Page 19

“Now, now, Alessandra. Don’t act like a brat in front of our guests.” He nods toward the pair nearby. “That’s Gabriella Giovani. Family doctor. The man across from her is my brother, Luca. You’ve met.”
“We have?”
“I’m sort of the one who drugged you,” Luca admits. “Sorry. I had to do what I had to do.”
“Asshole,” I mutter, hearing a feminine snicker in response.
“I like her,” Gabriella says with a slight accent, earning an eye roll from Luca.
“Anyway,” Dominic continues, “to answer your question, I’m looking for your father.”
My pulse stutters. “My father?”
“Yes. News has it he’s backing a RICO case against us.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“You tell me, “he challenges, leaning back with calculated casualness.
“You think I’m in on it with him? I haven’t seen him in almost a year.” I grab a strawberry, biting into it with more force than necessary.
“Family’s family in our world,” Dominic says, watching my mouth as I chew. “Even when they’re disappointing as fuck.”
“We’re not in your world.”
His laugh is cold. “Sweetheart, you were born in this world. You just pretend to live in another one. Have you talked to him?”
I shake my head, doing my damnedest to stay cool. Inside, a storm of contradictions rages—one year of silence after alifetime of his desperate attempts to keep me clean of all this. His face when I chose investigative journalism—terror masked as disappointment. Our last fight when he begged me to move farther away, to change my name, to erase every trace of Russo from my life.
He wanted me invisible. Safe. The opposite of what he was. What my mother was.
If Dominic sees how complicated this is—how my father’s protection became its own kind of prison—he owns another piece of me. So I meet his eyes, face blank as slate, while confusion and resentment churn inside me. The man who fought to keep me out of this world is now the reason I’ve been dragged back into it.
“No,” I say simply.
Dominic leans across the table, close enough that I can smell his cologne mixed with something metallic. Blood. “Here’s what I think. I think you know exactly where Daddy is hiding. I think you know exactly what he’s planning.”
“Then you kidnapped the wrong girl,” I hiss, leaning in to match him. “Because you’re dead wrong.”
His eyes drop to my lips, then back up. “We’ll see who’s dead wrong when we land, piccola. Can you tell me, then, why he’s backing it?”
“I don’t know, but if he is, it’s about time he puts a stop to you all.”
A growl emanates from Luca while Dominic just laughs.
“Careful, Alessa,” he warns. “You seem to forget that you’re at my disposal.”
“And the way I see it, Dominic, you need me to help find my father.”
“Are you going to help?”
“You trespassed into my penthouse, kidnapped me, drugged me, and you’re telling me nothing. Which of those things is supposed to convince me to help you?”
“I take it that the answer is no?” Dominic asks, his tone dangerously light.
“Never,” I hiss.
“Unfortunately for you, I don’t take no for an answer.”