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“I don’t know.” I lowered my head. “You’re changing the subject.”

She averted her gaze, but not before I saw the irritation in them. She was still a far cry from being on board with being married. It had only been a day, so why was I so impatient? She had years of patience waiting for me to react to her as a woman I could fuck, and when I was finally coming around to the idea of it, she was icing me out.

The irony.

The future remained murky, but I would worry about that later and it seemed she was still digesting the news I gave her about faking my death.

“We need to put this away.” She opened the freezer. “The meat will not fit in here.”

She was determined not to discuss learning to be man and wife.

“There’s a chest freezer in the garage.” I lifted the cooler. “I’ll put it there.”

“Good.” She stared at me as if seeing me in a different light. “It’s strange.”

“What? Like we’re living in domesticated bliss,” I teased.

She narrowed her eyes. “Go.”

“Yes, wife.”

She held open the door for me as I hauled the cooler into the garage. As I unloaded the meat into the freezer, I thought back to the different points of the conversation we never finished. Bianca felt guilty about the second time Griselda and I broke up. That was the time I just returned from Russia. The time after my father’s funeral and I was reeling from sordid revelations about my parentage. The time Griselda became a bad habit, a familiar body, and a reliable hookup. I spoke nothing about love or a relationship and made it clear our connection was simply sex. But after the damage she’d inflicted on Bianca because of me, I was done with her. It wasn’t only Griselda’s scathing words, but I found out she set a sociopath in Bianca’s path. And I confirmed the boy was indeed a sociopath five years later when he came into my club, roofied coeds, and raped them. But I had always kept an eye on Warren Winslow ever since that time Bianca called me the night that fucker took her virginity.

I almost didn’t answer my phone.

Chapter

Nine

Six YearsAgo

Sandro 26, Bianca 17

Sandro

“Sandro.”

“Bee, it’s midnight.” I woke up annoyed because I hadn’t slept in three days staking out a mark. I was not in the mood for idle chatter.

“Can you come get me?”

That was when I came fully awake, my heart slamming against my rib cage. “Where are you?”

“I didn’t want to call Matteo or Nico or Dad.” She stumbled over her brothers’ names and her voice sounded like she was on the verge of tears. Meanwhile, I was about to have a panic attack.

“Where. Are. You?”

“Ninety-First near Jamaica Avenue.”

“You’re in Queens?” I knew where that was. It was close to her friend’s house and a popular nightclub. I put her on speaker and threw on clothes. I kept her on the line and hustled out of mycondo and got into my GT4. She’d been dating, but I didn’t know which boy it was this time. I didn’t think it was anything serious. I’d been busy keeping up with the jobs the Rossis threw my way rather than keeping tabs on Bianca. The jobs kept my mind off what Raffa had told me about my father.

The thirty minutes it took me to get to Queens felt like an eternity, and after blowing past the speed limit and cutting through cars, it was a wonder I didn’t get pulled over. When I arrived at the location she’d given me, I immediately spotted her. My vehicle slowed, and she recognized the Porsche. Red hazed my vision when I noticed the way she was walking. Gingerly. As if she was in pain.

I squeezed the GT4 between two vehicles, jumped out of the car, and rushed to her side.

“Sandro,” she cried and limped toward me.

“Whoever hurt you is dead,” I growled, wrapping her protectively in my arms. I was having trouble regulating my breathing. “Who do I kill?”