Page 14 of Arranged

Chapter 5

“YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUTLuca,” Rafael said, his face deadly serious. “He’s sleeping every night now.”

“Why do I feel like that’s not what you came to tell me?” Judging by the look on his face, it had to be something far, far more important.

“It’s about Santino.” Rafael sighed.

He strode across the room and poured some whiskey into a glass. After he downed it, he brought another glass to me.

I took it, eyeing him carefully.

“Just say it. You know I don’t like to wait,” I said.

“He figured out we were asking around about him, and he decided to send you a message.”

“A message?” I furrowed my brow. “What kind of message?”

If Santino had killed one of ours again, I wasn’t going to be pleased. But I’d told Rafael to be careful so that such things wouldn’t happen.

Rafael pulled out his phone, tapped the screen a few times, and then offered it to me.

I stared at the video that was playing, my rage only growing.

Santino had created a music video to mock me. There was a girl in the video who looked like me, and she was wearing a wedding dress.

She was running around in panic. Then she tripped and her dress got ripped and dirty. She rolled around in the dirt, and when she got up, Santino showed up and took off her dress.

“You don’t know what you’re doing, girl,” he sang. “This is not a job for you. I’ll be coming for you. You need a real man for a man’s job. And I’ll give you some real dick too because I see you’re desperately missing it.”

He repeated the last line two more times.

The rest of the video was in a similar tone.

“This is good, right?” Rafael asked quietly, and my gaze snapped to his. “He’s clearly threatened by you.”

“Who else has seen this video? How did he find a way to send it to us?” I hadn’t exactly given him my email address or anything.

Rafael lowered his gaze.

“What?”

“Um.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake! Speak!” I raised my voice, which I almost never did with him, but he’d also never hesitated so much.

“It was actually posted online. On an app.”

“What?” I gaped at him. “Are you saying anyone can see that damn video?”

“Our tech team is trying to get it taken down. We figured it out only because we had an alert created for Santino’s face and the system recognized him. But I don’t think many people who know you even use that app. It’s stupid. Santino is an idiot for exposing himself like that. What serious crime lord shows his face and records a dumb music video to make a threat? It’s ridiculous. Even if someone sees it, they’ll be laughing at him.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. “He’s an asshole, yeah, but he’s not dumb, even if he wants to make us believe that. He knew exactly what he wanted to achieve with that video.”