Page 20 of Depths of Desire (The Emerald Dagger Mafia #3)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I send Luna to her room. Mostly because if she stays in front of me a second longer, I might do something I’ll regret.

If she had just said something back on the ship—anything—we might have had time.

We could have made a different move. Stopped Malrick before this escalated.

Now? I have no fucking clue what the next move even is.

Rage pours through me, red and sharp and unrelenting, at the thought of handing her over to Malrick.

Never. That bastard is lower than filth.

He doesn’t deserve someone like Luna. Doesn’t deserve to breathe in her direction.

My fangs drop before I even realize it. My jaw clenches.

Muscles coil tight under my skin. I’m losing control—and I know it. The thought of Malrick touching her…

A loud crack splits the air. I look down, chest heaving, and realize I’ve just crushed the corner of my desk with my bare hands. Splinters dig into my palms. I let go, shaking off the debris as I step back. Get it together.

Renzo’s right. The first thing we have to do is speak with Luna’s father and find out what the hell is actually going on.

I hate being out of the loop. Hate it more than I can say.

But I can’t leave Luna alone—not right now.

And it’s too dangerous to take her with me.

That makes me useless. Left sitting like a caged animal while the rest of my family prepares for war.

I close my eyes and open a telepathic channel to my father, Renzo, and Luca. Let me in. My father doesn’t answer at first. I push harder. His fury hits me like fire. Fiery. Violent. Ruthless. If you hadn’t protected Luna, he seethes, we wouldn’t even be here.

And if I’d let her die on the freighter?

Then what? We’d have no clue Malrick was involved.

No idea Luna was part of any of this. And Renzo and Luca?

Their wives would be burning the world down—starting with me.

Teeth clenched, I shove my own anger back against his.

Spare me your rage. This is not my fault. Let’s focus on the task at hand.

Luna’s father is here, Luca cuts in, always the diplomat when things get tense. I’ll set up a secure comm link. You can watch.

Thank you, I acknowledge trying to rein in my anger. I drop back into my chair, hands still twitching from the aftermath of fury. The screens on my desk light up as Luca’s link comes through. I click and join the feed. The video loads, grainy at first, before sharpening to crystal clarity.

Renzo steps into frame first, adjusting the camera so it captures the room clearly.

I recognize the reinforced interrogation space in the lower level of the villa.

Silver cuffs. Bolted chair. The kind of place no one walks out of unless Renzo allows it.

There he is. Elio Benedetti, Luna’s father.

His head hangs slightly, like he knows there’s no point in posturing.

His hair is standing up in tufts, and he’s wearing pajamas.

They obviously yanked him out of bed, not giving him the chance to change.

First rule of interrogation…strip the quarry of any dignity.

If Elio lies even once, I want to be the one tearing his throat out. Personally. Slowly. I will make them hold him until I am there, and then I will make him suffer unimaginably for the pain and fear he’s caused Luna.

Luca stands near the back of the room, arms crossed, jaw tight.

Renzo is beside him, his expression icy.

I have no doubt that waves of rage are emanating from them.

Our father is already seated at the long steel table, fingers steepled, face carved in stone.

Renzo is letting my father question Benedetti because Renzo is so angry he doesn’t trust himself to question the little fucker.

It’s his way of showing restraint… not that Benedetti knows that.

Benedetti opens his mouth, but my father waves him off.

“Don’t speak until you are spoken to.”

Benedetti swallows whatever he might have been about to say and nods silently.

My father continues to stare at him for another long moment. Then he begins the interrogation with one word. “Why?”

Benedetti sighs. “It was so long ago. I never meant?—”

My father waves his hand one more time and repeats, “Why?”

“We wanted a child,” Benedetti starts again. “He promised me he could help…”

My father shakes his head. “Why?” he repeats again. His rage is a living thing, and it’s turned ice cold. His patience is running out.

“I…Because I wanted to get ahead. I wanted to be on the top,” Benedetti blurts out. “By the time I realized how deep I was in, it was too late. There was no escape.”

My father nods. “That, I believe. You could have, however, reached out to any one of us at any time and we would have helped you. We would have taken care of Malrick easily and quickly.”

“I thought you would kill me. You would take everything I have. I’ve worked damn hard to get where I am.” His voice is angry and his face flushes crimson. “I wasn’t giving it up without a fight.”

“And yet here you are. Put out to pasture by your best friend when he retired. You could have lived out the rest of your days quietly and at peace with your family, but choose instead to sell us out.”

“I didn’t have a choice!” he all but shouts. “When Malrick found out you all were taking over, he demanded that I feed him more intel. He threatened Luna?—”

“He did not.” My father’s tone brooked no argument. “He would not threaten her as she is too valuable to him. He threatened you .”

Benedetti’s complexion pales. “I…I…” His voice died out while my father waited. Finally, he sighs again and says, “Alright, yes. He threatened me and my way of life. What was I supposed to do? People depend on me.”

“You were supposed to reach out to Renzo and tell him what was going on. You were supposed to put the family first as you’ve sworn to do. You were supposed to be loyal.”

“I didn’t have a choice…” he mumbles again.

“There is always a choice,” Renzo says as he pushes away from the wall. He comes to stand beside my father. “I have a few questions,” Renzo says, walking slowly around the chair. “And you’re going to answer them. Clearly. Honestly. Fast.”

“I—”

“You speak when spoken to,” our father snaps out a reminder, his voice cold enough to freeze time.

I tap my fingers against my desk, the only outward sign of the fury simmering beneath my skin. If this bastard had been in front of me, I’d have already ripped his throat out.

Renzo drops into a chair across from him, all calm menace. “Tell me how long you’ve been feeding intel to Malrick Comescu.”

Luna’s father straightens like he still thinks he has some kind of power.

“Since before Luna was born.”

I hear a sound behind me and know instantly that Luna has entered the room. I turn to instruct her to leave, but I see the anger and hurt on her face. I turn off my microphone so my family can’t hear me. “Luna,” I say, “You shouldn’t be here for this.”

“I need to be here. I need to hear him say it. Say exactly what he’s done.” She stares at the screen. “All these years, I’ve lived in fear of him. Fear of the truth. Now I want to hear it from his lips. I’m owed at least that.”

I want to argue with her, tell her it won’t be pretty, and she will be scarred by it all, but then I know she’s already scarred and maybe this will give her some kind of closure.

“Fine.” I make a promise to myself that if I think she’s suffering too much, I will take her out of here.

She will not suffer at this man’s hands any longer.

I turn the microphone back.

Luna takes up a position standing just out of frame beside me, arms folded, eyes like fire. “Turn it up. I want to hear it all. No more lies.”

Her father flinches, turning to the camera. “Luna, is that?—”

“Don’t,” she cuts him off. “You don’t get to say my name.”

Renzo doesn’t even blink. “You were saying? You started selling secrets to Malrick before Luna was born. How did that come about?”

Benedetti stares at the screen and then sags.

“There was a deal I was trying to make. I’d made promises about it, and took money for it, and suddenly the deal fell apart.

I couldn’t get it back together. I lost the product and the money.

I was a dead man. A friend gave me Malrick’s name as someone who might be able to help. I was desperate.

“I met with him, and he offered to help me if I cut him in on a slice of the action. I agreed. It was a simple deal. The type I made every day.” He let out a shuddering breath.

“Until it wasn’t. I…tried to get out. I told Malrick he’d made his money and we were through.

Then he showed me what he really was. He attacked some guy in front of me sucking the blood out of him.

It was disgusting. He told me about vampires and magickal creatures, and then he told me if I tried to stop working with him, he would kill me faster than I could blink, but he would take a good long time with my wife. ”

Luna made a small sound ,and I reach out a hand toward her. She took a step back. She was not looking for comfort from someone like me. So be it.

Renzo’s voice stays level. “Why didn’t you go to Aldo Giordano, former head of the family and your best friend for help?”

“Because Malrick had proof that I’d given him details about shipments to pay him off. He owned me. My business, my debts, my name. Aldo would have killed me if he knew. And then Malrick offered the one thing my wife wanted more than anything, a child. He offered us a child.”

His eyes flick toward the screen again, as if looking for Luna. Pleading. Pathetic.

“And how did it come about that Malrick would marry Luna?” Renzo cut right to the heart of the issue.

Benedetti turned back to the screen. “Luna, cara , I didn’t have a choice. He promised me he wouldn’t hurt you.”

A tang hits my sinuses as adrenaline floods Luna’s system.

Her heart rate ticks up, and the anger coming off her buffets me.

This is precisely why I didn’t want her to hear this.

While I can determine her physical reaction to her father’s confession, I can’t sense her emotional one.

Her face says she’s livid, but my guess is that he has broken her heart.

It’s hard to realize a parent doesn’t love you the way you thought they did. I know from experience.

“Don’t ever speak to me,” Luna says through clenched teeth. “I don’t want to hear any more of your lies.”

Her father looks sad for the first time. I wasn’t buying it. “You had to know what the deal meant, and yet you still made it, why?” I growl.

“Because I needed more help and Malrick was the only one who could supply it.”

“What help could you possibly need that was more important than me?” Luna demands.

“Your mother. She—struggled with aging. With losing her youthfulness. She couldn’t seem to accept that she wasn’t going to stay young forever.

She realized Malrick never age, and she wanted the same thing.

I tried to talk her out of it. Told her she was just being foolish, but she wouldn’t hear of it.

It was like she lost her mind.” He stopped speaking as if suddenly lost in the past.

“She reached out to Malrick without telling me. She made the deal with him. He promised her…I don’t know what the hell he promised her, but she believed him. He said he wanted Luna to be his wife, and she agreed, providing she didn’t age.”

I brace myself as disbelief pours off Luna. “How,” she starts, “do you go from making a deal with the devil to have a baby to offering that baby up to the devil to save your looks?”

Benedetti shrugs. “It was my fault. The money made her a bit crazy. Suddenly, it was all about keeping up with Sophia Giordano and Connie Dominici, the matriarch of la famiglia and her best friend. It was all about being on top. She liked it, no, she loved it almost like it was an addiction. She couldn’t see that she was losing her mind.

Anyway, the deal was set before I was aware of it.

There’s nothing I could have done to get out of it. ”

I breathe a sigh of relief. Renzo nudges me. Looks like it’s just a verbal contract. We should be clear then. Luna can stay with you. For now. We need to formulate a plan on how we’re going to respond to Malrick’s sinking of our cargo.

Agreed. I’m going to take Luna out with me now. She doesn’t need to see the rest.

I stand up. “Luna, we need to go.”

“What? No, I want to hear what else he has to say. I want to hear him try to justify it.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Why?” she snarls. “You think I can’t handle it? You think I can’t deal with this?”

“Luna,” I say, trying to be patient. “It’s not going to happen because we got the information we needed from him about how you were promised to Malrick.

They aren’t going to ask him anything else about you.

Now it’s all about what information about our business he shared with Malrick.

You can’t be here to hear that. They won’t let you.

I won’t let you. This is not your concern, and considering it is your family that has done a serious amount of damage to us, there’s no way to convince us otherwise. ”

Luna stares at me. Her mouth drops open as if to protest but she glances at the screen. Everyone is staring at her. She shuts her mouth, turns, and starts out of the room.

“Luna, I love you,” her father calls out.

But she doesn’t hesitate. She leaves the room and closes the door behind her.

If it were up to me, I would kill the man now, but it’s not.

I have to figure out how to deal with this mess.

Malrick is still going to come for Luna.

I smile slightly. I hope he comes personally.

I would love the chance to kill him. He will not touch Luna.

Not now.

Not ever.