Page 48 of Double Trouble for the Mafia Prince

The door swings open before I can knock.

Renato stands there, older, thinner, but eyes that are as intelligent as ever.

He nods once, then steps aside.

The hallway smells like lemon oil and memories.

I don't falter.

At the end of the hall, the light spills from the study.

I hear Rafa’s voice, speaking animatedly on the phone.

It doesn’t escape me that this kind of excitement is telling of who he’s speaking with.

Something tells me there will be a tribunal, not of law, but of family, legacy, expectation and betrayal and blood.

I press a kiss to each of my daughters’ foreheads.

I whisper the promise I’ve whispered a hundred times before—that I will protect them, that I will find a way to keep us safe.

Then I place them gently on the velvet settee outside the doors.

And I walk in.

8

DANTE

Five years later

The ceiling above the dancefloor pulses in time with the bass, an endless kaleidoscope of electric pink and liquid blue that bathes the room in half-light and sin.

From the upper floor, the crowd below looks like a tide of movement and mouths, all gilded skin and lacquered eyes, bodies pressed close in the hope that proximity might become invitation.

I lean back in the velvet-lined booth and let the world blur for a moment.

The liquor in my glass is aged, expensive, and probably wasted on the girl currently tracing her nail up the inside of my thigh as if she thinks she’s the first to think of it.

La Notte Alta is where Nuova Speranza comes to forget itself.

No politics here, no deals, no bloodstained ledgers or whispered warnings behind closed doors.

Just decadence, carefully curated and paid for in full.

The walls glimmer with crushed velvet, the chandeliers are low enough to remind you that you are meant to look beautiful but not important, and the staff are trained to pretend they don't know your name, even when they do.

This is not a club for desperate men.

This is a club for those of us who have already won.

I let my gaze wander lazily across the room, past the curved bar with its backlit shelves, past the suspended glass walkway that no one ever uses but everyone notices.

Two women blow kisses at me from a low corner booth.

One of them licks the rim of her glass like a promise.

I raise mine in return, not quite smiling.