Page 121 of My Solemn Vow

I set the knife on her lap as a peace offering.I can’t do this. Not to her.

I plead with her. “I love you. Let me save you.”

“If you really loved me, you wouldn’t have dragged me down here.” Her body is racked with a shudder. It guts me to watch. “Whatever you do, just tell Kerrianne I didn’t want to go and that I loved her. Don’t let her think I didn’t. I wouldn’t betray you. I wouldn’t betray her. Not when there’s so much for me to lose.” Antonella draws a deep breath. “Do what you’ve got to do, Valor, but I’m not hiding anything from you.”

There isn’t any deception. There hasn’t been any deception. I’ve made a mistake. For what? A few words in a text message?

I’m reaching for the latch to release her when the door from the underground garage slams open and my father and uncle walk in.

“Oh, you started without us. Did the bitch start talking already?” My uncle laughs, and it’s dark and murderous.

He doesn’t talk of our mate this way,my wolf snarls, snapping.

He walks over to the table and drops a stack of papers on it. It’s a small stack, but even a single line of text or a single photocan be damning evidence. We’ve killed for less. I need to get to the bottom of this.Now.

52

ANTONELLA

THE EVIDENCE

I’ve feared for my life before in shoot-outs and drive-bys. I’ve had a chill run down my spine as I’ve felt stalked while walking home at night. But nothing compares to the spiked back of the chair cutting into my flesh. It’s pierced my blouse in several places, and I can feel blood running from my shoulders down my back.

Valor’s accusations, the pleading, the way he said ‘I love you’ as he put the knife he just cut me with in my lap. He could have cut me deeper. I’ve seen him do so much worse.

The cuts burn but not as intensely as Valor’s eyes as he waits for something — anything — but he doesn’t even seem to know what it is. That’s what doesn’t make sense.

He steps back away from the chair. The warmth of his fingers as they brush against mine. Furrowed brows and hard-set lips. Valor looks over my head at his uncle and father as they approach. Their footsteps, loafers, step lightly across the solid floor.

Neil Cavanagh purposefully doesn’t look at me as he drops a stack of papers on the table. He’s smug, disgustingly smirking atValor like he’s figured out some dirty little secret. Like the cat who caught the canary.

Whatever Neilthinkshe has will be a lie. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you. You don’t pick on the biggest kid on the playground unless you can win the fight. And you don’t double-cross when you’ve already crossed enemy lines once.

But I don’t know that guilt or innocence matters in this room.

I admired Valor’s secret lair before. The way it was a fortress of solitude from the outside world. Now the feeling of being trapped, knowing that this is where I’ll die, I understand the pain of those who have been here before me.

Yet up in the light of day, when the sun rises tomorrow, life will go on.

Hopefully they won’t tell Kerrianne I left her. I didn’t want to go. I’m not guilty of whatever they think I did, but hopefully they’ll give her closure.

I draw a fortifying breath as the second-in-command of the Irish Mob holds up a picture, and he begins like he’s starting a perverted story time. “Here we have little Miss D’Medici sitting at a restaurant. Or should I say ‘ristorante’?”

As he continues with the show, he flicks to the next picture and it’s zoomed out farther, so the gold letters on the red trim of the restaurant are visible, and you can still tell it’s me.

“She’s at La Fatal Piedra, which, as we all know, is the preferred spot for Don D’Medici to do business.” Before I can interject, Neil goes back to the first one and points to my hand. “Look at her wedding ring glistening in the light. So, we know this was recent.”

This is clearly an attempt — a poor one at that — to frame me going to an Italian restaurant as evidence of the outing being somehow related to my family. But why? Given the clothes I’m wearing in the photo, I immediately know what day it is.

I open my mouth to object but close it again, thinking better of the situation.

What the hell is Neil up to, or does he just have bad information?

“Get to the point,” Valor growls, not disclosing to Neil that it was just yesterday that I was there. Not even disclosing that Valor had also been in D’Medici territory yesterday.

“Shhh, Valor. Let an old man tell you how your wife betrayed us. How she’s the one who already broke the truce like she forgot it’s her life on the line.” He scoffs and points. “Look at how she points to something on the paper, showing it to... oh, who is that? It’s her cousin, isn’t it?”

This time he asks me, and I answer because this proves nothing. “My third cousin, Humberto. He’s studying here for the semester from Italy and works as a waiter in that restaurant. I’m asking a question about the —”