Page 159 of Pietro

Ten days. That's how long I've known my life was over.

I press my palm against Rosso's door, the wood smooth under my frozen fingers. Three in the morning, and the restaurant sits dark except for a thin line of light bleeding from somewhere deep inside.

My mother loved small italian restaurants like this one.

She's been dead three weeks. Three weeks since the cancer finally won, and I held her hand while she slipped away, whispering apologies I didn't understand then.

I understand them now.

"I'm sorry, baby," she'd said, her voice barely a whisper. "I tried to keep you away from all of it."

All of it meant Uncle Francesco. All of it meant the family business she'd spent twenty years protecting me from. All of it meant the monster I'm supposed to marry in three weeks.

My stomach twists, and I have to swallow hard to keep from throwing up right here on the sidewalk.

Daniil Morozov.

Even thinking his name makes my skin crawl. Francesco announced it at dinner like he was telling me about the weather. "You'll marry Daniil next month. It's good for business."

Good for business. Not "He'll treat you well" or "You'll be happy." Just good for business.

The other men at the table wouldn't even look at me. That's when I knew how bad it was. These men—killers, thieves, criminals—they couldn't meet my eyes when Francesco said Daniil's name.

I found out why later. Overheard two of Francesco's soldiers talking when they thought I was asleep.

"Poor kid," one said. "You hear what happened to his last girlfriend?"

"Which one? The Russian girl they found in pieces, or the waitress who just disappeared?"

"Both. Man's a fucking psycho. Even Francesco's scared of him."

Pieces. They found a girl in pieces.

My hands shake harder as I knock on Rosso's door. Soft at first, then louder when no one answers. I know someone's here.I saw a shadow move past the window a minute ago.

"Please," I whisper, then louder. "Please, I need help."

Nothing.

I knock again, harder this time. My knuckles sting from the cold and the force of it. "I know someone's in there. Please. I just—I need?—"

What? What do I need? Sanctuary? Protection? Someone to save me from my own family?

I'm Francesco Torrino's niece. No one in Chicago will help me. No one would dare.

But I had to try. Mom always said the Sartoris were different from the other families. "They have rules," she'd tell me. "Lines they won't cross." She never said it outright, but I understood. If I ever needed help, really needed it, maybe they'd be the ones to ask.

Except Mom didn't know I'd need help from her own brother.

The wind picks up, and I wrap my arms around myself. The bruises on my upper arm throb where Francesco grabbed me yesterday when I tried to refuse the engagement. "You'll do as you're told," he'd said, his fingers digging in hard enough to leave marks. "Your mother kept you soft, but you're a Torrino. You'll serve the family."

Serve the family by marrying a monster. Serve the family by dying in pieces like those other girls.

I lean my forehead against the door, exhaustion making me dizzy. I've been walking for two hours, too scared to take a cab in case Francesco's men were watching.

The flash drive burns against my palm where I've been clutching it for the past hour. Such a small thing to hold my uncle's destruction—or mine, depending on who gets it first.

I recorded everything. Three weeks of Francesco's meetings when he thought I was upstairs grieving my mother. The deals with the Russians. The cop he's been paying off. The shipment he stole from the Sartoris last week, laughing about how Pietro would lose his mind.