Page 19 of The Assassin’s Captive (The Roma Syndicate #5)

SERENA

T he name Barone tastes foreign on my tongue now.

Twenty-eight years I've carried it, twenty-eight years I've built my identity around the quiet professors who raised me with books and gentle corrections.

Now it feels borrowed like a costume I've been wearing without knowing the performance was always temporary.

The adoption isn't the problem. The problem is where I came from before the adoption.

I test every window latch in Lorenzo's house for the third time today.

The kitchen window overlooks a garden, but the drop would break my ankle.

The living room faces the front, but there's no cover between here and the road.

Each potential escape route would end in failure, and the helplessness crawls under my skin.

Emilio Costa's daughter . The words play on repeat in my head until they lose all meaning.

My biological father runs the syndicate I've spent years trying to dismantle, which seems less than ironic.

Every case I've built, every corrupt official I've exposed, every thread I've pulled—it all leads back to him. To me.

The front door opens, and Lorenzo's footsteps reach down the hallway toward where I'm standing in the surveillance room, staring at the wall of monitors that show every angle of his property. Cameras everywhere, recording everything. Even me, probably.

He appears in the doorway, still wearing the black shirt from this morning, sleeves rolled up to reveal the tattoos that ink his arms. The scar down his right cheek catches the light from the monitors.

"What are you doing in my study?" he grumbles, glancing up at me as he loosens his tie and scowls.

"I'm trying to understand my situation." I turn to face him. "What am I supposed to do now? Pretend this changes nothing? Pretend I'm not the daughter of a criminal?"

Lorenzo moves past me and reaches for a tablet on the table next to one of the larger monitors, then heads out the door toward the bedroom. "You adapt. You survive."

"That's it? That's your advice?" I follow him, my voice rising. My feet slap against the floor, and it doesn't escape me that I'm asking a mobster for advice on how to live in my new reality. "Adapt to being Emilio Costa's bastard daughter? Adapt to having my entire life revealed as a lie?"

He pulls his shirt over his head and drops it on the floor the minute we're in the room, then sets his tablet on his dresser. The muscles across his back shift as he reaches for his belt. "Your life wasn't a lie. Your parents raised you. Your education, your career, your choices—those are yours."

"Built on false foundations." I watch him strip down to his boxers as I cross my arms over my chest indignantly.

"Everything I am, everything I've worked for, it's all connected to him now.

The prosecutors I work with, the judges who hear my cases—they'll all know whose blood runs through my veins. "

"Then you make new connections. Build new foundations.

" He walks toward the bathroom nonchalantly. He couldn’t care less about this.

To him I'm nothing but a job, and that hurts me even though I shouldn’t give a rat's ass what he thinks.

"Costa isn't keeping you alive out of fatherly affection.

You're useful to him now. That gives you leverage. "

"Leverage?" I follow him into the bathroom, my hands shaking with frustration. "I'm a political tool. A weapon he can point at his enemies or use to legitimize his empire. There's no leverage in that."

Lorenzo turns on the shower, steam beginning to fog the mirror within seconds. "There's always leverage if you're smart enough to find it."

"Stop talking to me about this as if it's a business transaction." My voice cracks. "This is my life—my identity. Everything I thought I knew about myself is gone."

He hooks his thumbs in the waistband of his boxers. "Identity isn't blood. It's choices."

"Easy for you to say. You've always known who you were. The Costa family took you in when you were a kid. You chose this life."

"I chose survival." He steps out of his boxers, completely naked now. "Same choice you're making."

I stare at him, at the scars across his torso that mar his tattoos, at the way he moves through this conversation as if discussing my destroyed life is routine. "You don't understand. This isn't about survival anymore. This is about my future and my identity."

"You're Serena Barone, criminal prosecutor. A woman who put herself through law school and built a reputation taking down corrupt officials." He steps toward the shower. "Costa's blood doesn't change that."

"It changes everything." Tears burn my eyes, and I hate myself for crying in front of him. "It makes everything I've done meaningless!" My voice is raised, but he's still not listening to me. I feel like I'm screaming at a brick wall.

Lorenzo stops at the shower door. "You think Costa's enemies will see it that way? You think the families he's destroyed will care that you built cases against corruption instead of for him?"

The question hits me cold. I hadn't considered that. The rival families won't see me as an innocent prosecutor who happened to share DNA with their enemy. They'll see me as Costa blood. A target.

"You're right." My voice comes out small. "They'll come for me regardless."

"Now you're thinking clearly." He opens the shower door but doesn't step inside. "Costa's keeping you alive because you're useful and because you're his daughter. In that order."

"And when I stop being useful?"

Lorenzo's jaw tightens. "You make sure that never happens."

"How?" I move closer to him, desperate for answers. "How do I do this? How do I stay alive in a world where everyone wants to use me or kill me?"

"You learn the rules. You play the game. You find allies." His fingers test the water, but I scoff.

"Allies?" I laugh. "Who's going to ally themselves with Emilio Costa's daughter? I'm toxic now."

"Not all of us." His voice drops lower. "Some of us are already in too deep to worry about political consequences."

I look at him standing there, water running behind him, his hazel eyes holding mine. "You're talking about yourself."

"I'm talking about reality. Costa ordered me to extract information from you, then kill you.

Now you're his daughter, and he expects me to protect you.

You see how that changed the instant your blood was revealed to hold his name?

" His expression darkens. "You're not dead, and he isn't having me torture you because of that blood. "

"Why didn't you just kill me?" I ask, almost feeling like giving up.

"Because I don't want to kill you." His admission makes me stop. This man is a trained, cold-blooded killer—The Sin Eater, they call him—and he doesn't want to kill me?

My heart pounds against my ribs. "Lorenzo…"

"This is a job to me." He takes a step toward me. His voice is harsh, but I don't believe when he says, "You're a job, a complication I need to resolve so I can move on with my life."

The words cut deep, but I see the lie in his eyes. "If I'm such a burden, why haven't you handed me over to Costa already? Why keep me here?"

His hand shoots out, gripping my arm and pulling me against the wall. His body cages me in, naked and powerful and dangerous. "You think I want this? You think I asked for Costa's bastard daughter to complicate everything I've built?"

Tears spill down my cheeks. "I didn't ask for this either."

"Then we're both trapped." His grip on my arm loosens, but he doesn't step back.

"The difference is, you're not going to die, but when he finds out I've fucked his daughter, I just might.

" His chest is pounding, and the air around us is so fogged with steam, I'm having a hard time breathing.

Or maybe it's the fact that my heart feels like it might stop beating any second.

"How can you be sure?"

"Because Costa needs you now. At worst, he'll force you to work for him.

Launder money through legal channels, provide inside information on prosecutions, help him legitimize his operations.

" Lorenzo's other hand comes up to cup my face, thumb brushing away my tears.

"But there could be a way out if you're careful, if you give him what he wants while building your own position. "

The relief floods through me so fast it makes me dizzy. "I don't think so…"

"I think you're smart enough to survive this. Maybe even smart enough to win."

Without thinking, I wrap my arms around him, pressing my face against his chest. His skin is warm, solid, real. I'm shaking as his arms come around me slowly, hesitantly. "Serena…"

I look up at him, and the expression in his eyes makes my breath catch. He's staring right through me, knowing the spark that flicks to life between us every time we touch but not backing away. If Costa will kill him for wanting me, then what I'm seeing in Lorenzo's eyes is bold courage.

"Thank you," I whisper. "For keeping me alive. For telling me the truth."

His thumb traces my cheekbone. "You shouldn't trust me."

"I know." I rise up on my toes, bringing my mouth closer to his. "But I do."

The kiss happens without conscious decision, soft at first, tentative, then deeper as he responds. His mouth is warm and demanding, and I lose myself in the taste of him.

"This is a mistake," he says, but his hands are already moving down my body.

"I don't care." I kiss him again, pouring all my fear and relief and desperate need into it.

He groans against my mouth, then lifts me against the wall. "Serena, we can't?—"

"Yes, we can." I wrap my legs around his waist, feeling him hard against me. "I need this. I need you."

His control snaps. He carries me into the shower, the hot water cascading over us as he presses me against the tile wall.