Echo, page 15
Remembering what I had said earlier, Erico answered for me. “The presidential suite.”
“That’s all we have for now, November. Sitrep in ten.” Mr. Trefor ended the call and looked at me with his piercing blue eyes that were void of emotion. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Mantovani. I’ll give you a moment to confer with Echo regarding our next steps.” Nodding once at Erico, he walked out of the room and shut the glass door behind him.
Erico looked at me, and for a single moment, my heart stopped as I stared at the absolute fury in his eyes.
Then he spoke, and my heart didn’t just stop, it crushed in on itself.
“You fucking married my brother?”
Echo
“You fucking married my brother?” I was so goddamn pissed I didn’t wait for an answer or an excuse. “What the hell happened to the money and place I gave you?” I made a mental note to track down the pilot and fucking kill him.
“I’m sor—”
“No. You don’t get to fucking apologize to me. That ship has sailed. Start talking, and do it fast, because any second, the asshole who took out Ademaro is going to figure out where you are. Alpha’s not usually in the New York office. This is going to look like too much of a coincidence for Vincenzo to ignore.”
She blinked. “I did not say it was the Vincenzos.”
“Neither did I. I said Vincenzo. Singular, not plural. Massimo Vincenzo. And before you deny it, let’s not forget that you were married to Ademaro for nine fucking years. You know exactly who the hell I’m talking about.”
She stared at me with the same damn doe eyes she’d had as a teenager, but she didn’t say shit.
“I swear to Christ, woman, you better start talking, or I’m going to start shooting.”
“Yes, I have heard of Massimo Vincenzo, but I have never met him.”
“Right.” Un-fucking-believable. “He’s your cousin and the goddamn Don of the Vincenzos, but you’re going to stand there and tell me you never met Massimo.” This was bullshit. “Ademaro became Don, joined the fucking board of directors at your father’s bank, married you in secret, and managed to not get every Mantovani in Sicily killed in the process. Tell me, how the fuck did that happen if Ademaro didn’t broker a deal with Vincenzo?”
This time, I got a reaction out of her.
Her eyes widened. “You kept in touch with Ademaro? He knew you were alive?”
Just hearing her say my asshole brother’s name made me want to kill him, but the fucker was already dead. Maybe I should’ve given a damn about that, but all I felt was irrationally pissed. “Do I look like I have a death wish, or do you think I’m just that goddamn stupid?” This whole time I’d been fucking protecting her by staying hidden. And for what? So she could screw Ademaro? “No, I didn’t contact him.” I hadn’t contacted anyone in the family.
She didn’t let it go. “But you know about Ademaro. You know he is—that he was at the bank. That he took over your family. How can you know these things if you did not keep in touch with….” She trailed off. “You have been speaking to Caio.”
She didn’t ask it, she stated it like she knew what the hell she was talking about.
Done with this conversation, I set her straight. “If I wasn’t in contact with Ademaro, I sure as shit wasn’t in touch with Caio.”
Caio would’ve immediately told Ademaro if I’d called. Then Ademaro, if he was smart, would’ve tracked me down and shot me before I found out he’d married her because I would’ve killed that motherfucker for touching her. Not that my asshole brother would’ve found me in the first place, because I’d kept it tight, which was the whole damn point of me walking away.
Erico Mantovani died the day I got out of that car in Palermo and left her with a fucking pilot.
Not once had I looked back.
Giancarlo had been a fucking disgrace and a son of a bitch, but he’d been right about one thing. Neither me nor Ademaro ever had any loyalty to the family or the Cosa Nostra. Add in the fact that Ademaro married Sancia, and it took my lack of familial loyalty to a whole new level.
Staring at me like she did all those years ago, like she was trying to get her fill, she slowly nodded. “You watched from afar.”
Jesus. She still spoke like she kept her head in a damn book, and for a second, I almost felt guilty.
Ademaro had a mistress. I knew it nine years ago. The woman was a distant cousin of the Arcuris, and he was too much of a pussy to openly be with her. The last time I’d used back channels to get intel on him, he was still keeping the woman on the side. Which meant the fucking prick had not only wagered Sancia to get at Santoro and his hold on the Vincenzos’ money before the old man died, but Ademaro had also been cheating on her.
There was only one thing I hated as much as assholes that hit women—goddamn cowards who cheated. I saw what that shit had done to my mother while I was growing up. Five fucking years old, holding my mother’s hand while she’d silently shed tears after that son of a bitch Enzo yelled at her before getting into a car with a mistress right in our own driveway. I vowed then and there to never be like him.
Except that was exactly what the hell I was doing.
My jaw clenched, acting like a son of a bitch, I was yelling at a woman who’d had even fewer choices than my mother—fuck. Fuck.
Trying to take it down a notch, I shook my head. “Just tell me why Ademaro was in New York.”
I also wanted to know why the hell he’d brought her when he’d kept her hidden for so long. But like a pussy, I didn’t take that question on. I remembered her asking me what it was like here. I remembered every damn conversation we’d had. I’d killed hundreds of men. All of it was a blur. But late-night phone calls with a forbidden Principessa? I fucking remembered those. But I didn’t want to know if she was the one who’d asked Ademaro to bring her to New York.
Her gaze cut to my jaw, and she frowned before she looked back at me. “I do not know.”
Christ. “How often did he come here?”
“I am not sure.”
Still fucking livid—at my asshole brother, at myself, at the goddamn pilot—I tried and failed not to take it out on her. “What the hell do you know?”
No anger in her eyes, her gaze swept across my face. Then her voice dropped to the same fuck-me-up quiet that an eighteen-year-old Principessa had used on me. “Your hair is longer.”
I inhaled. Twice.
“Keep testing me, woman.” I didn’t do sloppy seconds. Not with any of my brothers’ castoffs, and not with any woman used by the Cosa Nostra. Never had, never would.
But my cock wasn’t getting the memo that this woman was the crown fucking jewel of off-limits, and my head spun up with the temptation of a revenge fuck. Except that joke was on me. My brothers were too dead to give a damn who I fucked. And no matter how good I gave it to her, it wouldn’t change the fact that she’d cheated on me.
Cheated.
Gesù fucking Cristo, I wasn’t like a pussy, I was the goddamn pussy.
Dark-eyed and lost, she looked up at me with the same untainted purity that’d sucked me in and fucked me up nine years ago. “I do not know what that means.”
“No fucking shit.” That was the problem. Dressed up, aged up, speaking another language in another country—it didn’t matter. She was still too damn innocent, and her honesty was to a fault. She hadn’t changed, and neither had my reaction to her.
One look—then, now—and shit in my head went nuclear.
A normal prick would’ve told her that. In a flattering way.
An honest prick would’ve straight up admitted culpability.
I wasn’t either.
I was the asshole who hadn’t followed through, the negligent prick that didn’t check to make sure she’d gotten out, and the sloppy fuck who hadn’t tracked the pilot.
This entire shit show was my fault.
Something I probably should’ve admitted, but I wasn’t a saint. In fact, I was the furthest damn thing from it. I was also irrational, possessive and pissed. Blaming her for marrying my brother was an easier target than looking at my own damn mistakes, so I didn’t look.
Instead, I made a new fucking vow.
History wasn’t going to repeat itself. I wasn’t going to play into her innocent routine again. No more falling down the Principessa well of shit decisions. From this second forward, I was locking that bad habit down.
Mentally committing to my new mission, I asked what I needed to know to get her the hell out of my world and back into hers. “Who did Ademaro have lined up as his second?”
“Scusassi?”
I fucking paused.
My eyes closed, I inhaled, and for one damn second, I was there.
Her voice, our native language, another time and place.
I thought about it.
Me, her, a life.
Together.
Then I remembered who the fuck she’d married, and I bit out an order. “English.” One word of Italian from her was one too many. I didn’t trust myself to hear more. “Is Caio primed to step up?”
“To Don?” she asked innocently.
I added Don to the list of shit I hated hearing come out of her mouth. “Yeah.”
“I am not sure about much of anything.”
I read between the lines. “You’re not sure Caio’s ready, or you don’t think Ademaro made arrangements for him to step up?” It’d been almost a decade. I’d hoped Caio had grown up, but the truth was, I didn’t fucking know. All I was sure of was that he was still racing, and I’d never wanted him in this life, but the reality was, I had no control over that. I’d left, and Caio had been born into this shit, same as me.
With zero pretense, she frowned. “Are you asking for my opinion?”
Gesù Cristo, I hated how fucking beautiful she was.
Tempering my response, I laid it out as plain as I could. “Did Ademaro make arrangements for Caio or anyone else to step up in the event that he was killed?” Did that fucker even think about what would happen to her if he ate a bullet?
She hesitated. “Not that I am aware of.”
“You paused before you answered,” I accused.
She held my gaze, but then the side of her that’d never blindly put up with all of my shit came out, and she dished it up, Principessa-style, complete with manners. “I do not know what I can or cannot say that will or will not make you angrier with me.”
I fucking stood there.
Then the past replayed in my head like punishment for every fucker I’d taken out, and I remembered the exact text I had sent to her.
Truth, Principessa. With me, always the truth.
Choking on my own bullshit, already failing at my new mission, I repeated history and bit out a reply. “You tell me the truth.”
She nodded. Then she dropped her gaze to her clasped hands and gave me what I’d asked for. “I paused because I did not know Ademaro.” She looked back up at me. “He never spoke to me about his day-to-day activities or anything else related to his business or the family.”
I wanted to ask what they did talk about. Hell, I wanted to demand it, but I didn’t go there.
I couldn’t.
Hating Ademaro more, needing a minute to think without looking into those unintentional bedroom eyes of hers, I turned toward the window and the shit view as I swore under my breath. “Motherfucker.”
Her quiet, gentle voice hit my back with the force of a blast wave. “You still swear in English.”
The sun already set, the lights on in the office, the windows cursed me with a perfect view of her reflection.
“A walk down memory lane isn’t going to help you right now, Principessa.” But the irony wasn’t lost on me that I was right back where I was nine years ago. Step up to Don to put a wall of protection around a Principessa, or make her disappear, then walk the hell away.
She stood from her seat, but her voice sank even quieter. “I am sorry I came here.”
Sancia
Knowing I had to leave, I gave him the only form of an apology I thought he would accept. “I am sorry I came here.”
Turning, he stared at me with those eyes I was never able to look away from, not even now when I saw how much he hated me.
Holding me captive for too many heartbeats to count, he finally spoke. “Sorry you came, or sorry I’m here?”
I had not thought I could feel any more pain from his anger, but I was wrong. His scathing tone, the venom in his voice, he was exactly as I should have recognized him to be all those years ago. He was darkness without light.
His left eyebrow rose. “No comeback for that one, Principessa?”
I knew he was taunting me. His intent was so unctuous, I could have drawn the tension in the air. I felt his desire to hurt. I heard his want to spar. I saw his anger emanating like a roaring tornado of destruction. All of it had color and motion I could put on paper. But I did not draw anymore, and verbally, I could not play his game.
I did not have it in me.
Blaming myself for his darkness, for what I was seeing now compared to the man I had met nine years ago, everything was different between us except this.
I still had no idea how to converse with him.
Before, it had been his experience and dominance and authority. Now, it was still all of those things, even more so, but it was also because every word felt poised as if it were either a weapon or an extravagance, with no in-between.
Nowhere to move within the confines of my own guilt, I simply told him the truth. “I am not sorry I got to see you.”
“Is that right?” His gaze locked, he took a step toward me.
My heart started to pound harder, and I hesitated. There was something new in his tone, something more than anger. “Yes.”
“Got to,” he stated, repeating my words as he took another step.
Searching his inscrutable gaze, frightened of the sudden shift in his body language, I did not move. I could not have even if I had wanted to. Rooted in place, unable to save myself, I did what I had done the one and only other time this man had come at me.
I watched the Erico Mantovani storm roll in.
Mesmerized, intoxicated, frightened, I stared.
The tic in his jaw, the flexing of the muscles in his forearms, the vein on the side of his neck, the way he moved like a stealth tempest—he was terrifying, and he was beautiful.
“Got to,” he muttered, low and guttural.
Fear had me crossing my arms in a futile imitation of self-protection. “Y-yes.”
“You got to see me? Now you think you’re going to leave?” Threatening, challenging, aggressive, he closed the last of the distance between us. “That’s how you’re going to play this?”
I pulled my arms in tighter. “I am not playing at anything.”
His body stilled.
Then his voice became the storm. “What the fuck happened to the plan? I gave you a way out.” His nostrils flared, his hand came up, and his fingers wrapped around my neck as he bit out words in a murderous growl. “I fucking gave you your freedom.”
My heart stopped.
Imprisoning me in his dominant grip, his thumb landed on my mouth, and he sneered. “My house, my money—they weren’t good enough for you?”
Like a flash of lightning cutting the sky, like the split-second glimpse of the squall, I saw it—the hurt in the middle of his anger storm.
My body shook, my mind reeled, and I tried to reach for words that would not be the weapon that made everything worse. “I was young and afraid. I did not—”
“You ran to my brother.” Aiming the accusation with precision, he pulled the trigger. “Then you fucking married him.”
My heart and mind shattered.
“I….” No. That was not what happened. “I did not run to him.” My throat became thick with regret as the irrevocable past twisted my stomach. “You do not understand.”
Calculated and deliberate, he dragged the pad of his rough thumb across the vulnerable flesh of my bottom lip. “You think I don’t understand what you did, Principessa?”
Drawing in a sharp breath, I wanted to pull back in self-preservation, but my traitorous body leaned in for the slaughter. “I did not…. It was not what you think. It was not—” Sudden fury raged in his eyes, and I stopped talking.
“It wasn’t what?” he demanded, gripping my chin as his thumb made another sweep across my mouth. “It wasn’t for protection? It wasn’t for money? It wasn’t to appease your piece-of-shit father who was selling you off to the highest bidder?” Every word uglier than the last, every question coming with another unforgiving stroke of his thumb, his voice turned harder, but his touch became softer than a gentle caress. “You think any of that matters now?” Growling low and lethal, he pushed his thumb past my lips. “Tell me, Principessa, did you enjoy fucking Ademaro?” Leaning in close, slowly dragging his thumb back, his whispered anger fell across my face. “Did he take this mouth?”
Tears welled.
Nine years of hell.
Nine years of fear, imprisonment, and growing resentment from Ademaro as his ruthless world bled violence all around me, and I had not cried. Not since that first morning.
Not one single tear.
Because I had sworn, I had promised myself, that I would never be a victim.
But now with a single question, a green-and-gold-eyed Enforcer had reduced me to the woman I vowed to never be.
I was a pawn.
I was a Principessa.
I bled Vincenzo blood.
And yes, I was a scapegoat and hostage in the brutally cruel world of the Cosa Nostra that was too many generations deep for me to have ever had a chance. One way or another, this life would have claimed me. I understood that.
But I was not a victim.
I had chosen this path.
I had chosen not to trust this man.
I had chosen to believe Papà and Ademaro. I had swallowed all of their lies. I had forced that pilot to take me to the villa instead of the airport, insisting I would be safe even after we found Ademaro waiting in the courtyard. I had even told the pilot that I did not need the phone he had thrust into my hand as he had urgently whispered the unlock passcode while Ademaro’s soldiers yanked open my door. I was still telling him it would be all right when I was removed from the vehicle. I had even told him to leave.
