“It's fun to be hopelessly in love. It's dangerous, but it's fun," she murmurs.
"Let me guess." I tilt my head. "That's another quote from The-Actor-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named?"
Her lips kick up. "It's also a not very thinly veiled code for I love you."
A warmth fills my chest. "Ti amo. Sono pazzo di te.Sei la cosa più bella che mi sia mai capitata."
I flip her over. My shoulder twinges, but I ignore it. "From now on, you let me deal with the darkness." I bend over her. "You and Avery deserve the light. You deserve every happiness I can provide for you. I want to fulfill your every wish; I want to make sure you and Avery never have to fear anything, for as long as you live."
A shadow crosses her features.
"What is it?" I frown.
She bites the inside of her cheek. "It may be nothing… but there's something he said that I just remembered."
"Which is?" I scrutinize her features.
"That he wasn’t the one behind the attempt on your life."
"He wasn’t?"
"That’s what he said." She holds my gaze. "At first, I didn’t believe it, either. But when I asked him again, he insisted he wasn’t the one who tried to take your life. Which means—"
"The real killer is still out there somewhere."
Abruptly, the security app on my phone goes off.
"Cazzo."I roll off of her and onto my feet. My shoulder protests. I ignore it as I march to my phone and grab it up from the nightstand. The app that controls the security on my phone has a notification. I click on it, and the video shows the guards outside with their guns trained on a man on the ground.
50
Seb
Half an hour later, I pace the floor of the garage of the warehouse. Earlier—after making sure my wife and our daughter were safely at home, and tripling the number of guards outside our house—I marched to the car with the man who had been captured trying to break in. No way was I going to take him into the house, especially with Avery there. And while Michael has been known to interrogate men in the basement of his house, things have changed since he got married. So, we now have a safe house on the outskirts of Palermo, precisely to be used as a place where we can hold those disloyal to us and interrogate them, if needed. Which is where I brought the intruder, after alerting my brothers.
I drove to the warehouse, and as I parked, Massimo, then Luca, and Adrian arrived.
Now, I look toward where Luca glares at the intruder. The man sits on a chair, his arms and legs restrained.
"Who sent you?" Luca asks in a hard voice. "You can make this go much easier on yourself if you give up your employer."
"And risk you killing me?" The man bares his teeth. "I think not."
Luca buries his fist in the man’s face, and blood blooms from his nose. He slumps back in the chair, and blood splatters on his clothes and on the floor.
"Easy,fratello," Massimo cautions him, "if you knock out all of his teeth, he won’t be able to speak."
"Cazzo!" Luca shakes his head, then steps back. "You’re right," he murmurs, much to my shock. The hot-headed Luca, actually reining in his anger? Whoa, it’s as hard to believe as Elsa not mentioning The-Actor-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named in conversation for an entire day.
A-n-d, now I’m the one thinking of him, and without Elsa’s prompting. I close the distance to Luca, then grip his shoulder "May I?" I jerk my chin in the man’s direction.
"Have at him." Luca shakes out his arm as he walks out of the circle of yellow the spotlight above casts over the man.
Outside, it’s daylight already. The sun was rising as I drove here. But here in the basement of the safe house, perpetual darkness shrouds the space.
I pause in front of the man, who glances at me from under swollen eyelids.
"Look man, we have nothing against you. We simply want to know if it was Freddie Nielsen who sent you."