Her eyes widened, and she nearly dropped her fork from her hand. “What?”
“You were right,” I repeated through clenched teeth. I hated to admit it. “He’s doing what you said. He’s turning my Mafia against me. He’s playing Don. And he’s letting the other Dons know that they can start nibbling on things that I own. I need to stop him.”
Leda picked up her glass of wine and took a sip, then two. Her silence was maddening, and it was driving me crazy.
“Leda, please,” I continued. “I’m fighting a losing battle and I need every bit of help I can get.”
It hurt to admit it aloud, but it was the truth. Anyone could see that I was on the verge of losing everything, including my life.
“It’s hard to fight a battle that you are losing, isn’t it?” she asked softly, reaching across the table to touch my hand. “You have to prove that you still exist, Lucas. You have to make your presence known. You have to make him come to you on your terms. Show that no matter how many men he sways to his side, you still call the shots. Adrian craves control. That’s the only language he’ll understand.”
I knew she wasn’t just talking about Adrian. My control had been slipping for weeks too, and she was the only thing that could bring it back into order. I used sex to do so, but it just wasn’t enough. Not anymore.
“And how would you know that?”
“Your mistake was asking me what I’d do if I were Adrian.” Leda smirked. “You should have asked me what I’d do if I were my father.”
She wasn’t wrong. Carmine D’Agostino, as far as I could tell, knew how to use his power, even against his own children.
“You were never in your father’s circle.”
Something crossed Leda’s face, and I almost regretted my words.
“You’re right,” she replied coldly. “I’ve never been in his circle, but he wasn’t shy about his business at home, even in front of his children.”
Her jaw clenched and I flipped my hand over, lacing our fingers together. For a moment, Leda stared at our joined hands, and I wondered what she saw, or rather, what she wanted from me. Some days I liked to think that she needed me as much as I needed her, but it was only a dream. I wasn’t a lifeline for her, and why she fucking stayed, I didn’t know.
“He said that Nico and I resembled our mother too much, that we didn’t know enough to understand what he was doing,” Leda began. “Nico and I spied on it. We got a pretty good idea for what he was doing, and how to do it. Gunshots and all.”
I tried to picture Leda as a little girl, watching as her father dealt with his business and not understanding what sort of man her father was.
“His capos came by a lot,” she continued, her gaze distant. “Loyal and disloyal. I used to write down everything they said so I could study it later. Because I was a little girl who wanted to please my father, to let him know that I can do what he did. My notebooks were full of detailed minutes of everything he said.”
“Resourceful,” I admitted. I already knew that Leda was as smart as she was beautiful, but I hadn’t expected her to get started at such an early age. “Why did you stop?”
She shifted her eyes back to mine, something cold stopping my heart. “Because he caught me and threatened to sell me to the highest bidder.”
Chapter 26
Lucas
Fuck.
“Since we’re asking questions,” she said after a few moments, picking at her food with her fork. “How did you become a Don and not know how to balance your own power? I would have thought that you’d learn these before taking on the position.”
Her sudden change in subject had me picking up my whiskey again. I didn’t want to discuss myself or how I had come into power. More importantly, because I was doing a shit job at being a Don right now.
“Fine,” she murmured a moment later, realizing I wasn’t going to answer her question. “This food is fabulous, by the way. Your guard is a great chef.”
I turned my attention to the food, shoveling it into my mouth but not really tasting it. Her questioning was far too close to what I had thought about earlier, about telling her my story, and I realized that I was not ready to see the disdain on her face.
I was not ready to watch her shy away from my touch, to hear the thoughts that would go through her mind once she knew.
It would be unbearable.
After dinner, I finally allowed myself to touch Leda, peeling off my shirt to find her dressed in a matching lacy bra and panty combo in my favorite color, black. She didn’t give me any pushback as I worked my way down her body, pressed up against the wall of the balcony. I brought her to a swift orgasm with my tongue. Her hands clenched in my hair, and my name danced on her lips.
Like it should be.