Chapter 26
Leda
I glared at the men seated around the table. “Five men?”
“Five,” Gray repeated. His Don and second-in-command were both executed by my father during the Black Dinner—the name that we had all settled on for that night of treachery.
He was hesitant and careful. But when he acted, he acted with swift decisiveness. The epitome of festina lente—hurry slowly.
Except this time.
“How did you lose five men? What happened?” I asked hotly, my mind already calculating how many men that put us at now.
“They knew how we’d retreat. Somebody must’ve talked.” Gray replied.
I slammed my palm on the table. “Who?”
“Leda.”
I heard the warning in Lucas’s voice and promptly shut off any more questioning for now.
He was right. There was no need to browbeat what had happened, of course, but it just made me upset that it had happened regardless.
“What about tonight?” I asked instead, flipping open the book that I had made notes in. I knew it drove Lucas crazy that I wrote down our plans, but I wanted to make sure that I had a bird eye view of everything.
“Everything is in order,” Marcus, another capo that had been assigned to the table, replied. He was a scary-looking man, with a number of scars on his face like someone had carved him up, but I had found him very levelheaded when it came to plans in general. “We will hit four businesses. Two in Williamsburg, one in Queens, and the other in the Battery.”
“Don’t lose anyone,” I replied evenly. The last few attacks over the three weeks since we had made the plan hadn’t gone like we wanted. At first, things went according to plan. But rapidly, my father and Adrian were quickly figuring out our plan. Each life lost was another setback.
And we couldn’t afford too many.
“We won’t,” Marcus repeated. “You are quite the intriguing woman, ma’am.”
“Watch yourself,” Lucas growled from his standing position behind me. I would have been standing as well, but ever since he had found out that I was pregnant, Lucas made me sit at every opportunity—partly for comfort, and partly to conceal it from the other capos.
Pregnancy would be perceived as a weakness, and as much as I said we won’t be seeking to consolidate the Mafias afterwards, Lucas knew that none of the capos would see it that way. I was inclined to agree with him.
I liked having Lucas at my back, watching over me. I just wasn’t so sure he liked the fact that I was even sitting at this table. Something had changed in Lucas. Sure, he still showed me every day that he loved me, whether it was doing something like he was now or taking me to new heights in the bedroom upstairs.
I never failed to hear the whispers of love in my ear as I fell asleep, or the way he cupped my stomach tenderly when he wrapped that strong body around me.
But when we were doing things like this, I felt like he was jealous, and honestly, I wanted nothing to do with his future as a Don. I was only participating like this because Emil had told Lucas that the men trusted me, trusted that a D’Agostino was being legit when she stated she wanted to go up against her father.
That was the only reason I felt like I was here. We couldn’t afford for the capos and soldiers to turn their backs on this plan now. The walls already seemed like they were closing in, like we weren’t safe anywhere and it was only a matter of time before my father found me.
There were times I wanted to tell Lucas that we should just run, leave the country and forget it all, but my father would find us eventually.
The only way for us to be truly happy, to not have to worry about him, was to kill him.
Whenever I thought about him dead, I felt nothing, absolutely nothing, and that terrified me.
I should feel something. No matter what he had done to me, he was still my father, and it was wrong for me to wish for his death.
Right?
“I think we’ve spoken enough for the plan tonight,” Lucas said, his hand resting on my shoulder. “You know when to check in.”
The men departed quickly after that, and Lucas helped me up.