He smiled and kissed me again. “You’re too important—to all of us. The Vittorios are already incautious enough. We’ll find another way that doesn’t put you in danger.”
He bent down and picked up our masks. He handed me mine, and I stopped myself from questioning him again. He was the king. He was my Padrino, and his word was law. He made the decisions. I just carried them out.
He caught my eye again and took my hand. “Come on. We’ll find the twins and get out of here.”
He started to turn away, but I held him back. “Luca?”
“Yeah?”
I gulped and hesitated to ask. “What’s going to happen… with us? What’s going to happen between the four of us?”
He started to shrug again and then relaxed when he saw me looking at him. My heart couldn’t tolerate the thought that finally reconnecting with Luca might mean losing Dante and Dominic—or all three of them. What if they fought over me?
He eased closer and trailed one fingertip down my cheek. “We’ll work it out. We care about each other too much to let something like that come between us. Trust me. The twins will listen to me. If I tell them to deal with it, they will. I won’t let anything separate us. You have my word on that.”
He turned away for the second time. He said “something like that” with such disdain. Did he mean he wouldn’t allow any conflict between us? Did he mean he would let me continue to see the twins?
He headed for the stairs, but he didn’t put his mask on, so I left mine off too. If we were leaving to go home, I didn’t need it anymore.
Laughter caught my ear from down the hall, and I paused. “I still have to go to the bathroom. Let me stop by for a second, and then I’ll be ready.”
He followed me down the hall. Women went in and out of the bathroom, talking and rearranging their costumes.
He motioned to an armchair standing a few yards away. “I’ll wait here for you. You go on. I’ll be here when you come out.”
I kissed him one more time and went inside. I went into the stall, but this dress took some serious wrangling before I finished.
I came back out into the washroom and checked my hair and makeup in the mirror. Two women from downstairs were already there, and one of them smirked at me in the mirror. “You’re here with Don Luca Fortino, aren’t you?”
The other one burst out laughing. “Good luck landing that one. He’s a monk.”
“Maybe he’s gay,” the other one blurted out, and they both exploded in laughter before they sailed out of the bathroom.
I smiled to myself. Luca definitely wasn’t gay, and I had a pretty good idea why he’d been alone all his adult life, but that was my little secret.
My bodice had gotten twisted while I was messing around with Luca, and I double-checked that I didn’t have lipstick on my teeth. I stood back to redo my hair when the stall at the far end opened, and someone came out.
I positioned myself in front of a different sink to make space for whoever it was, but I stiffened when a man stepped into view. He wasn’t wearing a mask, and I recognized him instantly. It was Giovanni Vittorio.
He leered at me in the mirror. “Good evening, Ms. La Rosa.”
“What are you doing in here?” I shot a sneer toward his crotch. “You aren’t a woman, unless you’re keeping secrets from your father.”
He laughed, but not loudly like he did downstairs. He chuckled low and deadly. “That’s really funny, but you won’t be joking around when you see what we have in store for you.” He waved toward the stalls. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Do you want to come quietly, or do we have to restrain you?”
I frowned. Giovanni couldn’t really be planning to kidnap me here, in the women’s bathroom. “What are you talking about? Don Luca is right outside. If you try to get me out of this mansion…”
“He’ll never hear you scream.” Giovanni took a menacing step forward. “It would be a real shame if he got you back with any of your important pieces missing.” He dragged his eyes down my body, and my skin crawled.
“You’re insane if you think you can get me out of here without him seeing you. You’re as stupid as you are ugly.”
I whirled away. I had to get out of this bathroom. I just had to get the door open and call for Luca. Then the Vittorios would be finished. Luca would be able to say that Giovanni tried to kidnap me, and that would start the war.
I grabbed for the doorknob, but Giovanni moved way too fast. He charged me from behind, and before I could stop him, he seized my wrist. He yanked me back into his body, and his big hand clamped over my mouth.
I screamed, but it was too late. He hauled me back into the bathroom and started wrestling me toward the last stall.
I flailed my other hand, trying to hit the emergency alarm embedded in my dress, but at that moment, a bunch of the Vittorio enforcers from downstairs rushed out of nowhere. Were they hiding in the last stall all this time?