“No,” I shot back. “I’m just in a tight spot right now and can’t afford to lose my job.”
He huffed out a laugh. “That’s what this is about? Money? For fuck’s sake. I’ll send you money. How much do you need?”
“Did you ever stop to thinkwhyI choose to work in a bar, Enzo? It’s because I’d rather do that than accept one more penny of this family’s dirty money.”
“How many times do I have to tell you that we have plenty of legitimate streams of income?” His annoyance at having this argument for the millionth time was audible.
“You can tell me till you’re blue in the face, and it won’t make a difference. I’m not stupid. I know all those legitimate businesses were seeded by funds earned from the illegal ones.”
“I don’t know what you want from me. We don’t deal drugs, and we stay far away from the skin trade. You act like running underground casinos is akin to killing puppies.”
“I want a new family!” I screamed, my temper flaring.
Enzo snorted. “Yeah, well, good luck with that. Can you just behave yourself, please? I’ve got enough to deal with right now, with Gio gone and Matteo taking over the reins with no notice and needing me to hold his hand through it all.”
“Wait a minute.” That was new information. Leave it to my brother to casually drop a bomb like that in my lap. “What do you mean Gio’s gone and Matteo is in charge?”
A sigh sounded over the line. “Gio found Rory. Or he thinks he did. Either way, he’s following a lead.”
I stopped breathing.
One of the reasons I’d begged to leave was because tragedy seemed to befall the women of the Bellini family, and I would be damned if I became the next victim.
Matteo, the baby of the first cousins at seven years my junior, was recently widowed and currently struggling to raise his two young daughters while playing the role of CEO, dealing with Bellini’s real estate holdings.
Giovanni, who was five years younger than me, was the heir to the Bellini Mafia and had been handed the mantle of Don after Uncle Dominic’s passing. His wife, Rory, was Irish mafia royalty. Their union had strengthened our alliance with the O’Malley family, and with their backing, the Bellinis practically ran Chicago.
A few years back, Rory disappeared—just poof. There one day, gone the next. Gio spent months tearing the city apart, blaming the Russians for kidnapping her. Or at least, that was the show he put on for her powerful Irish family, so they didn’t turn on us.
But those of us on the inside knew the truth.
Rory ran.
Couldn’t say I blamed her. This wasn’t a life I would have chosen for myself, and Rory hadn’t been lucky enough to escape being sold off into marriage.
Having known Gio my entire life, I knew he wasn’t an abusive man—not like my father—but he wasn’t warm either. As the heir, he’d been raised to always get his way, for everyone’s will to bend to his own, and he wouldn’t take the slight of his wife runningoff lying down. It wasn’t a surprise he was chasing down the first lead he’d gotten in years.
I sent up a silent prayer that she could outrun him. But a determined Bellini man—Gio in particular—was a force to be reckoned with; something I knew from personal experience. She’d landed a blow to his pride and made him look weak to his men, and if he ever found her, Rory would be in for a world of pain—even if it wasn’t physical.
“You’re Gio’s second. If Matteo can’t handle stepping in, why don’t you just do it?”
“Gemma, you know how it works. I might be older and have more experience with the inner workings of the family dealings, but birth order is everything. The men expect Matteo, not me, to take over should anything happen to Gio. If I did, it would seem like a coup.”
Right. Couldn’t forget that the line of succession was set in stone.
Uncle Dominic and my father were twins. But because Uncle Dom came out first, he was instantly declared the heir, with Dad being named the spare. That meant Gio, then Matteo, were in direct line to take over after Uncle Dom’s death. My brother was a second son’s son, so the best he could hope for was the position he held at Gio’s side as he sat at the head of our family.
That was, unless the unimaginable happened and both our cousins met an untimely end. Given their line of work, that scenario wasn’t entirely beyond the scope of possibility.
A shiver rolled down my spine. I might have fought like hell to get away from the life they lived, but they were still my family. I didn’t want to see anything bad happen to any of them.
We’d been raised as a unit—the four of us cousins—growing up without our mothers. As soon as they’d popped out a couple of kids, both had been sent away, having served their intended purpose. Yet another reason that I wanted out. I refused to bereduced to nothing more than a broodmare for some powerful man, only to be discarded like a piece of trash once I was deemed no longer useful.
“How are the girls?”
Matteo hadn’t planned to cast his wife aside as our fathers did, but his daughters still ended up motherless.
My brother sighed. “Bianca misses her mom and is giving every nanny a run for their money. There’s been a revolving door of them every couple of weeks. Serafina’s still not sleeping through the night, so Matteo’s being run ragged. It’s a mess, Gem.”
