“And what if he gets his way? If he becomes the leader of the only family left standing, and Rosa is under his thumb?” More to the point, I realize, if he gets his way and Rosa produces a new Seer, he won’t need her at all. He’ll kill her once she’s not useful to him.
Pietro shakes his head, and there’s a spark of something other than self-pity in his eyes. For the first time, I see a man with a sharp brain, trying to unravel a mystery. “I don’t know,” he says quietly.
“Well, don’t worry about that.” I stand and pat him on the cheek. “Because it’s never going to fucking happen.” I stare into his eyes and push my will toward him. “Now go to sleep, fuckface. And dream of being a better man.”
His lids close immediately, whatever ability he had to fight off a charm lost between his feeble state and the fact that he’s pumped full of my blood.
Rosa passed the window a few seconds ago, and we need to talk.
“Hi honey, I’m home,” she calls, walking in as I close the door to Pietro’s room behind me. She dumps an armful of candy bars and potato chips on the bed. I really need to start paying better attention to what she eats, especially if she’s feeding me.
“How is he?” she asks.
“Good. Improving. He managed a few words, and now he’s sleeping.”
The joy in her expression makes keeping him alive worthwhile, and I marvel again at how she can be genetically related to the other Capellis. Maybe she was switched at birth. Or witched at birth, if Minnie’s thoughts on the subject hold up. I really need to talk to Rosa about that, but not until I know more. She has enough to deal with already, without me dumping a load of maybes on her.
She thinks she has no illusions about Tomasso, but he’s still her family, and if Pietro and I are right, I don’t look forward to breaking the news of the depths of his conspiracy to her. Most of all, though, I need to get her somewhere safe, and I won’t allow anything to delay that.
“We’ve stayed off-grid thanks to your bundles of cash—which, by the way, well done—but we should get moving.”
She finishes devouring her chocolate bar and shrugs. “A girl’s got to be prepared. And I think you’re right. We do need to get moving. From what Donatella said—before we were so rudely interrupted,” she adds, giving me a pointed look. “Tomasso has put out the word that I’ve been abducted. He’s probably at least partway to figuring out who you are by now. If he has this Kurt dude on the books, he probably has other vamps. There will be people he can question—the staff at the hotel, at my building. Anyone we didn’t manage to persuade you were actually a doctor.”
She casts her eyes over me, and I know how I look. I look big and brutal and bad, and the idea of me being in medical school at any stage of my life is frankly ridiculous.
“I like the thought of you as a doctor,” she says, her gaze lingering on my hands.
My cock immediately springs to life, and I shake my head in mock disapproval. “Much as I’d love to give you an internal, Ms. Capelli, we need to make some plans. We need to talk, not fuck.”
She nods, pulls a face, and starts on the next candy bar. “Yeah. I know. So here’s what I think: My grandfather was responsible for the death of Anna Lombardi and the attempt on Paola and for all the other messed-up shit. I think it’s a power play. Kill the Seers, destroy the families, take full control of the lot. He’s been planning it for decades, all the while pretending to be the dignified elder statesman.”
I stare at her, at this slender woman curled up on my bed surrounded by potato chips, and think yet again how easy it is to underestimate her. She’s been through hell and is on the run from the only life—the only family—she has ever known. She’s stuck with a blood-sucking monster who belongs to the ancient boss of a criminal supernatural organization, and she’s gone from seeing vamps as the enemy to seeing me as someone she trusts enough to bite into her femoral artery while I finger-fuck her.
That’s a lot of change. A lot of movement, a lot to take. Yet she’s got it all figured out. She put the pieces together as quickly as I did, and now she’s sitting here, calmly talking about it as though it’s another day at the office.
“I suppose the question is,” she says, licking chocolate from her fingers, “what the fuck are we going to do to stop him?”
CHAPTER 18
ROSA
We stay in the motel for the rest of the day, making plans, talking through our options, and coming to the conclusion that they’re all crap.
The net is closing in on us. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t used credit cards or an ATM or my old phone that was lost the night of the party at Tomasso’s. If my grandfather—god, I really need to stop calling him that—is using vamps, then it’s not a big leap from that to one of them questioning Brian or Jed. They will charm him, and it won’t take long before Brian remembers that I talked to him about the van. That I disappeared with a big tattooed dude with burns on his face who was carrying my brother in his arms.
It doesn’t matter that we have Pietro. My brother thinks Tomasso is entirely dependent on him for tech support, and to some extent, I’m sure that’s true. Tomasso is not a fan of technology. He sees it as necessary but vulgar.
But Pietro is not irreplaceable, and Tomasso is a Maker. He is practical, good at logistics, at seeing connections and finding creative solutions. He will recruit someone to help him, and from what Luca has been telling me, he has more resources than I imagined.
I wouldn’t ordinarily accept the word of a vampire Don like Vincenzo, but what he told Luca makes sense. Tomasso has always been deeply immersed in the business side of our family—not only in making money, but in building his empire. Expanding his legacy. It’s one of the reasons he was so set on me producing an heir. He was eager to share all his toys with the next generation of Capellis.
Now I understand a little better why he’s so obsessed with security, why he lives the way he does. Why he has more guards than the rest of the Vecchissime put together. He’s been making moves, causing ripples, quietly stretching out his influence. Personally, I think he’s a greedy, egocentric asshole, but I’m sure he’s justified it all to himself as being “for the family.”
I wonder when it all started—when he made himself the hero of his own territorial fantasies. Prior to Anna’s murder, obviously, but how much earlier? When Serena and I were born and he realized he had a double-whammy chance at getting two brand-new Capelli Seers? Before that? No fucking clue, and I don’t suppose it matters. It is what it is, and looking backward will get us nowhere.
At least, I think as I watch Luca get some shut-eye, I’m not doing this entirely alone. It’s a complicated situation, and whenever I let myself think too much, I realize I shouldn’t trust him. I should be cautious and not let myself get in too deep. What I feel for him clouds my mind and clouds my body, and it clouds the whole way I see the world.
He is lying on the bed, limbs splayed, bare chest on display as he rests. One thigh is uncovered, thick with muscle, and one bare foot peeks out. For some reason, the bare foot undoes me, and I walk over to kiss his forehead. He barely moves, only lets out a small murmur as my lips touch him. It’s sweet—which is definitely not a word I thought I’d ever use about a man like him.
