Chapter 25

Aldo

Even hours after Layla’s rescue, the men couldn’t stop talking about how calmly she’d handled the situation. How, with a man bleeding out on a beach, two men dead behind her, the scent of gunpowder still heavy in the air, she’d knelt in the sand and stitched a bullet wound.

“She’s calmer than you, Vas,” Carlo had joked.

A few of the others had laughed in agreement. “Why haven’t you hired her as our surgeon yet?”

“When’s she getting on the payroll?”

“You been keeping this hot doctor all to yourself?”

I’d ordered them to clean up the mess on the beach and marched back to my office to think. To sulk, really, to pace back and forth across the room, but also to think—because someone had broken into my home.

They were right, though. Layla had handled the situation admirably. After all that had preceded the gunshot, she’d still worked with quick, steady hands to save a man’s life.

If she were anyone else, I’d have offered her a job on the spot.

But she wasn’t just anyone—and she’d made it more than clear she wasn’t interested in anything to do with me or my family.

A knock on the door drew my pacing to a halt. I forced myself into my chair, because I at least wanted to appear focused and professional. “Come in.”

Carlo poked his head through the door, then let himself in. “Got an update from the security team.”

I groaned, but motioned Carlo to sit in front of me. He plopped down into his usual chair, leaned his elbows onto the wooden desktop. “The short story is, we got nothing.”

“Nothing?” My brows pulled tight in confusion. “How could they have nothing?”

“There’s no sign of tampering on any locks or alarms,” Carlo said with a flick of his shoulders. “No forced entry, no broken windows. They set off the alarm on the exit, but nothing on entry.”

I gritted my teeth together, but I’d figured as much. “What about cameras? They must have picked something up—a vehicle? A face?”

“Nothing.” Carlo shook his head, his expression turning grim. “It seems someone fed the cameras a looped feed for about twenty minutes.”

“Shit.” I rose from my chair without thinking to pace another lap across the room. My feet fell silent against the bearskin rug, and my mind whirred. For someone to have fed the cameras, to have gotten past the security without a hitch …

“This doesn’t look good, Car.”

He, of course, knew exactly what I was thinking. Exactly what I meant. “It looks like an inside job.”

I paused at the bookshelf, stared at the curved spines without seeing their gold-embossed titles. “Either someone let them in, or someone told them how to get in.”

“Looks that way,” Carlo agreed, his voice grim. “But I can’t imagine …”

Nor could I. I trusted every single person in this house, in my employ. Not only had I worked with each and every one for years, but gang loyalty went back generations. This wasn’t just a job—it was family.

So, who could possibly have betrayed me?

“There’s something else.” The strange tone of Carlo’s voice had me turning from the bookshelf to face him. I couldn’t read his expression, but the lines of his face twisted uncomfortably.

He didn’t like what he was about to tell me.

I paced back to my desk. Sat. Folded my hands atop the table. “Give it to me straight, Car.”

“Well. I’ve been keeping an eye on Marco Ricci, like you wanted.”

My stomach clenched in a sick knot. I really wasn’t about to like this, was I? “And?”

Carlo slid a file folder across the desk to me. I flipped it open without hesitation. It was another photo of Marco and a woman—of course—but unlike the others, this didn’t show any flirtation or compromising positions.

No, this was a dignified photo of Marco in a pressed suit and tie, sitting across a formal dining table from a middle-aged woman with bronzed Mediterranean skin and the posture of a queen.

I recognized her immediately. Maria Moretti—wife of the don of the Moretti clan.

“Goddamn.” I breathed. As much as I’d known Marco was no good, as much as I’d wanted to prove him the piece of shit I knew he was, this was beyond anything I could have imagined.

“He doesn't just have ties to the family,” I murmured, unable to tear my eyes from that photo. “He must be in deep, if he’s having dinner with the donna.”

“Right.” Carlo’s expression went grim. “Do you want me to tell Layla? Or do you?”

Layla. Shit. What could I possibly say to her? How did you tell the woman you loved that her son’s father had ties to the family that was trying to kill her? He might even have played a hand in the attack that had happened here tonight.

Was Eli’s kidnapping some kind of ploy to get Eli away from me and back to Marco?

I rose from my desk. “I’ll tell her.”

“Good luck.” Carlo’s parting words followed me out the door and down the hall. Dread made my stomach cold as I paced the distance from my office to the residence wing. I didn’t know what I was going to say, but I had to let her know … somehow …

Too soon, I stood in front of my closed bedroom door. So strange, to knock at the door to your own room, but knock I did. My fist echoed hollowly in the abandoned alcove.

The door swung open, revealing Layla—clad in a plushy bath robe, hair still wet from the shower. “Aldo.”

My name was a tired, heavy sigh on her lips. The sound made the dread settle like a cold weight in my gut. She didn’t step away from the door to let me in, and a quick into the room told me that Eli occupied the giant bed behind her.

At least he was safe, I told myself. For now.

“Layla …” I pulled my gaze back to the woman in front of me. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

Her mouth tightened into a hard line. “We’re alive. All right? That I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

It was a fair enough answer, if a little brutally honest. But that was Mafia life, wasn’t it? A web of neat lies spun across cold, brutal truths.

“Why are you really here, Aldo?” Layla stepped forward, forcing me back, so she could close the door. Keeping us in the hallway. Keeping me away from Eli.

“I’m here because …” There was really no other way to say it, was there? Why was baldfaced truth so much more difficult than a fabricated lie? “Because the attack tonight was an inside job, and I think Marco might have been involved.”

The effect was instantaneous. Her face crashed in a wave of hard, angry lines—everything pulling taut like I’d tugged on a string of her emotions.

“Get away from me, Aldo.” Her words emerged bitter, barbed. “I’m so tired of the games and the lies.”

“No games,” I murmured. “No lies. He met with Maria Moretti yesterday afternoon.”

For a moment, she hesitated, and the lines of her face softened with thought. Too soon, though, they hardened again with renewed resolve. “So? That means nothing. He’s always with women. This is nothing different.”

“It means he has ties to my enemies. It means he could have been part of tonight’s attack—”

She snorted. “Yeah, right.”

I opened my mouth to protest. To explain that such an important woman wouldn’t be seen in a public place with a lover—but Layla was already stepping back towards her room.

“Layla, please!”

“The things you’ll do,” she snarled, “to keep me from having a simple, happy life. Really, it’s disgusting.”

The words hit so much harder than any blow I’d ever taken. She slipped back into the room. Slammed the door in my face. And still, I reeled from the impact. Unable to move, unable to walk away, unable to beg her to come back and listen.

Those words echoed through my head.