Chapter 2: Blood Debts

"Let her breathe, Sal." Uncle Nico emerged from the kitchen, a wine glass in each hand. He gave me one, and I took it gratefully. The cheap Chianti burned the way down, but it was something to occupy my hands. "Girl just buried her father."

"And she's gonna bury the rest of her family if we don't get this situation under control." Salvatore's voice dropped to that funeral whisper everyone had been using on me for three days. As if normal voice would shatter me into a million pieces.

Maybe they weren't wrong.

"What situation?" I kept my voice level, though my heart had started that familiar fast-fire thump it did whenever money came up.

Salvatore glanced around the room, noting who was within earshot. All of them were grouped around the food table, snacking on the rapidly dwindling spread. Alessandro stalked by the window, chain-smoking and staring into nowhere. Nonna sat in a chair, rosary beads clicking through her hands in repetitious gliding.

No one was paying attention to us. They were all too distracted from lying about this being a wake for one man.

"Your father's office," Salvatore said at last. "Someone broke in. Last night."

The wine curdled in my stomach. "What?"

"Tore the place apart. Filing cabinets, desk drawers, even pulled up some of the floorboards." His gaze flashed to Alessandro, then back to me. "Whatever they were looking for, they found it."

*They.* Not any old random burglar looking for cash or gems. Someone specific. Someone who knew Papa kept valuable things in that office.

"Did they—" My voice cracked. I swallowed, tried again. "Did they take anything?"

"Hard to say. The building was ruined." Salvatore gulped down the remainder of his wine in one smooth action. "But I'm guessing they weren't after the petty cash."

No. They were looking for information. Names. Numbers. The kind that would destroy families or make them rich, depending on whose pockets they fell into.

"We have to go over there." I set my wine glass down upon the table with shaking hands. "Take a look at what the remains are."

"Already taken care of it. Had some boys clean up the mess." Salvatore's grin was oily, practiced. "Didn't want you having to deal with that on top of everything else."

_Bullshit._ He didn't want me to see what was missing. Didn't want me to realize how bad things really were.

"That was nice of you," I lied.

"Elena Romano?"

The voice was behind me, as smooth as silk and twice as lethal. I turned, already knowing what I'd find.

Luca Valenti loomed in Nonna's living room like a wolf among chickens. Still dressed in that expensive suit, that killer's smile. The close-up one was even more disconcerting—tall enough that I had to tilt my head up to see him, with angles so sharp they could belong on Renaissance paintings or police sketches.

The room went still. The chatter stopped in mid-sentence. Forks dangled halfway to mouth. Even Nonna’s rosary beads stopped.

Alessandro pushed his way through the throng, his face pale with fury. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Paying my respects." Luca's tone was smooth, educated. Private school Italian with only a hint of something raw underneath. "Your father was. an interesting man."

"Get out." Alessandro's fists were tight. "Now."

"Alessandro." I touched his arm, feeling the tension coiled there like a spring ready to snap. Nonna's living room was the last place I wanted to be fighting. "It's fine."

It wasn't fine. Nothing here was fine. But fine was what I did. Fine was my superpower.

"Actually, I wanted to discuss Miss Romano with her in private." Luca's black eyes held mine in captivity. "Alone."

"Over my dead body," Alessandro snarled.

Luca's smile increased by a fraction. "That can be arranged."

The room's air grew ten degrees colder. Conferences didn't just stop—they reached their expiration date. People started edging toward the walls, the door, anywhere there might be cover when the bullets started flying.

Because everyone knew what Luca Valenti could do. Everyone had heard the rumors.

"Gentlemen." Father Enzo appeared out of nowhere, still wearing his funeral attire. "Perhaps we can continue this discussion elsewhere? This is a mourning house."

Luca looked at the priest for what felt like minutes, then back at me. "Of course. Miss Romano, I'd like to have a word with you. Outside?"

It was more a dictate than a request. Men like Luca Valenti didn't request—guys like that dictated. And when they dictated, smart people obeyed.

But today I didn't feel so clever.

"I'm not going anywhere with you."

For a moment, something flickered behind his eyes. Surprise? Humor? It vanished too quickly to ascertain.

"Five minutes," he said. "That's all I need."

"Elena, no." Alessandro caught my wrist. "You have no idea what you're involving yourself in."

*I know exactly what I'm involving myself in.* A predator. A killer. A man who could make me disappear and sleep soundly that same night.

But I also understood we were drowning. Had been drowning since Papa got sick, since the doctor's fees mounted up, since the family business began bleeding money like an severed artery.

And Luca Valenti didn't go to Romano funerals because he was respectful.

He went because he required something.

"Five minutes," I consented.

Alessandro's grip on my arm grew hard. "Elena—"

"It's alright." I forced his fingers apart, not paying attention to the trembling of them. My older brother, the one who'd instructed me in the ways of punching and car-starting with a wire, was shaking.

This should have sent me running.

Instead, I went with Luca Valenti out.

Nonna's backyard was small, full of rose bushes that had had better decades. The sun late in the afternoon filtered through leaves, lighting up everything with golden rays that seemed too beautiful for today.

Luca lit a cigarette with cultivated fingers, the flame of his lighter dancing in the breeze. He didn't offer me one, which was probably for the best. My hands were shaking more than ever without nicotine to make things difficult.

"Your father owed my family money," he said bluntly.

*Naturally.* "How much?"

"Two hundred thousand euros."

The sum hit me in the face literally. I actually staggered, grabbing onto Nonna's garden gate to steady myself. Two hundred thousand. We didn't have two hundred euros, let alone two hundred thousand.

"That's." I was unable to finish the sentence.

"Impossible?" Unfortunately not." Luca puffed on his cigarette, eyeing me up and down as if attempting to figure me out. "Your father was a great many things, Miss Romano, but a good businessman was not one of them."

"Kind of investment?"

"The kind that doesn't pay dividends." His smile was cutting enough to slice glass. "Cocaine. Heroin. The periodic shipment of girls from the other side of Europe. Your father had poor judgment and costly tastes."

The words hurt me like punches. Papa peddling drugs? Smuggling women? It was unthinkable. Papa who taught Sunday school when Father Enzo was sick. Papa who cried at movies and gave spare change to every bum on the street.

Papa who'd been so desperate that he'd do anything to keep us afloat.

"You're lying."

"Am I?" Luca pulled out a photograph from his jacket pocket. Black and white, grainy, but legible enough. Papa shaking hands with a stranger in front of a warehouse. Date stamp in the corner: six months ago.

Six months ago, when the cancer treatments were draining Mama. When Alessandro lost his job. When the house was starting to come apart and the bills just kept coming and Papa stayed up nights.

"He was trying to save his family," Luca continued blithely. "I admire that. But good intentions don't pay off debts."

"What do you want?" The words scraped my throat raw.

"What I'm owed."

"We don't have that kind of money. We don't have any money."

"I know." He flicked his cigarette out into the roses, where it landed with a miniature shower of sparks. "Which is why I'm making you an offer."

Every instinct in my body was screaming at me to run. To grab Alessandro and Mama and run into the night before things got any worse.

But I couldn't flee two hundred thousand euros' worth of debt, couldn't flee the men who came and would take me when they grew tired of waiting.

Couldn't flee the look in Luca Valenti's eyes that declared him already possessing me, one way or another.

"What sort of proposition?"

His smile was beautiful and terrible, like watching a sunset on the killing fields.

"Marriage."