Chapter 4

"Andre!" Daisy threw her arms around him, tears streaming. "I hit her! It was all me! Please don't go after Ash. I'm begging you, I don't want my family to get hurt!"

She was trembling violently.

"Enough. Stop. No one will dare hurt you." Andre quickly buried her face against his chest, then turned a look of disappointment on me. "Ash, you went too far."

So ten years of fighting side by side, of trust built on risking our lives together, meant nothing against a woman who'd been around for six months.

The betrayal cut deeper than any bullet ever lodged in my flesh. I couldn't hold it in. Tears filled my eyes.

I looked at him, letting them fall. "So you're going to punish me for your wife?"

Andre's breath hitched. The last time he'd seen me cry was years ago, when he'd fallen ill.

He hesitated. But Daisy was the Don's wife. There had to be consequences.

I was locked in the lounge. I lost track of how long I waited before the door finally opened.

The man who entered wasn't Andre.

Eric Russo, the underboss, regarded me without expression and delivered the Family's verdict. "Ash, you assaulted the Don's wife. Forty-eight hours in the isolation cell."

His men seized me and dragged me out. Outside, Andre stood nearby, wiping Daisy's tears.

Our eyes met for a single instant. I was the one who looked away first.

Andre watched me go. A prickle of guilt rose in his chest.

He started to call it off. But Daisy chose that moment to press a kiss to his lips.

"Thank you. If you hadn't gotten there in time, Ash would have torn me apart."

He came back to himself and tilted her chin up with one finger. "To make up for it, I'll send you to Hawaii."

Daisy bit her lip shyly. "I don't want that. I just want to be with you."

Andre wrapped an arm around her waist, completely won over. "Then I'll take you shopping at the designer boutiques."

Only then did she reluctantly nod.

I was handcuffed, blindfolded, and taken away.

But the car didn't go to the isolation cell. After a series of detours, it pulled up to one of Eric's properties.

He removed the blindfold and unlocked the cuffs.

He studied the marks on my wrists and asked cautiously, "Does it still hurt?"

I had always believed I was an orphan.

Until five years ago, when Durand Dente, the newly appointed young Don of the Dente Family, a centuries-old Italian dynasty, tracked me down using a pendant that matched mine.

That was how I learned my real name was Ashley Dente, and that I was his long-lost sister.

As a child, I had been stolen by a rival family seeking revenge on the Dentes.

I was supposed to have been drowned, but the man sent to do it showed mercy and left me at an orphanage.

After being moved from place to place, I ended up in Boston.

Durand had once invited me to rejoin the Dente Family, but at the time, Andre was at a critical moment in his rise.

So I'd turned my brother down. But we stayed in touch.

Over the years, Durand had helped me in countless ways. One of those was placing Eric, his most trusted man, at my side.

I still clearly remembered the first time Eric and I met. He'd been nothing but a green kid.

Looking at the tall man he'd become, I couldn't help it. "You've grown up."

Eric knelt on one knee and cleaned my wound gently. "That's thanks to you. Without you, I'd have died three years ago."

It had been a carefully planned assassination. The target was Andre.

Eric, serving as a decoy, had been critically wounded. I risked my life pulling him out and paid a fortune for his treatment.

When he woke, he swore to serve me and the Dente Family for the rest of his life.

I hadn't taken it seriously at the time. But that small act of kindness had now come back to me.

After he finished with the wound, he said, "Durand's people have reached the West District. They're waiting on your move."

He meant Durand.

The lingering pain kept my mind clear.

A major arms shipment was about to move through the West District. The order was too large to tolerate the slightest mistake.

I'd designed the entire transport route myself. I handed Eric the personnel deployment files I'd prepared in advance.

He would deliver them to Durand on my behalf.

I opened a laptop. "Who proposed putting me in confinement?"