Nine Lives Caryl Novels & Stories

At the DeLuca Family banquet announcing its new advisor, Matteo said he was going to end nine years of secrecy and finally acknowledge our relationship in public. I stood in the back row of the banquet hall, so nervous I'd crumpled my prepared speech into a ball. Over nine years, I'd cleaned up the port books for him three times, negotiated two cross-border shipping routes, and taken a bullet for him. Everyone knew the DeLuca Family had a female advisor who never showed her face, but no one knew I was that woman. I thought that after tonight, I would finally stop being his shadow. Until the screen at the front of the banquet hall lit up. There was no photo of us. Instead, there was only a si