“Luigi is incapable of love.”
She shook her head. “That’s not true, Casimir. He loved Arturo. I could see it on his face. He still can hardly bear the loss.”
Casimir inclined his head, his thumb sliding over her hand. Back and forth. She found the motion soothing.
“I’ll give you that,” he conceded. “But, lyubov moya, you know you can’t save him. There’s no way to do that.”
“I know.” She did know. It was just that, when she thought of him, she still thought of her uncle, not of the monster who ordered the hit on her family. She tried to remind herself that he had made certain anyone loyal to her father had been murdered. Even those working in the house – maids, the cook. The gardener and his entire family including children. Her uncle had done that. The thought made her sick. It made her feel worse that knowing all of those things, she still had a difficult time thinking he was that person.
“He’ll have to kill you,” Casimir reminded. “After this. He’s going to ask to meet you somewhere, a place he can arrange an accident for you – one where you won’t be identified as belonging to him. He can’t have any blowback if he plans to take over the Porcelli family. The counsel won’t like it, and they’ll be scrutinizing his every move. That’s why he wanted accidents, no more than a couple a year. That’s why he stayed patient. He knew they would be looking at him and he had to appear absolutely clean.”
She knew he was stating the truth, but she didn’t have to like it. She wanted to believe that Luigi at least loved her the way he did Arturo – that all those years together meant something to him. It was true that he had to be planning her death, there was no other way he could be certain she wouldn’t find out about Luigi’s betrayal of her family and come after him. He’d lived on the edge of that sword for so long it would be a relief for him to get rid of her. He’d sent her to the United States once she had turned eighteen to make certain she didn’t have a chance to stumble on the truth about his wife and children.
“I love you, Giacinta,” he said softly, bringing her hand to his mouth. His teeth teased her fingertips, scraping back and forth gently. “I know this is difficult, but I can do it for you. There’s no need…”
“It’s my mess,” she interrupted. “He killed my family. He’s planning on killing me. I have to be the one…”
“No, you don’t. I’m your family. Your husband. When he killed your family, malyshka, he killed mine. My father-in-law. My mother-in-law. They belonged to me as well. My parents were torn from me, just as yours were. Viktor and Gavriil hunted those responsible down one by one, over the years, just as you have done. You planned on taking care of the last of them – the Sorbacovs. For my brothers.”
“And my sisters.”
“So Luigi is my duty just as much as yours.”
She nodded her assent. “Okay.”
He took his eyes off the road long enough to glance at her. “Okay? You aren’t going to argue some more?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t argue.”
He smiled at her and returned her hand to his thigh. “You argued with me over Viktor. Still, I find all that fire sexy, so we’re good.”
“Why didn’t Viktor and his seventeen assassins go after Sorbacov?”
“He was planning to do just that. After he brought down Shackler-Gratsos. All of us knew he would do it. We didn’t know about the others, but we knew Viktor would make a try. He’s always been about protecting us. He takes that job very seriously.”
“Too bad he doesn’t do the same with his wife. If she is his wife,” Lissa said, trying hard to keep the biting sarcasm from her voice.
Viktor looked and acted like a biker, a one percenter, more, an outlaw biker. That didn’t surprise her. He had come from a brutal background, learning a thousand ways to kill a man, torture him or just plain fuck him up. He would do so without mercy and with no remorse. If any of the Prakenskii brothers was truly a straight-up killer, Viktor was one. Gavriil maybe, but Viktor for certain.
He also had the mentality of a man who believed he could get away with telling his woman what to do and she’d do it without question. She knew Blythe Daniels. Had known her for five years. Blythe wasn’t a jump-on-command woman. Lissa couldn’t imagine elegant, beautiful Blythe with Viktor.
“That school, Giacinta, they took those little boys and flogged the skin off their backs for any infraction. They were forced to hurt one another. You can’t imagine what it was like. Each of the schools was progressively worse. We all knew that if we were sent to the one Viktor was in, odds were, we weren’t coming out of there alive. Those who lived through it were given the dirtiest, most dangerous jobs Sorbacov had.”