The Porcelli family had no idea they were under attack. The accidents came infrequently. Two, sometimes three in a year. There was no pattern that anyone could detect, and Lissa always made certain the accidents were random. She didn’t care about tipping off the Porcelli family that the Abbracciabene family was coming after them. She didn’t care anything about the second generation either. Only those responsible for the deaths of her people and her family. Luigi was her only living blood relative, and she didn’t want him compromised in any way. He appeared to live quietly, surrounded by those he trusted, an older man who enjoyed gardening.
She hadn’t known a real family again until she lived on the farm with her chosen sisters. Of the six women who had banded together to start a new life, only Lissa and Blythe remained unmarried. Unclaimed. Well… Blythe was up in the air. She had her own secrets. But Prakenskiis were overrunning their farm and the small village of Sea Haven. Even the famous Jolie Drake was married to a Prakenskii, which put five of the seven brothers in her small town. She could count. That left two. One for her. One for Blythe. It wasn’t happening. Not to her.
“We’re nearly home, Lissa,” Arturo announced. His eyes met hers in the rearview mirror. “Are you settled, or do you need me to miss the driveway?”
She loved Arturo. She did. She loved few people in the world. She didn’t dare get close to them. Her sisters. Their husbands – and she was still trying to hold herself apart from them. Her uncle and Arturo. Those were the few people she had in her world. In truth, Gavriil telling his brother about her hurt. She had trusted him to keep his word to her, not to let anyone know that she planned to go after the Sorbacovs. He’d given his word, and it hurt more than she’d ever expected that he’d broken his promise to her.
“I’m good. Thank you for going with me, Arturo. I don’t know if I tell you enough, but I appreciate the way you’ve always looked after Tio Luigi. I don’t ever worry because you’re with him.”
His teeth flashed at her, his smile dazzling. She hadn’t trusted, even as a child. She’d learned the hard way not to, but over the years, Arturo had become another uncle to her. Her hand shook as she put the brush back in her purse. Lifting her chin, she caught up the book and slipped from the car. Arturo drove the vehicle into the garage, leaving her at the side entrance.
She knew her uncle would be waiting for her, worried as always, but Arturo would tell him what happened. It was too late to beat Tomasso to his room, if the man with the book had in fact been Tomasso – a Prakenskii – so there was no need to try to catch him in the act of reverting back to the bodyguard role. In any case, if he actually was a Prakenskii, she knew she wouldn’t surprise him in the act of assuming another role. He would be too good for that. The Prakenskiis’ craft had been honed in a hard school. They wouldn’t make mistakes. Which left her the book.
Why had he dropped the book and then not recovered it? Especially if the book was from Luigi’s library? She used the back stairs and hurried into the room she had grown very familiar with as a child. She’d often taken refuge here when she was lonely. She’d been lonely a lot. Luigi wasn’t a man who knew how to comfort a grieving child. He was a man of action. He’d devoted his life to his brother and the family business. It had been small but lucrative. Now, he found himself with an emotional child who went from storms of weeping to fiery rants on vengeance.
Luigi had learned, over the years, how to express his love for her in more concrete ways, but she’d spent so many of the earlier days right there in the library, crying her eyes out. She tried to be brave in front of him because she wanted him to teach her what he knew. Then she’d discovered his books. She’d learned everything from Luigi, from self-defense and dirty tricks to weapons and poisons. She was a walking encyclopedia on poisons.
She knew right where the reference books were kept, and she hurried across the room to the shelves. The book should have been right there. She’d read it, put it back and granted, it was a number of years ago, but still, no one else was going to have taken it off the shelf. She scanned for the title. There was a small space between The Elements of Poison – A History of Murder and Basic Illustrated Poisonous and Psychoactive Plants, a book she’d read repeatedly as a child. This book, dropped by the man who had probably saved her life, belonged in Luigi’s library.
She took a deep breath, let it out and replaced the book between the other two titles. She was going to confront Mr. Prakenskii and have him leave immediately. She couldn’t afford to have him looking over her shoulder. She had work to do. Luigi had found the man she had wanted more than any other, and she intended to take care of Cosmos Agosto, the dog handler who had betrayed her entire family, and then she was going to see to the problem facing her sisters. No Prakenskii was going macho on her and stopping her.