Page 12 of The Mafia's Broken Vows

I’ve apologized a million times for what happened that night of my twenty-first birthday, yet he continues to punish me with his icy detachment.

It’s been two and a half fucking years, I often want to scream at him, but I know doing that would only push him away further.

His voice comes out sharp, almost shaky. “No. Adele, ye can’t go there.”

I chuckle, “Too late, Daddy. I’m already heading to the airport. Besides, it’s for a crucial case at work. I can’t not go.”

Another pause, loaded with unspoken words, and I imagine him silently melting down.

While I understand my dad’s overprotectiveness, it can be unsettling, a foreboding that clings like cobwebs in the corners of my mind.

And then I hear him say with a forced casualness, “Is it for the Martelli case?”

My breath catches. How did he guess? “I can’t discuss it, Daddy,” I remind him sharply. “Look, I’ll be back tonight if that makes you feel any better.”

“It bloody doesn’t, Adele,” he snaps, his voice completely devoid of emotion once again.

And then it’s the dial tone.

Wow, how long did that flicker of emotion last there? Two minutes?

Why the fuck do I even still bother with this guy?

Because you know how much he’s suffering. How much he’s lost. You’re all he has in this world.

And, like it or not, he’s all you have.

I think back to that night in Chicago. As if sensing that my world was falling apart, my dad’s call had come in moments after I ran out of Dante’s restaurant. Shaken and scared, I immediately confessed to him where I was.

Of course he’d lost it. I’d fully expected him to, just not to the degree that he did. He stopped speaking to me, and if he could have grounded me for months, he would have done so.

But there was no need. I’d seen enough of Chicago anyway. Enough of the world, in fact, to tearfully promise myself and him that I’d never go there again. That I’d never leave Boston without telling him.

Yet here I am, leaving Boston and heading back there.

I grab my coat and shout to let Kira know I’m leaving. My reflection in the elevator mirrors brings me up short. The woman who stares back at me looks flushed. Terrified, even.

I take a deep breath to settle the flutters in my belly and say to her. “Chicago is a huge city, and your assignment is simple. Pick up the sample and come straight home. I promise you, the odds of running into him are one to three million. Practically zilch.”

If only I could get my heart to believe me and stop racing like a horse going into battle.

Chapter Four

Dante

I lean back against the cool leather of the SUV seat, drumming my fingers on my thigh, a heavy metal track blaring in one ear, drowning out the eerie silence in the car.

On my other side, the tinted window is rolled halfway down to let in Chicago’s pulse. I welcome the sounds of wailing sirens in the distance, screeching tires, honking trucks, and shouting people—the city’s chaotic symphony, finding it oddly calming.

But what I really need is a release of this coiled tension inside. The gym calls to me, weights and punching bags, but duty anchors me here, in the backseat, waiting for Salvatore, my right-hand man, to emerge from the tall white building across the street.

After what feels like hours but is, in fact, only five or ten minutes, Sal pulls open the door and slips into the driver’s seat with a restless energy about him. He shakes off the cold like a wet dog and cranks up the heating to replace the warmth lost from my partially rolled-down window. Unlike me, Sal hates the cold.

“What do we know?” I ask in a flat voice.

He flashes me his signature boyish grin through the rearview mirror. “Can you believe that Boston has just sent someone to collect that sample?”

I shake my head in disgust and grumble, “That’s too fucking close for comfort, Sal.”

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