Page 106 of Sinner's Vows

“What?”

“They put you, a rape survivor, under-fucking-cover on a sting operation that deals with sex trafficking? What the actual fuck, Ariana?” I growl, wanting to wring the necks of the men—without a doubt—who thought this would be a good idea. I’d think of all the things that would disqualify her from getting involved in a gig like this, it would be a brutal rape which left her stunned for decades.

“They didn’t know, okay,” she says, her voice thick with anger, on the verge of tears.

Tears she always shed quietly. Not only because she grew up in the Mafia, but because it would make her seem weak in the police force.

“How did theynot know? You have psychological assessments, endless tests to make sure you’re mentally fit for a job like that.”

I don’t even want to know what she witnessed in some sex trafficking shithole in Italy. What I’ve seen as we researched to prepare Matteo for his job to kill Randazzo, where I needed to go to ensure he had the proper security, was enough to give me fucking nightmares.

Me. Nightmares.Dominic Fucking Scalera, expert on human torture, had nightmares of the women ensnared in that world. And there she just walked in, a lamb into a lion’s den. At any second, they could have flipped on her and thrown her on the stage, subjected her to more of what Franco did to her and worse. So much worse.

“I was fucking mentally fit for the job!” she hisses at me as she slams her hands on the table, leaning into my face. “I was after Randazzo. He killed my mom after he abused her for years,and then he tossed me to the wolves as if I was worthless. I had my own fucking agenda, and I was mentally strong enough to fool all of them. I got in exactly where I wanted to be. And if it wasn’t for Franco Fiore walking in on me, I would eventually have gotten to Randazzo and looked him in the eye as I slit his fucking throat.”

She stares me down, the anger in her voice reflected in her eyes, and I feel it vibrating through me.

I get it. I completely get every emotion she has.

“And then someone went and killed Randazzo before I—before I could get close enough—” She breaks off, tears flowing, her face flushed as she slumps in frustrated anger, stymied in the one thing that kept her going. “I have no idea who it was or how they managed to get close to him.”

I do, but she doesn’t need to know this.

I reach for her hand where she’s fisted it on the table, and it trembles as I wrap it in mine. She’s so delicate, but with this passion in her, I don’t doubt she would have killed Randazzo if she’d had the chance. But to kill anybody else? No. Not this woman. And it isn’t as if they could give you target practice with real humans, not even in the DIA. I’m relieved someone else avenged for her, someone she can now call family.

Maybe it’s time to share that secret. He is, after all, her half-brother. Maybe they even get to know each other, get to care for each other.

“Matteo. It was Matteo,” I say softly, squeezing her fingers as it hits me. Things suddenly makes sense. This is why Matteo got access to Randazzo so easily—he was his son. “Matteo killed Randazzo on our Don’s command.”

Even Matteo questioned it at the time, and the Don assured him Randazzo would see him, which means Matteo doesn’t know. Or maybe he does…he’s after all been fucking distracted lately.

“He walked straight into Randazzo’s compound, because he’s Randazzo’s long-lost son. Instead of negotiating taking over Randazzo’s operations, which I think was Randazzo’s end goal, well…Matteo did what he did, and looked him in the eye all the way.”

“I can’t believe it,” she says, her voice quivering. “Matteo?”

“Yes, sweetheart.” I reach for a napkin and hand it to her, and she buries her face in it.

I give her a minute, but time is ticking. I’m not at the bottom of this whole fuck-up yet, and my sixth sense tells me I need to dive deeper to find the real nasty business behind everything that led to her sitting across from me.

“Ariana,” I say, reaching for her again. “Franco knew exactly where you were. How?”

“I don’t know,” she says, between two suppressed sobs. “We moved so many times, I lost track of my team, and my team lost track of me. I even got separated from Lorenzo, my partner, and that was never the plan. In the end, I had nothing to notify them of my location. They confiscated everything bit by bit. From my phone to my makeup kit that held my last tracking device. They even took my shoes and gave me new clothes. I had nothing but my training to go on. When I heard Randazzo got killed, I wanted to run, but that was the night Franco came, and it was too late.”

Because it was planned.

A chill sweeps down my spine as Don Scalera’s voice echoes in my head. ‘The police are so fucking weak because they can’t trust their own.’Bought, bribed, rotten to the core, and so dysfunctional in places, people would rather ask for Mafia protection than trust the police.

Planned.Franco Fiore knew where she was because it was all planned.

“Have you had any contact with any of your team members since Franco took you?”

“No,” she says with a dry smirk as she wipes at her nose. “I was locked up for more than a month in a dungeon straight from some medieval horror hell. I still don’t know what happened to any of them. I haven’t had access to anything, as you well know.”

True. And with fucking reason. She’s a Trojan Horse, and we were all idiots to let her walk in, buying into her disguise.Just a girl…Blindsided, all of us.

“Here’s the thing, sweetheart. The DIA thinks you’re dead. Or at least, they’ve marked you as missing, presumed dead, on their files. What if this whole undercover operation you were working on was a Mission Impossible, with the only goal to wipe out agents who are actually desperate to get the job done?”

She glares at me, not buying into my reasoning as she shakes her head. “No…there were good people on my team, really?—”

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