Page 26 of Sinner's Vows

With a deep sigh, I get out of the car but slam my door, not waiting for Matteo. As soon as I’m inside, I spot Bruno where he is lying in the foyer and sink my hands into his fur. He’s been waiting for me to come home. I breathe, trying to find my equilibrium. Of all the things I can do to my brother, it’s going to have to be nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The dog doesn’t even acknowledge Matteo as he heads to the Don’s office, and I take the minutes I need to get a grip.

By the time I close the door, I’m calm but go over to the bar and pour two neat whiskeys. It’s only ten in the morning, but shit’s gone down already today, and I need a drink.

Matteo is slumped in one of the wingbacks facing the Don’s desk, opting not to take his rightful place. He’s cupped his face in his hands, looking completely defeated.

“How long have you known?” I ask as I hold out his whiskey to him.

He inhales a sharp breath and looks up to meet my gaze. “Since yesterday? Since Franco Fiore jerked my fucking chain?”

Jesus Christ. It hasn’t been years.

He takes his whiskey, and I sink into the other chair, facing him. “And we’re going to go on the word of a fucking lunatic?”

He shakes his head as he waves a hand at the Don’s desk. “Have you found anything here? Anything at all that could?—”

“Fuck it, Matty, no. I haven’t exactly been looking for information on a MIA stillborn sister.” I didn’t know this couldeven be a reality. “Why the fuck do you think Franco wasn’t just lying? And how would he know anything in the first place?”

Matteo drops his head back and stares up at the ceiling as if he is praying for strength, clinging to the whiskey glass as if it’s a lifeline. “That day the Don called me in to tell me he had cancer, he mentioned he had three loose ends he wanted me to wrap up before he died.”

Three? Matteo had shared only two with us, and we’d helped him with both projects: eliminating Don Emilio Randazzo and taking care of senator Peter Armstrong’s debts.

Then Tasha flung Matteo’s phone across the expanse of his apartment, and he gave her a fucking hickey. In that moment, I knew things were going to go pear-shaped. When Matteo defied the Don by marrying Tasha Armstrong, I was so relieved. It pleases me fucking endlessly that the exact opposite of what the Don had wanted happened with Tasha and Matteo.

“What did he say about the third loose end?”

As if a baby girl born to our mother is a loose fucking end. Whatever happened to our sister is a sacrilege I will never forgive anybody for. I will torture every capo who was in the Don’s service at the time until I know the fucking truth.

“He didn’t elaborate. He first wanted Randazzo dead and Armstrong dealt with, both with proof, before he told me his third and final command.”

“What happened when you came back from Cannes?”

The Don was sick, but he was still alive when Matteo and Tasha headed back with Stephano in tow, our younger brother as prickly and moody as a teenager who didn’t get the girl.

Matteo sighs, takes a deep sip of whiskey, then looks me in the eye. “I came to see him and lost my shit.”

I quirk a brow. Of all the things we were allowed to do, losing our shit was never one of them. Even Stephano learned how todeal with his own vice by starting that Fight Club gym of his. “Why?”

“Because I thought he was asking me to kill Tasha—” He breaks off, running his thumb along his forehead as if he could erase his frown lines. “I mean, what else was I to think with the amount of shit he’d already put her family through and then what he’d wanted me—us—to do to her?”

None of us endorsed what the Don wanted to do with Tasha Armstrong. The unwrittenIl Consiglio’srule for civilians is two for one. If you take out one of ours, we take out two of yours. The Armstrongs paid for Alex’s death. We had no business putting Tasha’s virginity up for auction, and I’m still not sure what the Don’s real reasons were behind those tasks he saddled Matteo with months ago.

“But that wasn’t what he’d meant.” He groans. “Fuck it, Nicky. His last words to me were aboutthe girl. Alive.I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t for one second think about Gabriella. I fucking strangled him before he could explain himself because I couldn’t listen to one more word.”

Jesus fucking Christ. I drop my head into my palm and try to digest this influx of information.

The girl. Alive.

Jesus. Our little sister has been alive for twenty-two years, and none of us knew it? How many more secrets walk the corridors of this house? No wonder I can’t shed this weird feeling that’s been trailing me for weeks now. It ghosts over me as if this house is haunted, and it is. With secrets. About Gabriella and what happened to her.

Not only do we have a Scalera sister unaccounted for, but Matteo just confessed that he killed the Don. Our fucking dad. The man whose fist I can still feel choking me.

My big brother did all of us all a hell of a favor. He might have left it a bit late, but here’s the thing: you can sense aman’s grip weaken, you can watch him wither away with age and then cancer, but if you grew up with his type of discipline, guarded yourself and your brothers against his wrath for doing anything against him, it takes immense courage to disobey his instructions, never mind killing him. I was never able to do it. Ever since the time Alex died and the Don put me in my place, I focused on protecting my brothers. Firstly from the Don, and then from people like me in other crime organizations.

I rub a hand down my face, and with a deep sigh reach for my whiskey where I parked it on the desk. I down the whole thing, stand, take Matteo’s empty glass, and get us each a refill.

With this new information, the scales have shifted from speculation to certainty. The Don’s third request to wrap up unfinished business must have been for Matteo to find our baby sister, dead or alive.

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