Page 55 of Savage Proposal

I snorted. “You just did, but fine.”

“What’s your plan for Isabella?”

“Hey,stronzo, we just calmed him down,” Elio snapped. “Do you want him homicidal again?” He grabbed the case that he’d packed with his extra handgun and clips. “I need a fucking cup of coffee.”

There was a drip machine in the lobby of the gun range, but it varied between absolute swill and sewage water. Not that it would keep Elio from making a cup, but he was going to bitch the entire way home unless we stopped for something better.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Cristian said, watching our cousin as he walked away. “I’m curious.”

“You know the plan: she goes free once she delivers the baby.” The thought of her being anywhere but the estate, however, made my stomach burn.

Cristian raised his eyebrow. “Really? You’ll just let her walk away? After everything that she’s seen in the past few months?”

“I think she understands the consequences of running her mouth, Cris.”

“Maybe,” he said with a nod, “but what about the baby?”

“What about it?”

“Youwantto be a father?” he asked. “Really?”

That made me chuckle; it was a short, ugly sound, even to my own ears. “You know me,fratello,” I said.

“I know,” he countered. “That’s why I asked.”

“There is an abundance of aunts in New Jersey who would love to dote on my heir until it’s old enough to be sent to boarding school.”

I didn’t have to look at my brother to know he was disappointed in me. Our father had been active in our upbringing. He wanted to make sure that we were the men that he wanted us to be, and he couldn’t trust our education to places he didn’t have a direct hand in controlling.

“Maybe you should speak to Father David,” Cristian said. “He’s excited about coming for dinner; it would be a good time to discuss your impending fatherhood.”

Normally, I would have told Cristian no. I kept Father David at a distance to avoid the scolding I knew I would get for becoming such a lay Catholic. But the clenching, claustrophobic feeling in my chest that accompanied any and every thought about being a father, and Isabella in general, was weighing on me. Eventually, it would make me sloppy, and I couldn’t afford any mistakes. Not at this point in my life.

“I’ll talk to him,” I promised my brother.

Cristian gave me a genuine smile, and it pushed some of that crushing weight off my shoulders. “I’m glad. He’ll be able to give you sound advice.” I didn’t quite believe that, but I wasn’t going to contradict him either. Not after we had spent so much of the last few months at odds.

“This is literal shit.” We both looked to where Elio was standing in the doorway between the lobby and the range. He was frowning down at a Styrofoam coffee cup. “Let’s go. I want?—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Cristian cut him off. “We know what you want. You don’t have to cry over it, Christ.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to take the Lord’s name in vain,fratello.”

My brother flipped me off, and I was able to take a deep breath again.

CHAPTER 34

Lorenzo

Laid up in his bed, Damian had never looked smaller than he did right now. His shoulder was in a sling, and he was still so pale. It wasn’t so much his shoulder that was bothering him—a PT was already working with him to regain his strength and range of motion—but the blood loss. It was going to take a while for him to be one hundred percent again, and no one hated it more than Damian himself.

He was sitting up in his bed with his laptop when we came to check on him. “I’ve been trying to find anything that might point us to which family is responsible.”

“Did you?”

“I think so.”

“Show me what you’ve got,” I commanded, and Damian opened a video file on the laptop. It was grainy security footage, probably taken from one of the storefronts on that street. We watched a heavily tattooed man as he dragged Damian out of his car. There was scuffling, and then the flash of a knife. “Can this thing zoom in?”

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