Page 17 of Merciless Oath

“Don’t you dare go anywhere near Cavalli, or I swear, I’ll charter a plane there and drag you home myself.”

“Yes, Father,” I whisper, suddenly feeling like I’m nineteen years old and terrified of my father’s rage again.

After he clicks off, Uncle Luigi wraps his arm around my shoulders and leads me out of the warehouse. We make our way through the sludge to our cars.

“I should be in this meeting,” I say, finding my voice again.

“I know,” he admits.

We stand in the cold, not knowing how to proceed. Uncle Luigi would never double-cross my father, but he’s well aware that I’m technically in charge.

“He wouldn’t do something like this,” I finally venture.

“I know that too.” Luigi agrees, the steam escaping his mouth and floating up in curling wafts of white. “Listen, how about we shelve this for now and focus on getting the business ready? If anything else strange happens, we’ll reach out to the Romanos.”

“Thank you,” I whisper, my eyes threatening to spill the tears I’ve been holding in.

As rare as it is, it’s painfully affirming to have someone acknowledge that my decision is the right one, even if it goes against my father.

As I head back home, desperate to have Matilda in my sight, I think about Mussorgsky’s piece. The first death was a lullaby—the death of a young child.

The second?A woman, I think.A single woman.I wrack my brain trying to remember the third.An old man, maybe.And the last one? Men at war.

Four deaths. Lullaby is coming.

No, Enzo wouldn’t do something like this.This is coming from a sick, sick individual, I realize as my brain starts putting things together.

Matilda is a child, I’m a single woman, my father is a sick man, and men at war? They’re all around me in the dark underbelly of the city.

Someone is coming for everyone I know.

CHAPTER SIX

Enzo

“Well, it’s definitely a bomb,”Rafael confirms, placing it gently back on the counter.

“Thanks, Einstein,” I snort, shaking my head at him. “I got that.”

“I just don’t understand it,” he continues, eyeing the bomb and ignoring me. “The cryptic messages, the bomb, what is all this?”

“We’ve never really encountered… an attack like this,” Uncle Joe confirms, glancing at Rafael desperately as if he’s the one with all the answers.

“Can we have it tested for fingerprints or something?” Jack muses, rifling through my pantry.

“You think we’re on an episode ofCSI: Miamior something?” I ask, elbowing the younger cousin in the ribs. “We don’t have the skills for shit like that. Even if we got some prints, we can’t run them in the database unless we can somehow get access to it. Besides, the security footage showed nothing of use. Whoever did this knew how to place the package at the doorman’s post undetected."

We mull the idea of hitting up some of our sources on the police force until Uncle Joe shuts it down. The corefamily members have gathered at my penthouse to debrief the situation, but we’re getting nowhere.

I guess there’s no chapter on defused bombs or coded messages in the mafia playbook.

“Enzo, you can’t do any of your hacker shit on this?”

“On a defused bomb?” I laugh. “What exactly do you want me to hack into?”

We silently stare at the tiny black box perched innocently on my kitchen counter. Everyone is stumped—and nervous.

I can feel the sizzling tension in the air, especially from the older family members who are used to playing by very defined, well-known rules.

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