Page 176 of Niccolo

And those beautiful cries as she came.

Madonn, what a woman.

Which made it an unfathomable tragedy that, unless she turned…

I was going to have to kill her.

I didn’t want to think about that.

It filled me with dread and horror.

Even worse, I didn’t like admitting that I might not be able to go through with it.

Last night was magical.

The best of my entire life.

I could not imagine myself hurting the woman I’d spent it with.

So instead, I prayed I could haveanothernight with her…

And another chance to change her mind.

The private jet flight from Nice had been a one-way trip. I would have to make other arrangements to return to Italy.

I snagged the last first-class seat available on a commercial flight to Paris.

The $18,000 price tag was high, though a mere pittance compared to the 375,000 euros we’d paid for the private jet to Hong Kong.

You had to keep everything in perspective.

While I was waiting to depart, I booked a connecting flight to Florence –

And realized I should probably call Roberto.

I had to warn him Fausto might have contacted Lau –

But I needed to be cautious.

Roberto had mentioned he was going to spend the night in one of Lau’s properties.

From what I knew about Lau, he was essentially a gangster – or at least gangster-adjacent.

As such, he probably had his fingers in all sorts of unsavory things… like filming people who stayed in his penthouse suite and using it as blackmail.

I would call Roberto’s cell phone, so if Lau had the place bugged, he wouldn’t be able to hearmyside of the conversation –

But he would hear anything Roberto said, so I’d have to warn my brother to be discreet.

When I called, I expected him to already be up and about.

Hell, I didn’t evenexpectit. It was a given, seeing as the time was approaching noon.

Roberto had always been an early riser, the very picture of the saying ‘the early bird gets the worm.’

So imagine my shock when the voice that answered sounded like a chain-smoker on his deathbed.

“…hello?”he croaked groggily.

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