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“The hit was ordered without my knowledge or approval.”
“So you say.”
“And so I will continue to say, because it is the truth.” He clears his throat and smooths the lash of anger from his voice once again. “Since I had no knowledge of the inner workings of that decision, I did some investigating once I became don. And it turns out that my father didn’t make the call alone.”
“If you’re trying to posthumously prove your father’s innocence, you can save your breath. He’s worm food regardless.”
“My father is indeed dead, Arsen,” Enzo agrees coldly. “I’m the one that pulled the trigger.” He pauses as if he can still hear the reverberations of the shot in the back of his mind. “So believe me when I say that, if I didn’t protect him in life, I’m certainly not about to protect his memory in death.”
Fair enough. I nod for him to continue.
“My father was approached by a man with his own agenda, but limited resources. My guess,” Enzo says, “is that he planned to make the hit and then use the fool as a scapegoat once the body had cooled.”
The casual mention of even the idea of Laila’s dead corpse sparks a kind of white-hot rage I’ve never felt before. It takes all of my self-control to remain in my seat.
“If you have a name, give it,” I growl. “I’m not about to give you a fucking drumroll.”
“Barnes,” he answers promptly. “The man who wanted your wife dead is named Charles Barnes.”
15
LAILA
“Why can’t I just stay home?” I twist and turn in the mirror, trying to get used to myself in the sight of something without an elastic waistband, as I talk to Kira on the phone. “This is stupid.”
“This is tradition. Also, you haven’t been out in months. This could be fun.” I let Kira’s words hang unanswered until she sighs. “It might not be awful, at the very least.”
“Wrong,” I insist. “It will be torture. It’s supposed to be torture. Torture is what Arsen Adamov does best.”
As soon as Arsen knocked on my bedroom door last night, I knew there was trouble. Not only was he breaking the cardinal rule of my demand for space by coming to my room himself instead of using a middleman, but when he asked me to accompany him to this dinner, he actually said, “Please.”
“I don’t think tonight is about you, Laila,” says Kira, the sound of her washing machine humming in the background of our call. “I mean, Arsen asked you to come with him…nicely.”
“Yeah, but the manners were a trick.” I keep squinting in the mirror. “If I’d refused, he would’ve ripped my door off the hinges and carried me to dinner anyway. I have no control.”
No control over where I live, what I do, or who I can see. Arsen has the world on a string, and I’m just another one of his puppets.
“It still seems like a step in the right direction,” she argues. “Don’t kill the messenger, but he is doing this for you. This alliance is to keep you safe. A few months ago, the Italians wanted to kill you. Now, you’re going to dinner with them. That seems like a move in the right direction.”
“Except the direction I want to be moving isawayfrom Arsen. He gets to send me away and bring me back and control every detail of my life, and I just have to go along with it. It’s not fair. Also, I don’t have anything to wear.” I strip my blouse off and toss it into the pile of every other item of clothing I own that doesn’t work for tonight. “Can I make a lasting alliance in sweatpants?”
Suddenly, Kira gasps. I know she’s in her house next door, but that doesn’t stop me from spinning around and looking over my own shoulder anyway. “What? What’s happening? What was that sound for?”
“That was the sound of me having a brilliant idea.”
“Oh, great. It sounded a lot like yourthere’s-a-murderer-behind-yousound, so I got confused.”
She ignores me and continues. “I think you’ve been playing this all wrong, babe. You don’t want to avoid Arsen.”
“Um, actually, yes, I do. That’s all I want. You haven’t been listening.”
“No, I mean— You’ve been away for months. He hasn’t seen youin months. Arsen is well-versed in what it’s like to be without you,” she explains. “If you really want to make him suffer… show him what he lost.”
I don’t know that I want to make Arsen suffer. Then again, it would make the night more interesting. Why should I be the only one having a miserable time?
“What did you have in mind?”
Kira’s plan has some pros and cons.
