Page 101 of Captivated

“And why would he say that?”

Monica did a little bounce in her shoes. “I guess ‘cause you’re his person, you know? He said we’ll love you.”

Liliana stilled. “Is that so?”

The girl smiled widely. “Guess so.”

The room went quiet.

Or maybe that was just her.

His person.

His. Person.

Huh.

THIRTEEN

“NO ONE TOLD me we were having a buffet,” Joe said from the dining room entryway.

Dante, who had been lost in conversation with his brother, looked to Joe with a smile. “Yes, well, that wasn’t the plan. My mother likes to cook when she’s nervous, though. Come in and grab a plate. Don’t let it go to waste, Joe.”

“Where’s Lucian?”

Because that’s the only reason why Joe showed up to the old Marcello mansion this afternoon. He’d spent the day before fielding phone calls to make sure Liliana was settled into his place in Chicago, and gathering the last bit of intel he needed on Martin Abraham to make the Chief of Police’s hit successful, and clean.

Joe was not going in on that mark half-cocked.

It would be stupid.

“Lucian took a phone call from Liliana in the next room,” Giovanni said. “Sit, Joe, and tell us what you have. We can pass the message along if he doesn’t get back in time.”

Joe wished it was him taking the call from Liliana. Right now, though, she was just a distraction he couldn’t afford to mess around with. He needed to be as detached as possible from his mark, but especially when he finally went in on the man. That way, there was little chance of his emotions taking over the kill, and fucking up the whole clean aspect he needed to maintain.

They all needed to make it out of this unscathed, after all.

Problem was, should Joe talk to Liliana, he was going to hear her voice. And then he was going to remember the way her voice sounded when she told him how a man had helped to cover up the fact Rich beat her, and then that same man proceeded to threaten her family and father’s freedom to keep her quiet.

And yeah …

Joe didn’t need to be focusing on that right now. He needed to remain disconnected from the reason why he was doing this in the first place, even if that reason had been overtaken by Liliana, and what happened to her.

“Well?” Dante asked.

Joe came into the dining room as he spoke, and grabbed a plate to start filling with food. “Tomorrow—Saturday—Martin will be heading to his vacation home in Long Island. I guess he has a pond, or something where he fishes. Relaxing, I bet.”

“The point?” Giovanni asked.

“Well, he’s not going to make it there, but it’ll look like he was trying.”

Joe didn’t really like giving the details of his plans when it came to the actual murder. Mostly because some men in this business got off on that shit, and he wasn’t killing for the excitement of others. He killed because it was a job that needed to be done more often than people cared to admit, and he was fucking good at doing it.

He’d been damn good at it since his first at fifteen when an enforcer called his aunt, Abriella, a whore, and Joe beat the man to death after luring him into the backyard. The guy hadn’t even seen him coming. Joe didn’t even think about it, really. His uncle, Tommas, hadn’t said very much about it, but he did tell Damian to take Joe to confession.

That was the first time he ever used confession.

He usually went back a couple of times a month, now.