Page 30 of Torn By Fate

He’d assessed the distance between us and decided he couldn’t reach whatever he was carrying before I closed it.

“Who are you?” I asked.

The question hung in the air between us, simple and direct. I didn’t raise my voice; I didn’t need to. The dark alley amplified every sound—the drip of water from a leaking pipe, the scuttle of something small moving through the garbage, and the measured cadence of my own breathing.

The man looked at me, reading me in the same familiar way I had done to him. Whatever he found didn’t frighten him. The corner of his mouth curled into a lazy smile.

“Why do you care?”

His arrogance would get him killed tonight.

“The woman you’re trailing is my wife.”

His wicked smile widened. He seemed to enjoy this game, and he appeared to find it particularly amusing being cornered in a filthy alley by a stranger.

But I wasn’t a stranger to him. He was stalking Serafina. He probably knew everything there was to know about her … so in turn, he knew me.

“Your wife?” He tilted his head, considering the word. “That’s an interesting way to put it. Last I heard, she tried to put a bullet in you.”

I didn’t react. Of course he had done his research.

“Was that some kind of foreplay between you two?” He let out a low, dark chuckle, shaking his head. “No, I don’t think so. If it were the case, she wouldn’t have fled to the other side of the world just to escape you.”

His smile turned sharper. “She was running from you, wasn’t she? From you and the Cosa Nostra. Because if word gets out that she tried to kill a Salvatore, they wouldn’t care why she did it even if perhaps she had good reasons. She will be hunted and there will be nowhere for her to hide.”

“Who sent you?” I asked.

His sick smile didn’t falter. He tsked darkly, the sound echoing in the alley. “You can’t make me talk.”

“I don’t need you to want to talk.” I took a slow step toward him. “I only need you to understand that eventually, you will.

I had many ways to make a man like him talk.

He watched me approach, amusement still glinting in his eyes. “Are you trying to threaten me, Salvatore?”

“I’m not threatening you.” I stopped just a few feet away. “I’m giving you an opportunity.”

“For what?”

“To leave this alley alive.”

The amusement faded for half a second before returning. He threw his head back and laughed.

I cracked my neck side to side. And when he was done laughing, I tilted my head to the side, regarding him with a bored gaze. “So, I’ll ask you one more time. Think carefully before you answer.”

I let the silence stretch between us.

“Were you paid to kill my wife?”

He said nothing. The grin held, fixed and unyielding, and in the silence I heard everything he wasn’t saying. The refusal was deliberate. Calculated.

He wanted me to push until I was angry and reckless.

He wanted me to close the remaining distance and make this physical, because he believed—mistakenly—that he could handle it.

Unfortunately for him, he had no idea how badly he had miscalculated.

“See, that’s where you’re mistaken,” he finally said. “I don’t take money and then betray the person who paid me. My word is worth more than that.” His eyes locked onto mine, sharp and deadly. “My silence has been bought, Adrian Salvatore.”