She was quiet, and he didn’t turn his head to look at her, knowing she had to process the idea of a Saldi family, a crime family, being able to move in the shadows the way her family did. Would she feel as if she had to inform Stefano? Probably. She told Stefano anything that might someday affect her family. Val respected her for that. She was loyal. He wanted that intense loyalty to burn for him as well. There was more, and it would be even more difficult for her to handle. He wasn’t looking forward to telling her, and it was possible this was as far as he would go if she couldn’t accept this much.
Emmanuelle sighed. “It’s a scary thought that members of crime families can use shadows to move around, Val. They kill each other as well as other people. I don’t know if I want to be the one responsible for the start of providing that to others. If we had a daughter and she was able to go into the shadows and another family saw her shadow and bound her to them …” She trailed off.
He kissed her fingertips. “Baby, we would educate our children. Teach them the danger of what could happen. That first time can easily be broken. I would stop anyone who would try to take our daughter like that.”
He felt the shiver run through Emmanuelle’s body and knew his voice had grown too cold. Dropped too low. The thought of his child being taken and imprisoned against her will brought out the monster in him. He’d done that to Emme. She’d been sixteen. He wanted to think it was different with him, but he wasn’t all that good of a man. He tried to be for her, but deep down, he knew he had to work at it hard. And then there was Dario. If Dario ever found the woman he wanted, Valentino wouldn’t hesitate to do everything in his power to help him acquire her, just as Dario had done for him.
“Going into the shadows isn’t easy, Val. I had a younger brother, Ettore.”
“I remember.”
“That was how he died.”
He turned back to her, wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her tight against him, hearing the sorrow in her voice. “Baby, I thought he had a respiratory illness. Pneumonia maybe.”
“He had bad lungs. Asthma as well. He worked out all the time just like the rest of us. He trained hard. The shadows require stamina. It can take a toll on your body and can cause brain bleeds. It isn’t easy.”
“What? What the fuck, Emme?” Anger ripped through Valentino. What was her brother thinking, sending her into the shadows if it could kill her? Brain bleeds?
“I’m just warning you, it isn’t a picnic. Ettore went in, but he died in there. Stefano was able to find his body and bring him out. Even that was sheer luck. There are feeder tubes everywhere going off the main ones. Some are greased lightning. You have to know what you’re doing and be able to find your way around. You have to be able to keep maps of cities in your head and find them at lightning speed while it feels like your entire body is being pulled apart, all the skin is leaving your bones and there is nothing left of you.”
“Why would you go into them?”
She was the one who was silent for so long he didn’t think she would respond. “I’m an assassin. That’s my job, Val. The woman you want for the mother of your children kills people.”
Valentino wasn’t shocked. It had been long suspected that the Ferraros were contract killers. No one knew how they did it, or how they got away with it, but it was known in the neighborhoods how someone could get an audience with them. Once, Greta had gone to visit Emmanuelle’s grandparents when they were alive. They’d shared tea and Greta had told them how the son of one of the dons from one of the five ruling families wouldn’t leave her alone. He touched her inappropriately every chance he got. If she told Giuseppi, he would kill the man and there would be a war. She didn’t know what to do, and could they give her advice? She didn’t want anyone to know. She’d only told Lucia Fausti, one of her closest friends, who had encouraged her to go to the Ferraros and just tell them her troubles. That was all. Just tell them.
Valentino retold the story to Emmanuelle. How her grandparents had listened attentively without saying a word, encouraging Greta with a smile or a reassuring touch. They had thanked Greta for coming and said they would be in touch with her. Five weeks later, the man who had been harassing Greta had been found in his own home, sitting at his desk, his neck broken. There had been no sign of forced entry. No fingerprints. No forensic evidence at all to connect anyone to the crime. His neck had simply been broken. He’d been alone in a locked house.
Greta hadn’t been able to say if the Ferraros had anything to do with his death, but she had slipped them an offer of money, a very generous one. A few days before the man’s death, she received a text to transfer the money to an account. She had done so immediately. No one had ever contacted her again. The account hadn’t been traceable; at least she hadn’t thought it was. She had waited five years before she confessed to Giuseppi because she’d known he would be furious with her for not telling him. The story had been repeated more than once, within their household only, and Valentino had watched the Ferraros. Dario had as well. At first, they’d bought into the playboy image, but after a while, that hadn’t made much sense to them—especially not Stefano. He was a killer. Just looking into his eyes, one could see that. It took one to recognize one.
“Why would Stefano allow you to become an assassin?”
“That’s what we do. Who we are. That’s our family business, just as you have yours. You train from the time you’re a child; so do we.” Emmanuelle rolled away from him to sit on the edge of the bed.
Elusive. She slipped off the bed and padded on bare feet, naked, to the windows. Graceful, her body feminine. Flowing across the large room until she stopped, and then she was completely still again.
“You didn’t come here alone, did you, Val? Dario is somewhere close sharpening his knives or cleaning his guns, right?”
“What are you worried about? Do you see something?”
She shook her head. With their wild lovemaking, her hair had come loose from her braid, and part of it tumbled down her back, snaking in waves to her bottom like a dark, sensuous waterfall.
“No, I’m just uneasy all of a sudden. And I wish you’d take your bodyguards with you.”
“Dario has always been my bodyguard.”
“You need more than one now.”
He didn’t answer her.
She wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed up and down on her forearms as if she was cold. “Tell me the downside of the Saldi myth. What you haven’t told me. The upside would be the two of us together, our children better protected, but how is it I couldn’t leave if I wanted? What is the downside you don’t want to talk about, Val? How you can control me, keep me imprisoned?”
He sat up and shoved both hands through his hair. His body hurt like a son of a bitch, reminding him he’d taken a couple of bullets. The wounds hadn’t been that bad, but the bullets had penetrated and they still didn’t feel that good and he’d exerted himself quite a bit.
“Baby, do we really have to do this? It’s a damn story. I already have enough sins, don’t I? You were a fucking teenager when I took advantage of your shadow. I still use sex to control you—in fact, come over here now. I’d like to take advantage of your hot little mouth. My dick feels like it’s going to shatter any minute.”