She understood.
All too well.
She also wouldn’t give the okay for Dare to make a call that would effectively end any hope that Luca would live to see the end of the week simply because he was doing what he had always done. He was only trying to find her ... she knew why, too.
Because people loved her. She was also here because she loved them.
It didn’t seem fair to hurt those people again by removing someone else from their life just because it might make this plan of Dare’s for The Elite a little harder to see through. That was not her problem; she just did the killing.
It’s what they wanted.
“Are we done?” Penny asked.
Dare’s gaze drifted to his partner at Penny’s side with a glint she recognized. He wanted to push; to question and ask more but that had never been his MO with her. He liked Cree to do that dirty work for him ... just like the show downstairs. It wasn’t by accident that Cree knew exactly where to find Penny or that he was the only person within the large complex that had been able to reach the music room despite all the locked doors. No one got anywhere in this place without Dare allowing it to happen through his security system.
In that moment, Cree was silent.
He wouldn’t indulge whatever Dare was silently asking. Maybe because he didn’t care to or, perhaps, he agreed with Penny. It didn’t matter to her if they left the conversation—and Luca—alone.
Dare gave her a pointed look. “Don’t play any games, got it?”
“What game?” Penny widened her arms, adding, “Call me when you can tell me the next move I need to make. You know where to find me.”
7.
Luca
LUCA had long become accustomed to chasing people down—his best friend included. Naz’s need to keep moving from one thing to another was only a by-product of his heavy hand in the family business. The mafia always liked to keep a man on his feet and running.
Sometimes, it meant Luca couldn’t get a meeting in with his friend at all. Other times, it just meant he had to fit one in whenever he could. Even if that time was during a family breakfast at a restaurant in Brooklyn when they weren’t supposed to be talking any kind of business at all. Not that it ever mattered to him.
It did, however, matter to the man who demanded the breakfast between the Donati family and Luca’s.
He figured ...
Rules were meant, and made, to be broken.
Right?
Even if breaking it meant risking the wrath of the family boss currently sitting at the head of the table and eyeing Luca from his spot as he slid into the chair beside Naz’s after entering the restaurant. Cross Donati was a lot of things. Luca had grown up calling the man his uncle even if he wasn’t related by blood. One of his father’s very best friends, he had learned to appreciate the softer, family side, of the mafia boss before anything else.
Then, life got in the way.
Business, too.
He was given an entirely different kind of perspective on the man Cross could be when the situation and time called for it as Luca grew older and started to dabble in the family business. And it was that lack of ignorance about Cross that kept Luca quiet as the man continued watching him instead of going back to his previous conversation with his wife, Catherine, at the end of the breakfast table.
He didn’t mind breaking a rule. He simply didn’t want to do it brazenly. Therein lied the difference. Or at least, it was a good enough one for Luca when it came to Cross. There were some men he knew better than to provoke.
Cross Donati was one of those.
“Good to see you showing your face this weekend,” came the familiar voice of his father from the other side of the table. “I figured you would still be chasing after someone’s—”
“Zeke.”
The quiet murmur crawled down the table from the boss’s seat to Luca’s father’s all the way at the end. It silenced everyone as it passed, his mother, sister, and best friend included. When Cross said no business at family functions—even if it was just a simple breakfast—then that was exactly what he meant. Regardless of who sat at the table.
Luca tipped his head to the side, smiling at his ma and then nodding to his father. “Hey to you, too, Dad.”
Zeke’s jaw tightened but that was the only sign of his irritation otherwise. “Busy week?”
Luca lifted his leather-covered shoulders, happy to be back in his staple black jacket and hoodie for the time being. Hopefully, he wouldn’t need to slap on another suit and tie for a while if he was lucky. But one never knew what the future held, either. “Busy life, Papa.”
“Right, right.”
“Are we eating or what?” asked Cross from down the way. “I’m starved.”
The confirmative noise from the other Puzzas and Donatis at the table sent the boss clapping his hands and calling for the servers. Another benefit of this restaurant—the Donatis owned it. Which meant whenever a recognizable face from the family came through the front door, the employees jumped through hoops to make sure everything was perfect.
Luca decided to put the flood of servers coming into the private dining section to his benefit while everyone else around him was distracted. The servers came in with a choice of breakfast foods on platters, stopped at every person with a choice in coffee, juice, or water, and did their job. Quiet chatter bounced from person to person.
He turned to his friend.
“Guess what I got?” he asked Naz.
Naz thanked the woman pouring his coffee and blocking the view of the boss down the way before asking Luca, “What? And make it quick, you know how my father gets when we discuss any kind of business at a dinner table with family present.”
“A reporter ...”
It had taken Luca an entire week after the hellish fundraiser dinner that went to complete shit to pull together a decent amount of information about what exactly went on ... but he did it. There could be only one reason why Penny had been there that night—to murder the son of the prominent politician who had been busy shaking hands downstairs while his son got a bullet between his eyes eight floors up.
The real question was why?
Why did she do that? Why Elijah Smithsenson?
Why that night—when the spotlight on the Smithenson was shining brighter than ever as they rallied funds from wealthy donors?
Why, why, why.
He hated whys.
And since the dead couldn’t talk—and neither could the ghost he hadn’t been able to catch—and the media had been mum on the details about the murder otherwise, Luca was left with only a few options at his disposal. He needed as much information on the murder, and the political family, as he could get his hands on. Something there would lead him to the whys he didn’t have answers for about Penny’s involvement in the murder.
He was sure of it.
It was the only thing that happened in the hotel that night—she was on Elijah Smithenson’s floor. The media’s lack of discussion on the murder told him that the family was trying to keep the details out of the spotlight for whatever reason.
Police were crawling all over it.
It had to be Penny.
Luca figured if he could find the answers to his questions, then it might be one more thing he could use to lead him back to her. To find her.