“Aren’t you lucky? Who else would be able to—”
“Careful with your next sentence, husband.” her eyes narrowing as she crossed her arms.
I grinned and let it go. Handing her a glass, I looked to her now. “You’ve been deep in thought all day. What is it? Seriously? I know if it were serious enough to actually be a concern, I would already know. But even small problems are worth my attention.”
“I didn’t tell you because you are going to blow me off,” she grumbled, finishing off the rest of her brandy. She made a face. She hated it but nevertheless drank it whenever I gave it to her.
“Try me anyway.”
“Fine,” she stated, lifting her phone for me to see.
I read the message but didn’t understand. “What does some random plane ticket have to do with us?”
“Look at the name.”
I checked it again. “Calliope Affini? Who is that, and why do we care?”
“Remember that little girl I was speaking to at Wyatt and Dona’s birthday party?”
I thought back, vaguely remembering, even though it was only a few days ago. We’d spoken to so many useless people that they all blurred together.
“The little girl Ethan was in the bathroom with?” she added.
“The little brat who flooded the downstairs guest bathroom?” I snapped, annoyed.
One of the security men had notified me after the party that they had seen Ethan enter with a girl. When I spoke to Ethan about it, he just brushed it off, saying she was weird. And I was more focused on explaining why he shouldn’t be in the bathroom with girls…at least not at his age.
“I expected you to be annoyed that she was alone with your precious Ethan. However, sending her to Italy is a bit harsh, Mel. They are just children. They don’t know—”
“I’m not the one sending her.”
I paused. “So, why do we care again?”
“She has a one-way ticket to Lazio, Italy. Do you know who lives in Lazio, Italy?” she questioned, and before I could answer, she did. “Fiorello Orsini. Do you know who Fiorello Orsini is?”
“He used to work for your father, right?”
“My father use to call him mano sinistra?”
“Left hand?” I snickered. “The nicknames your people come up with.”
“A right-hand man is an indispensable aid, someone you can count on, someone who is a soldier and ready to follow every command, in the most efficient way. But a left-hand man? He is hard to control. He gets the job done but not in the prettiest or best way. He follows orders but also has a mind of his own and sometimes desires to take control. No matter what they do, they are always crooked.”
“And Fiorello was okay with that nickname?” I snickered because it felt more of an insult than an honor.
“My father only told me that,” she said humorlessly, with a serious tone I didn’t quite understand. “My father warned me never to get too close to Fiorello, which was strange to me. I was raised around bad men. Yet he’d never really warned me about anyone except Fiorello Orsini. Normally, I wouldn’t have listened, in order to find out the truth about him myself. If he were completely a loose cannon, my father wouldn’t have him.”
“And what did you discover?”
“Fiorello is a complete and utter psychopath.”
“Mel, I hate to break it to you, but people say we are psychopaths.” In fact, we’ve been called sociopaths, narcissists, narcissistic sociopaths, the list is endless.
“Do you rape women for fun?” She questions.
My eyebrow rose at that, and she simply nodded. “Thought so.”
“He apparently liked a ‘good fight’ in his women. And it was none of my father's business so long as he did his job and didn’t screw us over. Everyone was criminal in some way. My father never really cared about any other women but me…and maybe my mother. But that’s not my point. My point is, no matter how hard and brutal my father was on me, no matter how depraved he was to his enemies, he still wanted me to be as safe as possible.” She frowned as her finger tapped on the now-empty glass of brandy. “We have a daughter the same age as this Calliope. Is there any reason that you would send Dona to a man like Fiorello Orsini?”