The Woman with the Ring (Costa Family)

“Mira,” I said, nodding. “You know you’re not supposed to be here.”

“Why? Why am I not supposed to be here? Because you’re doing awful shit to my sister, and don’t want the Families to know? Is that why?”

“As I told your brother and Lorenzo, Isabella won’t come to harm from my Family or me.”

“Yeah, right, because I am just supposed to take the word of a fucking psychopath, right? ‘Oh, no harm will come to her. Except, you know, the whole kidnapping and forced marriage thing,’ you fucking lunatic.”

“I’m not seeing the family resemblance to your sweet wife,” Vissi said, shaking his head as Mira glowered at him.

“Only because you have yet to piss Isabella off,” I said, snorting.

“So you admit it. You’re pissing her off.”

“I piss her off by existing, Mira,” I said, shrugging. “But I don’t put my hands on her.”

“Just keep her trapped in a tower like fucking Rapunzel. Totally normal thing to do to your supposed wife.”

“She is free to move around.”

“With babysitters,” Mira snapped.

“With guards. For her own safety,” I corrected.

“Oh, so she is free to come and see me then, right? Great. Send her down.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Right. Because she’s not your wife. She’s your fucking prisoner.”

“As I told your brother, once Isabella settles into her life here, she will be able to be in contact with all of you again.”

“Oh, when she is so brainwashed by your stupid face and your big-dick-energy that she will forget that she is here against her will, you mean?”

“My stupid face,” I repeated, lips twitching.

“Would you prefer me calling it ‘punchable?’ Because it is that too.”

“Don’t you know better than to threaten a boss?” Terzo growled.

“Oh, please. And what do you think you’re going to do to me?” she asked, eyes rolling. “One hair on my head goes out of place while I am here and my brother will sic Brio on you so fast that you won’t be able to reach for your gun before he’s plucking each of your teeth out with a set of pliers.”

She wasn’t exactly wrong about that.

She might have called me a psycho, but the title for that absolutely went to Brio, who was a member of the Costa Family. I’d never seen anyone who enjoyed blood and pain and death as much as he did.

“Mira, you have my word that Isabella will see you again in the near future.”

“That near future is now,” Mira declared, gaze holding mine.

I’d known lifelong mobsters, professional hitmen, who wouldn’t dare to speak to me or look at me the way she was right then.

You had to admire her balls.

“And if I have bruises, you fuckface,” she said, looking over at Vissi again after she tried to pull her arm loose, “I am going to find out where you live, let myself in, and pour hot grease all over your twig and berries,” she told him, and there was something a bit chilling in her eyes as she gave him the threat, something that made me think she was completely capable of doing exactly that.

Vissi seemed to pick up on it too because his grip loosened ever so slightly.

“Let me see my fucking sister, you monster.”

She said that with a smile, too.

I didn’t know dick about Mirabella Costa, but it seemed like I needed to have some of the guys look into her. I guess I’d figured that Emilio’s sisters had been raised at an arm’s length from the Family business, so they would all be softer and sweeter. But Mira had a toughness about her that said she brushed shoulders with bosses and capos, and managed to hold her own around them, too.

I wasn’t intimidated.

We both knew she didn’t have a leg to stand on, that her sister and the Families had all agreed to this plan. Whether she liked it or not.

The reason I wasn’t immediately telling Vissi to drag her back out of my borough had nothing to do with her.

And everything to do with the fact that I had a woman a couple of floors off who might stop giving me the silent treatment if I let her sister visit.

“Tell you what,” I said. “If Isabella agrees, you can visit for a bit,” I said, ignoring Terzo’s gaze on my profile. “But you will have the visit here,” I told her.

“Fine. Whatever. I just need to see her,” Mira said, shrugging.

“Give me five, then lead her up,” I told Vissi, then turned, and made my way back upstairs.

“Dulles, do you think we can take a trip to… oh,” she said, her smile falling as her gaze landed on me.

“I have a proposition for you,” I said, watching as her cold gaze cut to me. Her brow rose slowly when I didn’t immediately go on. “I’m willing to let you have something you’re probably really desperate for right now if you stop acting like I’m a ghost in my own fucking home.”