Angelo (The Marchesi Family 2)

Cameron shook his head. “None at all. My father left me the necklace that he stole from the Romano’s house, but you’ve seen the letter. He claimed to not know anything about the money.”

“Where’s the necklace?” Lucien asked.

“Here. I put it in the safe the night Sergio’s men tried to burn the place. I can get it.”

“Please do.”

I followed him. He rushed into the bakery office, obviously trying not to see the covered bodies on the kitchen floor. I flipped on the light and Cameron knelt to open the safe. When he pulled the necklace out, he turned it over in his hands, studying it. “Hold on.”

He pulled out his phone and opened a magnification app. “Look. There are numbers etched into the back, but you can hardly see them.”

We took the necklace with us and showed Lucien and the others.

“Do you think it’s a bank account number or something?” Cameron asked.

“That’s an excellent suggestion,” Lucien said. “We’ll put our best hacker on it and see what we can find out.”

At that point, I’d had all the waiting I could take. “Can you just do that and let me get moving?” I didn’t want to work on any more puzzles. I just wanted to find Sergio and make him die a slow, painful death.

Lucien shook his head. “You’re not going anywhere yet. We need to do some more research and get Cameron somewhere safe.”

Cameron frowned. “How can I just walk away and ignore the fact there are two dead men in my kitchen?”

I didn’t want Cameron out of my sight, but Lucien was right. He needed to go home and stay there. I pulled him to me and gave him a gentle kiss. “You promised to let me protect you, remember?”

“Yes, but—

“No one will ever know what went on here tonight,” Lucien said. “I swear it.”

Cameron sighed. “All right, but I think we need to renegotiate our agreement.”

My chest tightened. Would he want to go back to sex only? Would he insist on moving out once Sergio was dead? “We’ll discuss that later, but I expect to find you safely tucked into bed when I get home.”

“I will be.” His soft expression gave me hope I hadn’t fucked things up completely.

When I led Cameron back into the kitchen, the bodies were already gone.

He stared at the floor where they’d been. “How did you…? I didn’t even hear anyone come in.”

“We’re efficient.”

He shook his head but didn’t say anything else.

Six and Muffin were waiting at the door. “Take Cameron home please, and make sure no one can get to him, Peter, or Sabrina.”

“Yes, sir,” Six said.

Cameron pulled me to him for a kiss. “Please be careful. If you… You being alive is more important than you going after this man.”

“He won’t stop pursuing us until we put an end to him. I’m doing that now so you can be safe.”

“I hate this.”

“I know. I’m sorry I’m not—”

“Not you. This situation. I just want you home with me.”

He’d referred to my house as home. Maybe things would be all right after all. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

25

Angelo

I pushed back through the swinging door. “Sergio dies tonight, Luce.”

“I agree, but I want some surveillance and backup in place as well as confirmation that the location is a good lead.”

“Cam’s right. I know he is,” I insisted.

“He made an excellent deduction, but I won’t have you running out there unprepared. He wouldn’t want that either.”

I hated that Lucien was right. There was no way I could sit still, so I paced the length of the bakery counter.

“I have the incident here covered,” Lucien said. “If anyone saw or heard anything and reports it, our contact at Boston PD will bury any inquiries that come in. But hiding a second incident on the same night will tax our contacts.”

“We won’t leave a trace,” Devil said. “The guy’s a fucking ghost anyway. They’ll never identify the body, and they sure as fuck won’t connect it to us.”

“All they’ll have are dental records to go on at best. I intend to burn the motherfucker the way he wanted to do the bakery.”

Lucien nodded. “I’ll make sure any records we can locate are destroyed. Do you have the fuel you need?”

“I’ve got an extra gas tank on my bike,” Devil said. “We can handle this.”

Lucien frowned. “Your way of handling things always leads to trouble. We don’t have room for error here. Sergio will be expecting an attack after going for Cameron. He has to know Angelo will come for him.”

“But he won’t know we’ve solved the puzzle. I doubt he knows how brilliant Cam is.”

Lucien gave me a knowing look, but the fucker kept his mouth closed. “I’ve got Emilio checking out the area and looking for cameras and other security.”

Vinnie was studying something on his phone. “My grandmother had a house near here. If you both go on bikes, I can tell you some trails that will keep you off the main roads and bring you into the back of the property.”