“You are not,” Emmanuelle snipped. “There is no way you’re on a dating site.” There was a small silence. “Are you?” Dario didn’t deign to answer. She looked suspiciously up at her husband. “Tell me you didn’t sign him up on a dating site, because I know he didn’t sign himself up.”
Val nuzzled her neck. “He needs a good woman to settle him down, Emme.” He sounded innocent—too innocent.
Elie tried not to laugh. There were snorts of derision and various other forms of amusement coming from the large table of bodyguards behind them.
“Don’t think anyone believes your bullshit, Val,” Dario said. “I should forward you all these crap responses. These women are nuts.”
“Then why haven’t you deleted your account?” Emmanuelle demanded.
“I can tell you,” Elie said. “It’s like watching a train wreck. You know you should look away, but you can’t.”
“Is that speaking from experience, Elie?” Val asked, sliding his arm around the back of the booth.
Tito arrived, grinning as he placed an all-meat pizza in front of Val and the salami and double olive in front of Emmanuelle and Elie. Berta followed with the antipasti, a bottle of wine and another pizza, which she placed in front of Dario with a tentative smile.
“I thought you might still be hungry, Dario. It’s on the house.”
He barely glanced up, but he did acknowledge her with a nod. She beamed at that small gesture and hurried off.
Emmanuelle sighed. “Don’t you dare encourage her.”
“Encourage who?” Dario frowned and looked up from his phone.
“Never mind.” Valentino reached for a piece of pizza. “You’re hopeless, Dario. There’s no need to worry, princess. Every woman is safe around him. Now that he’s got that dating app to stare at, that’s all he wants to do. He’d never see a flesh-and-blood woman flirting with him.”
Dario shoved his phone in his pocket. “Elie is really going through with his marriage tomorrow, Val. I couldn’t talk him out of it.”
“Did he try, Elie?” Val studied Elie’s expression.
“He offered to let me come to the kink club free to give me one last night of freedom.”
Emmanuelle scooped up olives before Elie could get to them. “Not this again. We’ve had this conversation. Elie’s already married. Tomorrow is just a formality. Stefano will walk his bride down the aisle and I’ll be her matron of honor. Pictures will be taken. Cake, that sort of thing. The family will be there for you, Elie.” She narrowed her gaze on Dario. “By family, that includes you. Wear a suit.”
Elie found himself watching Emmanuelle and Valentino as they cuddled close together, his knuckles occasionally brushing her cheek. She looked up at Val and he smiled down at her with far too much open love. Elie wasn’t certain it was good for Val to show that much real affection for his wife in public. Valentino was head of the Saldi crime family. Loving his wife the way he did could be a major liability for him.
Still, Elie wondered if maybe he’d acted too hastily in deciding to pursue an arranged marriage. He had done so because the woman he was supposed to marry had rejected him, refusing to see him. She had returned his letters unopened. She wouldn’t open her door to him. Eventually, knowing he would have to make a decision, he had made the trip back to France with the intention of confronting her, but she was gone.
She had a sister and a father, but they no longer lived in the same house, and Brielle, the woman he should have been marrying, wasn’t with either of them. Her sister, Fayette, was considered by her parents to be the beauty of the family. When Brielle had come home and told her father that she wasn’t going to marry Elie Archambault, her father, Gaspard, apparently, had been furious.
Gaspard had gone to the head of the Archambault family and offered his daughter Fayette. It was such an honor to marry into the Archambault line. To have Fayette politely turned down had made him even angrier with Brielle and he had disowned her unless she agreed to go to Elie and insist he marry her. She had not done so. At eighteen, she had gone off on her own, refusing to give in to her father’s demands, and ignoring Elie’s many attempts to contact her.
Now, he was married to a woman he didn’t know and didn’t love. He would be faithful to her, because he was a man of honor, but he would never have what Emme and Val had. And damn Brielle to hell for not listening to him. He made a mistake. Granted, it was a bad mistake, but he’d been young and his world had been turned upside down. It wasn’t an excuse to act the way he had, but she could have just heard him out. Neither one of them would be in the mess she’d landed them in. Not only them, but at least two other riders.
“You find anything out, Val?” Dario lowered his voice as he leaned over the table to snag a piece of pizza.
Elie leaned in on the pretense of catching up the bottle of wine to pour everyone a glass. He counted himself lucky that he was regarded as a sibling in the Ferraro family and therefore whatever Val and Dario allowed them to be privy to, he was as well. They had broken up a human trafficking ring together. Elie had taken great satisfaction in helping to rid the world of even a small branch of that depraved network.
“Unfortunately, yes. We delivered a blow to the trafficking ring, no doubt about it, a pretty good one. I met with Tibberiu Messina and it appears as if the rumors might be true. Before we ever started trying to ferret out who was behind the ring in our territory, Dario and I discussed the possibility that we would be put on a hit list, but we thought getting rid of the ring was worth the danger to us.”
Valentino dropped his free arm around Emmanuelle’s shoulders when she turned her face up to his, a look of alarm hastily hidden when she ducked her head.
“Messina said someone else has been investigating this same ring as well, very aggressively, but so far no one seems to be able to uncover their identity. The fact that the scrutiny has been so intense has put enough pressure on them that they’ve slowed bringing in girls from Europe and have turned their attention to stopping those opposing them.”
“Does Messina have any idea who was in bed with Jason Caruso?” Dario asked.
“I thought when you got Jason, he was the head of it all here and that would be the end of it,” Emmanuelle said softly. “Wasn’t the trafficking ring all his idea?”
Elie heard the unconscious plea in her voice. She didn’t want Val or Dario to be in any more danger than they had been in. He could have told her that both men, as heads of the crime families, would always be in danger. He could tell, like him, Dario and Val wanted to comfort her and assure her they would be fine, but they couldn’t do that and be truthful.