Shattered Throne: A Dark Mafia Romance: War of Roses Universe (Mice and Men Book 3), Lana Sky [summer reading list txt] 📗

between brown and green. With one look, she could reduce me to a piece of shit, unworthy of her.

“You never let me in. I try so hard to think like you, but I never can. Are you even listening to me? Can you hear me? Donatello? Donatello!”

A scream cuts the air, and I’m on my feet, lunging into the hall.

“Liv?” My body reacts on autopilot, urging me toward the stairs, but the figure descending them isn’t Olivia. She’s too small, her eyes wide, and another name slips out of me before I can choke it back, “S-Safiya?”

“It hurts…” The fact that she’s speaking at all shatters the illusion. This girl isn’t Safiya Mangenello. Already, my brain is tallying up more clues that prove it—her eyes are blue, her hair dark and curling, but that shirt…

I remember picking it out in the store myself, wracking my damn brain to consider what a little girl might like. Something pink, I decided. Little did I know it was her favorite color.

“Kisa!” Luciano races past me, and I finally recognize the child before me. Antonio Salvatore’s little girl. “What the hell happened?”

Blood spills down her left arm, dripping onto the floor in rivulets. I blink, but it’s no hallucination. She’s been cut—and it doesn’t take long to find the weapon.

Luciano snatches it from her, hissing in disgust. “Where did you even get this?”

A grunt of recognition rips from my chest as he lifts the weapon high. The dagger is a distinct silver, with a dark handle, engraved with the word Mouse. I know where she got it from—my room.

I say nothing, but when Luciano sets the blade down, I grab it, slipping it into my pocket.

“Kisa, honey.” He spins her to face him, but she stares blankly ahead, unresponsive. “What the hell is wrong with her?”

“She’s in shock,” I surmise.

When he reaches for her injured arm, she blinks, finally meeting his gaze. “It hurts,” she says.

An understatement. The wound looks deep, slicing across her forearm. Judging from the amount of blood, the blade nicked a vein.

“We need to apply pressure to it.” I shrug off my jacket and wad up an edge of the sleeve around the slender limb.

“It’s deep.” Already I can feel the warmth seeping through the fabric. Standing, I throw the jacket aside and lift the girl into my arms.

“What are you doing?” Luciano is hot on my heels.

“I’m taking her to the hospital,” I say. “She needs stitches.”

The irony isn’t lost on me. I got my wish. Though who knows, Willow Stepanova could already be safely ensconced in her fucking mansion, forever beyond my reach.

Or I could get there in time to ruin this little family reunion.

“I’m coming with you,” Luciano warns, and I realize I’m already heading for the door.

“Good. You can cover me.”

The girl doesn’t react as I carry her outside, her wide blue eyes fixated on mine. That look… Someone else used to stare at me like this. Boldly. Like nothing on earth scared her, least of all Donatello Vanici.

Though that little girl had been taught more than enough fear in her life. Gino Mangenello was my second in command, but I didn’t know the extent of the brutality he showed his wife and child behind closed doors. The day we met comes back to me so clearly; it’s like I’m there in my office, watching her peek from around his bulk.

Taking her in wasn’t my choice, but I never once doubted it. Not once.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Luciano calls from behind.

I look down and realize I’m standing just before the driveway with a trail of the girl’s blood in my wake. Teeth clenched, I keep walking. “I’m fine.”

“I don’t think you are, and I damn sure don’t think you should be driving.”

“I said I’m fine.” The further I move from that house, the better I feel. When I finally wrench open the door of one of Antonio’s cars—a flashy black sedan—and shove the girl onto the back seat, I feel even clearer.

“I’ll be right behind you,” Luciano warns as I settle into the driver’s seat. “Keep pressure on your arm, Kisa!”

I don’t think she hears him. By the time I start the car, she’s gaping into space again, her arm resting limply on her lap.

“You’re bleeding,” I warn. My voice isn’t naturally soothing like Fabio’s, and she jumps. “Keep pressure on it until we get it checked out.”

She clutches her hand to her chest at least. As her eyes stoically scan the road, I can’t resist the comparison—she’s nothing like Safiya—a girl so bubbly, despite her silence, it felt as though an entire chorus of people were battling to speak all at once. You only had to listen.

Antonio’s girl is an entirely different creature. She’s like her father, how he was back in the day at least. Like ice, an impenetrable wall from which you only ever got a glimpse of genuine emotion.

But Antonio was never innocent.

“Are you a bad man?” The small, crisp voice comes as such a shock I nearly veer off the driveway. As I wrench on the wheel to right it, a horn sounds from behind me. Luciano.

Ignoring him, I eye the girl in the rearview mirror as she turns the full brunt of those eyes on me. They aren’t a reflective brown, but piercing, her tiny lips quivering. “Are you a bad man?” she repeats.

“Yes,” I reply without a shred of hesitation.

The answer doesn’t surprise her. “Why?”

She makes evil sound synonymous with a pair of shoes someone decides to put on in the morning.

Maybe it is that simple. I joined the famiglia and served Giovanni because I wanted to, but I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I stopped giving a fuck.

When did Donatello turn “bad”?

As pathetic as it feels to admit, only one answer comes to mind. “I don’t know.”

4

Evgeni

“This is it?” the woman remarks as our destination comes into view. “After how long you’ve been driving, I’d assume we’d be in China by