As I watched Alfonso, I tried to figure out how long this had been going on. I mean, Maria had told me that her father had promised her to Alfonso. What exactly did she mean by that? I had no idea what her dad had told her to put that into her head, but she was obviously stuck on the idea—and who wouldn’t be. This guy was a worse motherfucker than almost every motherfucker in this town; hell, even Lucca could occasionally be charming or pleasant. Alfonso was an asshole, and now he was in the same building as the woman I loved.

 

But how in the hell did he know where she was? That was the question going around and around my brain as I tried to fit the pieces together in my head. He couldn’t have known. He shouldn’t have known. And yet, here he was—and I doubted that his appearance at the hotel was a coincidence.

 

How long had he been following her, I wondered? Maybe this was just part of his game, stalking her at all times to make sure she wasn’t ruining herself for him. When did he decide that she was the woman for him? He’d been in this business a while, so he must have known about Maria from when she was a kid. The thought grossed me out at once—yeah, those kind of guys start early, so they can get a woman they deem appropriately “pure” for a wife. I knew their types—I had worked with them long enough to recognize them when they came around, and I could tell you for certain that Alfonso was one of them.

 

As I watched him exchanging some terse words with the receptionist, my mind drifted back over everything that had happened over the past couple of months. Where did he fit into all of it? This was the first I’d heard of him in relation to Maria—and that made me think that her father and Alfonso had been planning this for a while, opening themselves up to the idea and then planning on guiding Maria into it, too. The thought made me a little ill—no wonder she had fled when she did. The knowledge that her father had plans for her—plans that included a guy like Alfonso Condotierri—had been enough to push her over the edge, and I doubted she was alone in that feeling.

 

I thought back to the first night we spent together. Her father had called me, let me know that something was going down. We had never found out what it was…but what if it had something to do with Alfonso? It wouldn’t have surprised me to find out that was the case. The two of them were obviously way down the path of joining their empires, and when these kind of men came together, there were often plenty of problems along the way. How many of the messes over the past couple of weeks had been caused by Alfonso trying to get to her? Is that why she’d ended up at the Stiches? Had he forced her in that direction to try and smoke me out of my hole?

 

I did my best to place the last time I’d seen Alfonso; had it been at the party the night before? Maybe that’s where he’d spotted us. It certainly wouldn’t be out of character for a guy like him to try and schmooze with a group like the Stiches. I couldn’t precisely remember him being there, but it would explain how he’d discovered exactly where Maria was staying before her father has so much as raised the alarm.

 

A cold shiver ran down my spine, as though someone had dripped a line of ice water down the back of my shirt, when I finally placed the last time I’d laid eyes on Alfonso Condotierri. It had been in that coffee shop, where the other member of the Stiches had confronted me—I’d spotted him staring at Maria, but had been unable to place where I knew him from. Shit. Shit. This had been going on a while.

 

My mind spiraled out as I tried to figure out the possibilities of this scenario. If he had been following us then, then he might have been following us before. He might have seen her go up to my apartment and spend hours upon hours there. The image of Alfonso peering through the window, watching us as we made love, flashed through my mind, and I fought the urge to vomit.

 

If he knew, then did that mean that Lucca did to? Was he just letting me break his daughter in for Alfonso? Surely no father could think that badly about their own daughter—but then I had seen people do worse. I felt as though my mind was turning inside out, as I tried to figure out what was normal and what wasn’t. I had spent so long in this world that I was having trouble separating what was acceptable and what was monstrous, what made a man a psychopath and what made him a caring father.

 

I was fucked up, but now wasn’t the time to linger on that. Now that the pieces were falling into place, I needed to do something—and fast. I looked through the door again, and Alfonso glanced over his shoulder at me; he narrowed his eyes, as though trying to place me, and I ducked away. I didn’t understand why he hadn’t recognized me, but he was letting me off for the time being. And I had to take advantage of that while I still could.

 

I reached into my pocket for my phone, and stared at the screen for a few seconds. Did I call Maria, tell her what was going on? I needed to try, even though it was probably already too late. I pulled up her number and dialed quickly, pacing back and forth in a small alleyway next to the hotel as I waited for her to pick up.

 

“Come on, come on,” I muttered—but nothing. She must have passed out or turned her phone off, or maybe she just didn’t want to hear from me. That left me with my options heavily limited. My footsteps echoed off the narrow walls around me, and I tried to focus my mind on what I could do next.

 

Could I go to the Stiches? They would help me out, but that would require me to tell them everything that had happened—and these men weren’t exactly the kind who would understand that I was doing this for a woman. They were more likely to rip the piss out of me for falling for a brat like Maria than they were to help—and I know that I would get torn a fucking new one if they found out I’d been fucking her, putting the whole organization in danger for the sake of my dick.

 

When one of the Stiches was in trouble, all of us were, and I’d known that when I’d started hooking up with her—it just didn’t mean a thing to me. They would have every right not to come out and help me—in fact, I expected them to kick me to the curb as soon as they discovered what had been going down between the two of us. My mind was running so fast that it felt as though it was about to split off into a thousand pieces. Who else would help me out here?

 

The only person I could think of was Lucca D’Orazio. I didn’t know how much he was aware of, but I knew that if he found out his daughter was in danger, he would leap in to help. Unless he’d sent out Alfonso to get her for him? Oh, hell. What choice did I have? If I went in there myself, Alfonso would just take me out and then do whatever he wanted to Maria—if I left, he’d have probably kidnapped her by the time I got back. I was running out of time, faster than I could come up with ideas—and I knew that I had to make a decision soon. That receptionist would give in eventually, and then there would be nothing between Maria and him. And that I couldn’t live with.

 

I came to a halt and scrolled through my contacts quickly; I couldn’t even remember if I had his number in the first place. My head spun when I saw his name come up, and I realized that I had no excuse not to do this. Should I? Would Maria ever forgive me if I involved her father in this after she’d put so much effort into putting space between them?

 

She wanted him dead—there was no doubt about that. The only question was whether or not I was going to help her with it. If I delivered her to his door—which, make no mistake, is what I’d be doing if I called him up—I couldn’t see myself getting back into her good graces any time soon. I pressed my fingers to my forehead, focusing on the feeling of the skin against skin, the pressure increasing as I fought to distract myself from what I was about to do. What else was there? Who else would have the power and the influence to stop Alfonso in his tracks?

 

Maybe they’d set this up as a way to trap me, to make sure that I would do exactly as I was told. I shuddered at the thought—Lucca would have all the sway in the world over me if he discovered my relationship with Maria, and I didn’t want to know what he would do with it given the chance. Who came first? Maria, or me? It was a question I’d never had to ask myself before, but then, I’d never cared for someone as fiercely as I did Maria. I had no choice. I had to go through with this.

 

I pulled up his number and hovered my finger over the call icon for a couple of seconds, and then, before I had a chance to talk myself out of it, I pressed the green telephone. The streetlights flickered out above me as a new day began, and it became very, very clear that whatever this day brought, it wasn’t going to be good news. Talk about a rock and a hard place.