The dead body on the ground stared sightlessly up at the sky as Lucca and Sal stared down at their fallen soldier. Lucca held a cigarette between his lips as he squatted, needing to check the body for any other signs of death. Unfortunately, the bullet in his skull told them all they needed to know.

Dante took a deep breath, sucking in the frigid air and trying to calm the blood that was beginning to boil inside himself. Then he cut the silence between them with his cold tone. “Sal, go see what you can find on the cameras.”.

Sal gave a nod before he disappeared.

“Could Angel have done this?” Dante asked once Sal was gone, not wanting to speak about it in front of him.

The fact was: Sal’s biological father was Lucifer. And even though Dante had taken him off the streets, Angel was still his brother. A brotherly bond had never formed between him and Lucifer’s other children, yet blood was blood.

Lucca took a hard hit off the stick in his mouth, still squatting, carefully examining the body. “I don’t know yet.”

“Even if it wasn’t Angel”—he stared at the body that had been brought to the back alley of his casino hotel, a message—“the possibility it was a Luciano is fucking high, especially since we just took out Lucifer.”

Standing back up, Lucca started to leave, needing to figure out what had happened.

“I hope she’s worth it,” Dante told him quietly, unable to hold back any longer.

Lucca stopped instantly as he turned his head back. “What did you just say?”

“That after Drago”—he looked down at the body of one of his best men—“and now Tom, I hope she’s worth it.”

Turning around, Lucca began to stalk his father, growing closer and closer until he was mere inches away. Then he took the cigarette out of his mouth and blew smoke right into his father’s face while putting the butt out right on the chest of Dante’s suit jacket. “I’ll fucking kill you if you ever speak to me that way again. And we both know I won’t hesitate.”

The blue-green eyes that stared back at Dante were just as icy and promising as his son’s voice. There wasn’t a question of whether he would do it. He knew firsthand what Lucca was capable of.

“Understand that, no matter what, Chloe will always be worth it. Even if I have to put a fucking bullet through my own father’s brain and bury you six feet under, I will.” Dropping the butt to the ground, he dusted off the ashes from his father’s jacket, revealing the burnt hole in the expensive Italian suit. “I can take everything from you. Your family, your men, this city. I could take it all tomorrow if I wanted, and no one would question me. They’d follow me because they know what this family could be if I led it.”

Dante’s jaw flexed as he stared at his creation, what he had brought into this world.

“You’re getting old, Father …” Lucca slightly smiled. “Tell me, how does it feel to know your days are numbered? To know that I could end your reign at any second?”

While he watched his son walk away, he could feel it. The crown he had worn on his head for what felt like most of his life was beginning to slip.

* * *

Angel was awoken in the middle of the night by a pair of evil blue-green eyes. He waited for the blade to slit his throat, knowing this had to be the end.

Death had never scared him. It only scared those who had something to lose.

“Get up,” Lucca hissed.

What the …?

He quickly stood, throwing on some clothes.

“Come, sit down,” Lucca commanded, pulling a Zippo out of his pocket.

While Angel took a seat across from Lucca at the small table with two chairs, Sal came in, flipping over objects and going through the room and his shit.

Fuck, she told.

Making sure to keep his cool, his brain began to rack with ways to get out of this.

“You’re not gonna ask why we’re here?”

Angel stared back, unafraid of the incriminating look Lucca gave him. “I was waiting for you to tell me.”

“What did you do today, Angel?”

“I did what I’ve done every day so far. I wake up, and then Tom and I pick up Adalyn. We go to the school, drop her back off, and then we come back here. I’ve been in my room since I got back.”

When his mattress was flung to the ground and with how thoroughly it was being looked through, he began to understand something had happened.

“What’s going on?”

Lucca’s eyes didn’t waiver from his as he put a cigarette to his lips and flicked open his lighter, not wanting to miss a single expression on Angel’s face. “Tom was found in the back alley with a bullet between his eyes.”

Fuck.

“And, as far as we know, you were the last one to see him alive.”

This was different than stealing a fucking ring. This was the murder of a trusted, respected, and well-loved family member. Hell, even he didn’t have a problem with Tom.

Angel was an outsider, someone who didn’t belong here, a member of a family whose hatred for the Carusos ran deep. This was some colossal deep shit that had spewed on him, one that could make the Lucianos cease to exist after what Lucifer had done. Their trust hadn’t been given yet, and the bridge between them hadn’t even been built yet.

Angel squeezed the bridge of his nose, beginning to recollect the events of this afternoon, feeling the weight of his family on his shoulders.

“He dropped me off in the parking garage. When I left him there, he was alive …” Looking into Lucca’s eyes, he let him in, hoping he could see the truth. “I swear to God, he was alive when I left him.”

“You sure about that?” Lucca blew smoke into the room.

“Yes. Why the fuck would I kill the man you assigned to watch me?” Angel shut his eyes off to him, having let him see enough. “You’re not stupid, Lucca. I know you’ve figured me out. You know I’m smarter than that. That if I were to kill a Caruso, I wouldn’t have picked Tom or dropped him on your doorstep. And we both know I wouldn’t have done it with a fucking bullet.”

“No, I guess not.” Lucca had known guns weren’t his style. “But Dominic could have, couldn’t he? Went straight through the back of his head and exited out the front. It was one hell of a shot with a pistol.” He lifted a finger to point right between Angel’s eyes. “One I’ve seen only one man pull off from a hundred yards away.”

“Dominic didn’t do it,” Angel assured.

“How do you know if you weren’t there?”

Angel smiled. “Because he would have shot him from the front.”

Tapping ashes to the ground of the hotel room, Lucca took a long, hard hit, making more of the cigarette turn to ash. “Who do you think did it, then?”

“I should be asking you that question. If anyone would know, it would be you. I’ve seen you”—he paused, remembering an old memory—“on the opposite side of the tracks, watching us. You’ve been watching us for years, before you were the underboss, before you became the boogieman.”

That comment had Sal pausing from going through Angel’s clothes to listen.

“You’re good, Lucca. I wouldn’t have seen you if you hadn’t let me.”

He curved one end of his lips; it then disappeared almost before it had appeared. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

There was silence in the room for only a moment before Sal’s voice broke it.

“He’s clean. I can’t find anything.”

“Be sure to check my phone. I don’t want you to miss anything,” Angel told them, wanting them to know he had nothing to hide.

Sal gave him a big smile. “I did before I even walked in the room.”

“Of course, you did, Salvatore.” Angel dragged out his name as he looked at his half-brother, the only son of Lucifer to come out sane. Ironic for the one who had been raised on the streets and taken under Dante’s wing. It was poetic, really. The son his father had never wanted had ended up becoming the son he always wanted by the hands of his enemy. Angel wondered if Sal knew who his father was and that he was staring right at his own brother’s face.

“I just go by Sal.”

“That’s not what the rest of the world knows you by,” he said before Sal left the room, leaving them alone.

Turning back to Lucca, he couldn’t help asking, knowing he of all people had to know the truth, “Does he know?”

Lucca flicked more ashes to the ground. “Why don’t you ask him?”

“He’s better off not knowing, isn’t he?” It wasn’t much of a question but a fact between them.

Putting the cigarette out on the table, Lucca warned, “Be careful, Angel. Any little thing you do will be judged from here on out. There will be Carusos who will blame you for this, even if your name gets cleared.”

When Lucca began to walk away, Angel almost couldn’t believe it.

“So, you believe me?”

Lucca’s voice was deadly. “Do you think you’d still be breathing if I thought for a second you did it?”

Not for a second.

When Lucca left, Angel looked around at the disheveled room until his eyes stopped on the nightstand where the ring used to be. If they had found it, it could have been grounds for war. That brat had somehow saved his fucking life.

Well, shit.