I let out a sigh of relief. “I thought she’d gotten you, too.”
“I hate having her anywhere near us, but I need her close by. We can play her at her own game. The more comfortable she is, the more likely she is to slip.” He turned and looked at me. “I need a favor, and I’m sorry because I know you don’t want anything to do with this, but I need you to look into her. Research, history, whatever you can find out. If she’s a Binachi, there has to be a record of her somewhere.”
I didn’t hesitate. “I’m on it.”
He smiled. “Really?”
“Of course. I said I was in, didn’t I?”
“You did.” His smile grew. “Not that you would say anything, anyway, but keep it quiet from my brothers?”
“I’ll go work in our suite.”
I stood up and started off for the door. I opened it, but before I could get it open enough to walk through, it was slammed back shut. I turned around to ask Alessandro what the deal was, but it proved fatal. I flipped around right into a kiss. Alessandro’s lips pressed against mine, and the power to resist abandoned my body. I went slack, letting him press me up against the office door, and my legs started to shake when he moved from my lips to my neck. There was a piece of my brain telling me to escape, but it was on an island by itself in a sea of molten lava kicked up by Alessandro’s hands snaking up my shirt.
“S-Sandro…” I meant for the huff of his name to be a warning to stop, but it came out desperate and needing. His lips came back to mine, and my mind was already turning to haze. I was giving in and had absolutely no power to stop it.
A knock at the door brought us to a screeching halt. “Hey. Can I come in?” It was Gabriel. “Stacy and I are going to the grocery store, and I need to know what you want.”
“Just get food, idiot,” Alessandro barked back.
“Fine, geez.” Footsteps were audible down the hallway after that. Alessandro was clearly annoyed, but I was happy for the distraction to allow me to center myself.
I balanced my computer in one hand and used the other to pull my shirt back to its place. “I’ll tell you what I find out.” I grabbed the handle and twisted it, and Alessandro backed off, letting me slip from between him and out into the hallway. I took a step forward and then stopped and looked back at him. “I don’t like it when you’re not there when I wake up.”
Alessandro’s eyes widened a bit but then settled back into disappointment. “It won’t happen again.”
I didn’t linger any longer than that. Any second more, and I would have rushed back into Alessandro’s office and begged him to do whatever he wanted.
10
Willow
My heart was still pounding as I retreated back into our suite. It didn’t take much for my husband to wind me up, and worse than that was the fact that he knew it. I probably could have stood for a cold shower to help calm me down, but instead, I settled myself on the couch and opened my computer. The smell of Alessandro coiled around me and threatened to distract me from the task at hand, but I liked the scent and refused to run from it. If I couldn’t be with the man himself, at least I could exist inside of his space, at least for a bit longer.
I passed by a few work-related tabs and opened a Google search. It wasn’t the best course of action. I knew all too well from trying to keep track of Alessandro in our years apart during college, that Google could be as dangerous as it was powerful. If I was to believe everything the internet tried to tell me in those years, Alessandro would be an underground double-agent from Italy, serving as a Varasso to try and elicit secrets for his real family back home. Reporters could run away with the crumbs of details and tailor it to something that suited their narratives better, and when it came to people in the Varassos’s specific line of work, that was often what had to happen, as the true stories were often hard to find. Still, I typed in, “Denise Binachi,” and hoped for the best.
0 Results.
That was certainly strange. It was rare that Google had nothing to offer on a subject, no matter how obscure. It typically only returned no results in the case of misspelled words or phrases that were too long. I did a blank search for, “Binachi Daughter,” and got a few results, but nothing seemed to point to Denise. There were a few articles predicting that one of the boys, Dante or Dario, had a daughter, but none of them had anything of substance. It was all just grasping at straws. I took, “Daughter,” out of the search, just looking for Binachi, which turned up many more results, but an hour of sifting through them gave me nothing about Denise or any daughter of Donovan’s. I Googled Donovan Binachi, and the internet told me in droves what I already believed to be true—Donovan Binachi only had two children, both sons, Dario and Dante.
Just because it wasn’t on the internet didn’t mean it wasn’t true, but it was curious, to say the least. I Googled, “Angelo Varasso,” just to see what I got, and a Wikipedia page dedicated to the man listed his four boys and late wife. I didn’t expect the internet to know everything that ever was, but I was fairly confident that if Donovan truly had a daughter, even if he kept her uninvolved from his family’s business, there would be some presence of it.
I scrolled through a few of the articles and saw quite a few about both Angelo and another crime boss from Chicago, Anthony Carducci. Carducci was something of a pulled-pin that kicked off everything between the Varassos and the Binachis back when they kidnapped my sisters-in-law and me. Apparently, Angelo had been working on an alliance with Anthony Carducci before he was killed by Donovan Binachi and his sons. In an attempt to guard themselves against the Binachis, Luca attempted to finalize that alliance and sent Gabriel to meet with Anthony. When Gabriel was late to the meeting—instead, choosing to chase after Stacy—Alessandro set up a meeting to try and clean up the mess and failed. We later learned his version of cleaning included threatening Chicago’s godfather, and Carducci sided with the Binachis and helped them take Molly, Kelly, Stacy, and me hostage.
The link between the Carduccis and the Binachis was confusing as far as the articles were concerned. Different things seemed to be linking them together, but next to nothing spoke of them as being partners in crime or in an alliance. It was more like they were always just in the same place at the same time. It didn’t make sense.
A thought hit me, and I scrolled back up to the top of the search results. I typed, “Denise Carducci,” into the search box, and my heart leaped up into my throat. Hundreds of results turned back at the term. I clicked the first of the articles and started to read through it. It was about a case that had involved the Carduccis a handful of years ago. Some international smuggling rings had been upturned, and Anthony Carducci and his daughter Callista were right at the center of it. Passing over the article, I didn’t see any mention of Denise, so I opened the find function and typed in, “Denise.” It dragged me to a single mention of the name near the end of the article, stating it was the name of someone else mixed up in the ring among a host of other names, but it didn’t list her last name nor say her involvement.
I backed out and clicked into another article and found more of the same. The entire article was about the Carducci family, namely Anthony and Callista, and made a single mention of Denise, this time as an informant. Article after article had the same curious results. Denise would be mentioned in a loose way, and the last name was never used. Nothing called her Denise Binachi, and nothing called her Denise Carducci. She was, purely and simply, Denise. It started to make my skin crawl. Just who was the woman who had snaked her way into our family? How did she know so much about the Binachis and us? If it was truly her aim to see Dario dead, then why? Looking into her had created more questions than it had answered.
“Mrs. Varasso?” A voice called from the other side of the suite door.
I stood up and opened the door, revealing one of the house staff. “Hey.”
“Mr. Alessandro sent me to retrieve you. Your family is in the backyard.”
“Right.” I didn’t realize I’d been at the re