Chapter 40 MICELI

Róise is calmer than when I first arrived.

That's going to change when I give her my news. There won't be any sex in the boathouse today. I'll be lucky if I leave without her trying to tase me.

She's so pissed about what happened at college today. When she finds out this is her last year, it won't be the dean in her crosshairs.

It will be me.

"I've been looking into your father's death." This is not what I came here to tell her, but maybe knowing I'm keeping my word about identifying her dad's killer will help sooth the blow to come.

"What about my mom's murderer? You vowed to kill him." She frowns at me accusingly.

Okay, we'll deal with that first. "The Bonanno soldier whose stray bullet robbed your mom of her life died of a heart attack while visiting her grave in remorse on the one-year anniversary of her death. He was twenty-nine."

"My dad?"

I nod. "In the week that followed your mother's shooting, while your grandfather was trying to negotiate peace, your father waged a one-man war, killing over two dozen Bonanno soldiers."

"Against my grandfather's orders?"

"The order to stop didn't come until after the Bonanno don sued for peace, offering concessions your grandfather wanted." The old man had been ruthless, willing to capitalize on his son's grief-stricken rage.

"But mom's killer wasn't dead yet. "

"No. Your dad is a legend among the Bonanno Family. They still tell the story of how he kidnapped and tortured the soldier for three days."

"But he let him go?"

"With a promise of more pain to come and eventually a death the soldier would not see coming. The last year of his life, that soldier lived in constant fear of your father taking him again." Derry Shaughnessy's torture techniques came out of a playbook as effective as ours.

"Good." The satisfaction in the single word shows how much of her father's blood runs through my fiancée's veins. "And the Bonanno don didn't investigate a twenty-nine-year-old man having a heart attack on the grave of a woman he killed?"

"He wasn't willing to risk the truce he'd reached with the Shaughnessy Mob." The don should have offered his soldier over as restitution, but the mob boss didn't ask for that. "No one doubted that Derry Shaughnessy was responsible."

"Is that why they killed him?"

"The Bonanno don swore a blood oath to your grandfather that he had not ordered the hit."

"He could have been lying. A blood oath is only as trustworthy as the man offering it."

"He offered his own grandson in restitution if any proof could be found linking the Bonanno to Derry's death."

"What a horrible thing to do!" For a moment, she's the innocent twenty-year-old I met that night in Portland. "Even if he wasn't guilty, someone could have manufactured evidence to get rid of one of his heirs."

Okay, not so innocent. "It convinced your grandfather."

"He never said. He let us believe it was another flare up with the Bonanno Family."

"I don't know why he did that."

"He was devastated by my dad's death, nearly comatose with grief at losing his oldest son. But he was still the boss." She sighs with a world weariness that does not belong on my feisty wife-to-be. "He would rather we believed it was the wrong syndicate than admit he had no idea who had killed his son. I always assumed he didn't go to war with the Bonannos because of his own failing health."

"It was no secret that your grandfather had serious health issues at the end. Whoever killed your dad wasn't targeting your grandfather," I voice the only theory that makes sense. "They shot who they meant to."

"Because they didn't want my dad to become the next boss?" she asks, quickly drawing the same conclusion I did.

"Yes. "

"But why? My dad's death wasn't going to weaken the mob. My uncle was ready to step into his shoes." A look of horror comes over her features. "You don't think it was Uncle Brogan?"

"No." But if it was, I will kill him slowly for all the grief his ambition caused my woman.

She shakes her head. "No. Even Uncle Brogan has to draw the line somewhere."

It's not a ringing endorsement of her uncle's familial loyalty, but I agree with her. I don't believe the older man's honor would allow him to order a hit on his brother.

"What if it was bad aim again?" She looks sick. "What if my grandfather took out the hit on himself so he would die a legend, not a sick old man?"

Unfortunately, from what I know of the deceased mob boss, it's not a farfetched theory.

"I'm not ruling anyone out. Including the Bonannos until I find the sniper who shot your father and make him tell me who ordered the hit."

Once I find her father's killer and dispatch him to hell, Róise will see that I can be trusted. That I'm not the enemy.

"It could be a her."

"Yes." Some of the deadliest snipers are women, but they are a tiny percentage of a small population.

"Dad was always there when I needed him." She hugs herself. "Until they took him away from me."

"Sev needs the alliance between us and your mob to go public."

Róise sighs. "Time to make the engagement official."

If only it was that easy. "Yes, and when we do, we will be announcing our upcoming wedding."

"Okay." She stares out over the water, but she's not looking for potential threats.

Brogan must have security measures against attacks from the waterfront that Róise doesn't know about. He would not allow his daughters and niece into the backyard without a full security team otherwise.

Even if he would, he would not risk his grandson and heir.

Nevertheless, until I know what they are and if improvements need to be made, Allessio is going to have to increase his team. There will be no time my fiancée is not guarded by my people, whether she is at home, or not.

"We will be getting married in September."

"That will make mamo happy. More than a year is plenty of time to plan a wedding. Even a traditional Irish one." The words are agreeable, but Róise's face is wearing the same troubled expression as when I arrived.

Her assessment shows a naivete toward wedding planning I have no intention of dispelling. She's still struggling with our upcoming marriage.

But mamma took two years to plan Giulia's wedding and lamented only having three months for Severu's more than once.

Even so, Maeve doesn't have the year her granddaughter believes she does. "Four months, but my mother will help with the planning."

"No. That's not right! The contract says June 30 th of next year. I thought you were generously giving me an extra couple of months not trying to take away the little time of freedom I have left."

"It says no later than June 30 th , but there is no language stating the wedding can't happen earlier."

Her glower would make a godfather proud. "Except your bride refusing to show up."

"This is necessary, Róise. We would not be pushing the date forward if it were not."

"But the engagement is enough." Her gaze fills with appeal, like she can't imagine anything worse than moving our wedding forward. "Once it's announced, everyone will know our alliance is familial."

"Engagements are broken all the time," I dismiss.

"And marriages end in divorce."

"Not as often in our world and no one outside the five of us know about that clause in our contract."

Not that she'll be exercising it. Dons do not divorce.

Not that I would ever have let my Aphrodite go as an underboss either.

But as a don? It is unthinkable.

She's lying to herself if she doesn't acknowledge that.