Page 67 of Enduring Caine

The damn crates.

One of them must have been what Vincenzo was looking for. I didn’t want him to be a TPC officer. I wanted it to be a lie. Didn’t want him to have this thing in common with Samantha that meant so much to her. Didn’t want him tied to her anymore.

I took the stairs slowly, keeping my eyes down. It had to look like I was still in pain while I passed by the security cameras. Where were all of them?

And what was in those crates? Surely whatever it was would be proof that my uncle was lying about everything. Some stolen or looted item he would smuggle out of the country.

I reached the fourth floor landing and snuck quickly into my room for the sling, throwing it on as I left. I continued—third floor, second floor.

Niente. I was not going so fast I would have missed it if it were there.

I swallowed hard, battling against the tension in my jaw. It was the only way to stop my teeth from chattering.Per favore, don’t let someone else find it.

Halfway through the eastern hallway on the main floor, excited voices reached my ear.

None of them were Samantha, who was in the wine cellar with Henri, two floors below the entrance to the tower. He didn’t seem as much of a threat as the others did. Only a chef, even though he moved like he fit in with the guards. After a year with Giovanni, that hardly surprised me.

When I’d moved in with Cristian in Roma, I was a joking and teasing young man, just shy of my twenty-second birthday. Within a couple of years, I was so much more. I had a different type of confidence about myself.

Samantha and I first met only two weeks before I moved. I tripped over my tongue, laughed nervously at the presentation she gave in class, and then she shot me down when I asked her out. I’d had a crush on her for months and my friends had harassed me about it incessantly.

But after everything I learned from Cristian, I never had a problem picking up a woman again.

Until, yet again, Samantha, who turned me down repeatedly until finally my sister lied to both of us and set us up on our first date.

Samantha was the only conquest in my life that mattered.

I followed the sound of voices toward the gallery.

Cristian’s raised voice was the first one I could make out. “Leonardo will figure it out.”

Figure what out?

An unfamiliar voice spoke next. “They’re long gone.”

One of the gallery doors was propped open, and when I entered, the sight halted my heart. Giovanni, Cristian, and two guards stood around the small round table at the center of the room. As always, a vase with a beautiful bouquet sat at its middle, nothing else to detract from the inlaid wood pattern on its top. But now?

Next to the vase sat a tiny black disc.

Elliot’s camera.

“What’s going on?” I asked slowly, trying not to betray the terror pulsing through my veins.

The men all turned to look at me.

Giovanni’s nostrils flared and he bared his teeth. He picked up the tiny camera and shook it in his fist. “Betrayal!”

I stepped closer, approaching my uncle, despite every instinct telling me to turn around and escape. There would be no outrunning this. Head-on it was. I tilted my head and pursed my lips. “I don’t understand. What is it?”

“I’m sure it was them,” Leo said from behind me.

Che cazzo, my breath caught in my throat. Was he accusing Samantha and me? I spun to face him and the other men did the same.

As Leo swiped a hand over his cheek, he said, “The crates arrive two days early, those fools have an accident, then this shows up. And they’re nowhere to be found.”

“Would someone tell me what’s going on?” The throbbing in my head and my arm were almost too much to bear. My knees grew weak, and I placed a hand on the table.

I should have gone to Mario’s.