not entirely attractive, twisted the side of her mouth. “It was my little sister who made me see what that meant in our family. Elisa and I were happy not knowing, floating around in the bubble Papa made for us, but Carrie has been a little mini-mobster since she could walk, and I almost think she always knew, like it’s in her DNA or something.”
“How much do you know?”
“Probably not much, really. Who he is. Enough to understand how he’s talked about in the press. Not much at all about what he actually does. But some stuff it’s impossible not to know. Carrie almost got snatched at the ballet. She was standing right there with us and almost got kidnapped. My father got shot in a huge shootout at a restaurant and almost died. I understand now it wasn’t an accident that made my Uncle Donnie’s face look like it does. You wear a gun all the time, like you’re still my bodyguard. I’m not so willfully naïve that I don’t understand what that all means. I know my father is dangerous, and what he does is dangerous. He makes enemies who hurt people, so I assume he hurts people the same ways.”
“Not the same ways, no.”
“No? I saw what he did to Jackson Crenville.”
Alex had no business speaking of Don Pagano’s business to a civilian, not even his daughter who was involved in that business, but he felt compelled to make this case. “You think Crenville didn’t deserve it?”
Lia sighed and looked away, back to the photos above the sofa. “I don’t know. Yeah, I guess. But why does my father get to decide that?”
Because her father was the biggest, meanest dog in the yard. If he said that, it would likely open a whole new line into this fraught topic, so Alex simply said, “It’s the way that world works, Lee.”
Lia let loose a scoffing sigh. “That world is this world, Alex. There’s only the one—and there are bad people all through it, rapists and murderers and thieves, whether they do business with my father or not.”
Every time she challenged the idea that the world of the Pagano Brothers was separate from the one she lived in, Alex knew there was more to her fight than semantics. Don Pagano, and the men who followed him, thought of the work they did as taking place in the shadows, beneath the sunlit spaces of people living normal lives—the underworld. Wanting to keep their loved ones safe from and innocent of the dark things they did, they tried to keep it out of reach.
But Lia was right—their world was this one. A lot of the don’s most important work was done with people who were thought to be legitimate. Fine, upstanding folks who ran businesses and held elected offices. Alex was far too far down the ladder to know details, but he’d been on enough jobs and recognized enough people at a distance to know that the don’s reach went all the way up from this ‘separate’ world beneath to the top of the world above.
There were bad guys in the light as well as the dark. For every Ukrainian mobster with an AK, there was a frat boy with a vial of date-rape drug.
Lia was right; there was only one world. And it was grimy as fuck.
But there were good guys all through it, too. Don Pagano was, in Alex’s mind, a good guy—a man with honor, who took care of the people who put their faith in him. Alex admired him.
And there were bright beams of light like Lia Pagano. People like her made the world worth the trouble.
With the tips of his fingers, he lifted and turned her head so their eyes would meet. “What do you want me to say, babe?”
“Nothing. This all—it’s the first time having the dad I have has really got in the way of what I want for myself, and I feel a little lost. I’m just trying to figure things out.” She snuggled in close and rested her head on his chest. “But I got you in the bargain, and you’re worth whatever I lost.”
Alex wrapped his arms around her and pressed a kiss to her silky, wonderful-smelling hair, but he felt a little cramp of irritation. She’d just admitted to being a princess who’d gotten all the way to adulthood without facing a significant problem. That wasn’t true, of course, she’d had trials and losses and worries, and he even knew