All my thoughts led to the same place: I needed to figure out the extent of Roman’s involvement, and he was involved. Everything in my gut told me so. Every instinct told me he and Victor were partners in this secret endeavor, at least to some degree.

But I needed to remember he was my mother’s brother. He’d loved her. Franco trusted him. Sergio had too. Salvatore didn’t trust anyone, and it sounded like the last seven years had only put distance between him and the Benedetti family. Me? Roman and I had a strange relationship. He’d known all along who I was—and who I was not. He’d been decent to me, to some extent. Roman was always good to Roman first, though. But hell, same could be said of any of us. Except maybe Salvatore.

Roman had helped to organize the buying of Salvatore’s house, helped me sell off the cars and much of the furniture. He’d made sure the house was maintained, even though no one lived there. Why? Why would he help me after that night, when I was out, finished? When I was no longer a threat? One more Benedetti son out of the picture.

Why not, though? Why raise my suspicions by denying me help? And couldn’t he then keep better track of me? Keep me in my place, which was far from his.

I thought back to those years and wondered if he’d been a friend to any of us, really. Or did he manage each of us, his eyes on the prize all along—becoming head of the Benedetti crime family.

No, that seemed too far-fetched. Too impossible.

But maybe it wasn’t. To be so close to the kind of power Franco Benedetti wielded and sit impotent at his side for so many years? I knew how that felt. I knew what it made of me.

Power corrupted. And Roman was corrupt. I’d bet my fucking life on it.

I slowed as I drove the final mile toward the mansion. Night had fallen, and a crescent moon illuminated a thousand stars in the clear night. Gia stirred beside me.

“Are we there?”

“Yes.”

She rubbed her eyes and leaned forward to get a better look as we got close enough for the lights of the SUV to shine on the gates protecting the property.

I slowed the vehicle, and she took it all in.

The last few miles I’d been tense. Now, that tension had reached a new level. I hadn’t been back since that night. I hadn’t been in the dining room since the shooting, and I was about to face it all now.