His Tesoro: An Arranged Marriage Age Gap Mafia Romance (Empire of Royals Book 1)
His Tesoro: Chapter 56

Domenico entered the office, his jaw clenched and a laptop in his hands.

“Report,” I said.

“Yes, Boss.” Then he hesitated.

I had to hold back a growl. I should be with Sofiya right now. I hadn’t wanted to leave bed this morning, especially with how tired she’d been lately. I wanted to spend all day wrapped up in each other, fucking and touching and listening to her sweet voice as she trailed her fingers along my bare chest. If I hadn’t wanted to kill the Albanians before this, I would have simply because they were taking me away from my wife.

Domenico cleared his throat, opening the laptop. “I found the traitor.”

I cocked an eyebrow, my expression giving nothing away. But inside, my heart was pounding with the need to destroy. Bloodlust rushed through me. Finally, we had them.

“Who is it, then?” Romeo asked.

Domenico set the laptop down on the desk so it was facing me. “I didn’t want to believe it,” he said. “But it’s Mrs. Rossi.”

It took me a second to process his words, but once I did, rage engulfed my chest.

No.

He was wrong. Fucking wrong.

Domenico shifted as he glanced down to where he knew my gun was hidden under my jacket. He should be nervous that I was going to shoot him after he accused my wife of being a traitor.

“You gave me permission to look into everyone in the Family and monitor communications,” he continued hurriedly. “I installed spy software on your wife’s phone when she got her new one. I did it as a precaution, of course not expecting to replace anything, but then I noticed a pattern of strange calls and messages.”

He shifted so he could scroll on the screen, revealing a file with text message screenshots. My eyes blurred as I took them in. Sofiya had been texting an unknown number with an upstate area code, sending them insider information about our movements. Information she easily could have gotten sitting with me at this very desk. While my cock was inside her, she’d been working to betray me.

Romeo’s brow furrowed as he met my gaze, and I knew we were both remembering my parents and the betrayal no one had seen coming.

Domenico scrolled through a seemingly endless series of calls and messages. Most of the recent texts were sent mid-morning—the times she had told me she was too tired to get out of bed. When she was alone in the apartment.

Romeo eyed me carefully, as if waiting for an explosion. But the anger inside me burned dark and cold.

“Why would she do this?” he asked.

“There are messages between Mrs. Rossi and her sister, Mila, that suggest that Mila is in love with…” Domenico trailed off.

“Spit it out,” I growled.

“Arben,” Domenico said.

The name sent a chill through me.

“Rustik would never allow Mila to marry Arben and destroy our alliance,” Romeo said.

“Unless Arben claimed the city.” Domenico’s words hung in the air.

If the Albanians gained control of New York, Rustik would be much better off breaking our alliance and siding with the Albanians.

Sofiya loved her sister. Said she would do anything for her. Did that include betraying her new family, betraying me?

“Are Arben and Rustik working together?” I asked.

“It doesn’t look like it,” Domenico said. “This is all Mila and Sofiya’s plan. Arben promised Sofiya a house anywhere in the world she wants,” he continued as he paged over to a text exchange between Mila and my wife.

I didn’t think anything could have the power to destroy my world as much as hearing the shots that killed my parents, but the pain piercing my chest right now proved me wrong. I’d spent years hardening my heart, but somehow Sofiya had wormed her way in. And now my world was falling apart all over again.

“Wait outside, Domenico,” Romeo gritted out, gesturing at the door. My enforcer hesitated for a moment before giving me a nod and leaving the room. When the door closed behind him, I turned to my second in command.

“It might not be what it looks like, fratello.”

I ran my hand down my face, letting my mask slip a bit in his presence. “She said she loved me.” The words felt like ash in my mouth.

“She does,” Romeo said.

“How do you explain this?” I shouted, gesturing at the laptop. The messages went back to the first few days after we were married. The day I’d abandoned her in the apartment. But things had gotten better since then. I had gotten better. And still, she chose her sister over me.

Romeo’s suffocating silence stretched across the room like a tangible thing, stealing the breath from my lungs.

I was a man of action. Always in control, always with a plan. And yet my head was empty. My entire world was crumbling, and I couldn’t see the next step in front of me. Against my better judgement, I had opened myself up to Sofiya, bared my soul to her. And this was how she repaid me?

Romeo opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by a sharp knock at the door.

“Boss,” Domenico called out. “I have Ajello on the phone. It’s an emergency.”

I raised my chin at Romeo, and he opened the door.

My enforcer entered, eyes wide. “There’s an ambush at the northern warehouse. Our men have barricaded themselves inside, but they might not last long. Ajello says Arben is there.”

“Fuck!” I roared. This was the moment I’d been waiting for—the opportunity to take Arben down. Why did it have to happen now, when I needed to deal with Sofiya?

Unless that’s why it was happening now. Was Arben in the city because he was making some sort of move with Sofiya?

“Fuck, Boss, they won’t last much longer without backup,” Domenico said. Even across the room, I could hear shouts through the phone’s speaker.

I pulled my jacket on. I had to move now.

“Get Sofiya and put her in a basement room,” I told Domenico. Each word was agony, but I couldn’t see another path ahead.

“What?” Romeo hissed, eyes wide.

I met his shocked expression with my hard one. He might be my brother in all but blood, but I was the Don and my orders could not be publicly questioned. Romeo recognized his mistake and gave me a nod. His jaw remained clenched.

“You don’t want me to come with you?” Domenico asked.

“No, stay with Sofiya.” Possessive rage rose in me at the idea of another man being close to my wife. My body certainly hadn’t caught up to the fact that she was a traitor. How much of our time together had been a lie? But I had no choice. My priority had to be going after Arben. While Domenico was an asset in a fight, I needed someone I trusted to stay here. He was the one who had helped me identify traitors over a decade ago when I was fighting my uncle to win back what was mine.

“What do you want me to do with her once she’s in the basement?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I gritted out. “Don’t harm her, just put her in the room. Make sure she doesn’t have her phone or any other way to communicate. I will get her when we return.” I turned to Romeo, unable to ignore the urge to defend my actions. “If she is the traitor, hopefully her time in the room will scare her enough to confess.”

Romeo didn’t voice his question, but it hung in the air between us as clear as day—what if she wasn’t?

I couldn’t take that risk. My men were in danger, my entire empire threatened. I couldn’t leave her unsupervised when I was gone. It was possible that she and Arben already had some sort of plan in place, and if she suspected she was caught, she might try to run.

Never.

Never, tesoro.

You will never run from me.

“Yes, Boss,” Domenico said. “I’ll see to it.”

Romeo and I grabbed additional weapons in the armory before heading to the garage with ten of my best men.

We would go to the warehouse, destroy the Albanians, capture Arben, and then I would return and get the truth from my wife.