THE MAFIA’s PET

I KNEW NOTHING ABOUT HER

My heart skipped a beat.

“What… what about Alessia?”

Antonio opened the brown envelope and slid it across the desk.

“There’s no easy way to say this, Lucia, but your friend was a spy.”

I stared at him.

“What?”

“She was working undercover for a rival gang.”

I let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “I don’t believe you.”

“Open the envelope. It’s all there.”

My fingers trembled as I pulled the contents out.

Photographs.

Documents.

Names I had never heard before.

And then I saw her.

Alessia.

Except the woman in those photographs looked nothing like the girl I knew.

Her hair was shorter in one picture, her face harder. In another, she stood beside two men dressed in black, her arms folded across her chest. She wasn’t smiling. She wasn’t even trying to look friendly.

She looked confident. Dangerous.

Like someone who knew exactly what she was capable of.

I turned the photograph over, hoping there would be some explanation on the other side.

There was a name.

LA MORTE NERA.

The Black Death.

Beneath it was the name of the Moretti family, followed by pages of information about their operations, known associates, and their long-standing conflict with the Dante family.

My mouth went dry.

I looked at the photograph again.

That was Alessia’s face.

The same face I’d held in my arms while she bled.

“No,” I whispered.

Antonio said nothing.

I flipped through the documents faster, desperate to find something that would prove this was a lie. A mistake. Anything.

Instead, I found dates.

Reports.

References to meetings I knew nothing about.

And a photograph of Alessia standing outside a building I recognized.

Our old neighbourhood.

My stomach twisted.

“How do you know all this?”

“Because I had someone investigate you.”

I lifted my head sharply.

“When I ordered a background check on you, your friend looked familiar. I had my people look into her, too.”

He leaned back in his chair, watching me struggle to make sense of the papers.

“She’d been working for the Moretti family under the name La Morte Nera. She found out about Crimson Club and eventually discovered I was running some of my operations through it.”

I shook my head.

“But I’ve known her all my life.”

“Apparently, she’s been involved with the gang since she was sixteen.”

“Sixteen?”

The word came out as a whisper.

I looked at him, waiting for him to laugh. To admit he’d made a mistake. To tell me there was another woman with the same face.

He didn’t.

“How is that even possible?” I demanded. “She was a child!”

“People get recruited for all sorts of reasons. Money. Family connections. Protection.” He paused. “Sometimes, they’re offered something they can’t refuse.”

“And you expect me to believe she spent all those years pretending to be my friend?”

“I’m telling you what the evidence says.”

“Evidence you got from your own people!” I threw the papers onto his desk. “How convenient.”

His expression hardened.

“You asked me what happened. I’m giving you an answer.”

“No. You’re giving me another reason to hate you.”

“That’s your choice.”

I scoffed, but I couldn’t think of anything to say.

Antonio picked up one of the photographs.

“The Morettis have been looking for ways to weaken my family for a long time. Alessia was useful to them. Being close to you helped her maintain her cover and live like an ordinary girl. She got her chance when you started working at the club.”

“What?!”

“Think about it, Lucia. You worked at Crimson Club. You saw things you weren’t supposed to see. You lived with someone who was gathering information about me.”

I remembered all the nights Alessia would roam around the club and, when I asked her about it, she’d brush me off.

The times she got home late after work and begged me to quit, using Cleyton as the problem.

The way she’d always asked what happened at the club, even when I was too exhausted to talk.

Had she been worried about me?

Or had she been collecting information?

I pressed my fingers against my forehead.

“No. She wouldn’t do that to me.”

“Perhaps she cared about you. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t using you.”

I rolled my eyes at him.

But putting the pieces together was starting to make a bit more sense.

“You really didn’t notice anything suspicious about her?” Antonio asked.

I stared at him.

“Just—stop talking for a minute.”

“Lucia—”

“I said stop!”

I shoved the papers away and stormed out of his office before he could say another word.

I dragged myself back to the room.

All I could see was Alessia’s face.

I reached the bedroom, slammed the door shut, and locked it.

Then my knees gave way.

I slid down the door, pressing both hands over my face as a sob tore through me.

Had she really hidden so much from me?

Had she watched me struggle to pay for my mother’s treatment, knowing she belonged to a family powerful enough to buy half the city?

And that night…

The night she died.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

She had looked straight at me and said, “Forgive me.”

Was she trying to apologize?

I got up and went to the bed, grabbed a pillow, and buried my face in it, but the tears kept coming. My chest hurt so badly I could barely breathe.

I didn’t know how long I lay there before a knock sounded at the door.

“Go away!”

The handle turned.

I jumped to my feet and shoved my shoulder against the door.

“I said go away!”

“Lucia, open the door.”

Antonio.

“Get out of my life!”

“That’s going to be difficult, considering you’re living in my house.”

I let out a broken laugh.

“You must feel good right now,” I whispered against the door.

I heard him sigh, followed by his retreating footsteps.

Then my phone beeped.

I walked over and saw a message notification from an unknown number.

I can tell you more about your friend. Meet me at this address by 11 p.m.

“Who is this?” I texted back.

“That’s not important right now.”

This could be my chance to learn the truth. For all I knew, Antonio could have fabricated those documents just to mess with my head.

Gosh! What should I do?

I pushed my hair back, staring at the message again.

What if this was another trap?

Then again, what if it was the only chance I had left to discover who Alessia really was?

I took a deep breath and typed my reply.

I’ll be there.