His Mafia Prince
Chapter 264: I’ll Show You Rome

Chapter 264: I’ll Show You Rome

{TYLER}

"Yes," she says. "Gloria sent me the pendant ."

"And do you have it with you?" I ask eagerly.

She looks down, stabbing carefully through paper-thin slices of beef with her fork. "No."

"Is it in your room? At the hotel?"

"No. I left it back home."

Disappointed, I lean back in my chair. This whole trip to Italy has been a bust. Sasha was right, we never should have come. We haven’t even been able to see the sights while we’ve been here. All he wanted was to go into the Colosseum, and he won’t get to do it.

Sasha clears his throat. "We thought—Tyler and Gloria and I, we all thought the pendant might have something to do with this."

La Contessa finally stops spearing things onto her fork and looks up at Sasha. "Yes."

"Have you ever noticed anything strange about the pendant?"

"No."

"Do you wear it yourself?"

She shakes her head. "It’s a little unwieldy." She glances at me and I shrug.

She sighs, and I snort at that.

Sasha, on the other hand, takes advantage of the emotion of the moment. "You know, then, that I will do whatever I need to do to protect my husband here."

"Yes. The whole world knows that by now."

"So when you get back home, will you send me the pendant?"

She looks him over for a long moment and then says, "No." "But if you give me the pendant —"

"You are worried about your husband. I am worried about the rest of the world. Whatever secrets Angelo took to his grave, they are probably better off there."

This time, I grab her hand. "What did you know about his ties to the Irish?"

Slowly, La Contessa replies, "I know Angelo spent a long time trying to make up for things he regretted doing. And I know part of family was in bed with the Irish."

"That pendant may be the key to cutting those ties for once and for all," Sasha says evenly. "If not for Tyler’s sake, surely for Gloria you would—"

La Contessa stands, slamming her hands down on the table angrily.

Well, this lunch has completely gone to hell.

She marches over to where she put her backpack down when she came in, yanking off the hoodie and letting her habit skirts down over her leggings.

I plead, going over to her, "we didn’t mean to upset you. We just— we really thought you might be able to help."

Sasha comes over as well, although after he speaks I wish he’d just kept his mouth shut. "It’s not just about Tyler and Gloria, or the Adonises, or even about the Irish. If you hang on to that pendant , you’re only putting more people in danger, because they will not stop until they have it."

"If the Irish want it so badly, it must hold a lot of power," La Contessa says, looking at him in the mirror. "Why should it be any better that I give that power to you?" She turns away from the mirror and picks up her backpack, clearly ready to go.

"We want—we hope—to stabilize the environment back home and here," Sasha says. "Our aim is to do good instead of evil."

"A corrupt tree produces evil fruit." She walks to the door.

Sasha urges her, following her to the door, "and overcome evil with good."

I don’t quite understand La Contessa’s expression until I see her mouth quirking. She unzips the front pocket of her backpack and fishes for something, holding it out to me. I reach out automatically to receive it.

"Please don’t contact me again," she says, and leaves before I can even say goodbye.

But I’m too busy staring at what lies in my hand: the pendant .

She was certainly stubborn," Sasha sighs, while I’m still staring at the pendant in my hands. "But at least she responded to logic."

"Do you see this?" I demand, shaking the pendant at him. "She did have it with her. She lied!"

"Yes. Not very well. And now we have it. Can we—"

"Hang on a minute," I say, putting my hands on my hips. His last words have just hit me. "First up, I am Tyler, and don’t you forget it. And second, I respond to logic as well. I’m totally logical."

"Oh, totally," he says. "Come on, baby bird, let’s see what this pendant holds."

There’s part of me that wants to slow down, to talk about exactly what happened back there in St. Peter’s Square—because I know Sasha’s still pissed I didn’t wait right where he told me.

Don’t contact me again sounds pretty final, though.

I follow Sasha back into the living room and we sit on the sofa together, side by side, close to each other. His thigh presses up against mine, warming me, and for once being this close to him doesn’t just make me want to jump. I feel comforted, understood.

Although I still would totally jump him if he gave me any cues.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, Sasha is fixated on the pendant right now. "May I?" he asks, putting his hand over mine, where the pendant lies in my palm.

"Sure," I say. "You’re more likely to recognize anything weird about it than I am." It must be almost two decades since I last held a pendant . Frankly, I’m surprised it didn’t fall into ash as soon as I touched it.

Sasha lifts it gingerly from my hands, although I’m not sure why he’s being so careful. It’s not like it’ll break. This thing is heavy duty.

"It’s not wood or a precious metal," he says, almost to himself. He’s turning the pendant over in his fingers, and then lets the beads of the pendant itself run through them. "Beads seem to be glass. Agreed?"

"Yeah," I say, flicking one with a fingernail. "Ow."

"But it’s not particularly special." Sasha adds.

"Don’t worry about pissing me off, honey. Just tell me what’s so amazing about this particular pendant ."

He checks several of the round beads and then each flat one, frowning. Then he looks closely at the pendant again, the back of it, the little figure on the front.

"I thought there might be some inscription," Sasha sighs at last. "Here—you have a look. Maybe you’ll see something I missed."

But I take the pendant , look it over closely, even bite down on the beads, then the end of the cross, like it might tell me anything.

It has no effect but to make me spit a little because it’s not very tasty. "Bleh," I say, and then run a finger over my tongue to get the taste off. "What’s the pendant made out of?"

Sasha’s still staring at the cross, turning it over in his hands. I poke him. "Whatcha thinking?"

"I’m thinking there might be something inside it. Baked into it."

"Um...wouldn’t whatever it was get burned up in there during the firing?"

"Not necessarily. It would depend on what it was. Anything paper or wood, yes. Probably the same for copper or gold or anything with a lower melting point. But if it was steel...or iron...maybe even bone..."

I stare at him. "Since when did you become an expert on the melting point of—of things?"

"I know a lot of things" he says wryly.

"Seriously, Sasha, this all sounds a little hardcore for Angelo. Baking spy stuff into a cross? He wasn’t a hobbyist potter or anything, to my knowledge, so he would’ve had to get it made specially."

"Well, there’s one way to check if there’s anything in it."

It takes me a second to figure it out. "We are not smashing it open, husband, especially if we end up with dust and there’s nothing inside."

Sasha thinks it over for a while, and then puts a hand on my knee. "There might be another way."

I look down again at the pendant weighing up my options. "Maybe... maybe we should just smash it. We came all this way; we might as well see if it was a waste of time."

Sasha takes the pendant back from me and puts it on the coffee table. "No," he says softly. "You were right the first time. If we can preserve it, we should. And besides, we might be missing something. Let me follow up on my idea first. If we run out of options, we can crack it back home." He cups my face. "I thought we did well today. We were a team."

Brightening, I smile at him. "Yeah. We were."

"Except that part where you left the obelisk."

Damn it, I should have seen that coming. "Fair cop, guv," I try, but even my terrible cockney accent isn’t going to get him laughing.

"I mean it, angel. If I can’t trust you to have my back—"

"It wasn’t like that," I protest, but I’m taken by the way he put things. "Wait...have your back?"

"Well, yeah." He rests his forehead against mine. "I was counting on you to watch out for me, just as much as I was watching out for you. I need to know I can depend on you when I’m in a tight spot."

Like, I’m not sure if I really, a hundred percent believe him? But it does make me melt, so I’ll allow it. "I’m sorry. Next time, I promise—I’ll sit and stay like a good puppy."

"I hope so. Maybe we should practice a little." He boops my nose with a fingertip and a smile lifts his lips.

My eyebrows shoot up. "Well, honey, you know I can never resist a little experimentation. And believe me, there’s nothing I’d love more than playing your bitch right now. But, uh, my ass is still recovering from that alley."

"Shit." Sasha pulls back from me, a hand squeezing his eyes. "I knew I was too rough. We shouldn’t have—"

"Oh, yeah," I say, swinging around on top of him, my legs splayed over his as I sit back on my heels, resting on his thighs. "Yeah, we definitely should have." I slide my hands around the back of his neck, and he automatically puts his arms around my waist to keep me balanced.

I smirk down at him, but he’s still worried, reaching up one hand to cup my face. "I hurt you."

"You sure did," I tell him dreamily. "In all the best ways. Believe me, Sasha

—that was one hell of an enjoyable night. Memorable. And in all honesty, I’d be down for your dick in me right now. It’s just," I sigh, "that we got places to be."

He quirks an eyebrow. "Places to be?"

"Mm-hmm."

"What places?"

I grin and boop his nose right back. "I’m gonna show you Rome, baby."