The Hitman's Mark

11. Hope

"Valentina!" Leonardo exclaimed as soon as he laid eyes on his daughter's bloody forehead. He lurched to his feet behind the desk, the whites of his eyes expanding to resemble saucers. At the same moment, Adriano released a string of curses as he rushed toward his niece.

"What the hell happened!" Adriano demanded, taking her cheeks between his hands to better inspect her forehead wound.

Matteo took a step back toward the entrance, crossing his arms against his chest and silently watching as both Romano patriarchs surrounded their principessa. At the moment, both men seemed alarmed, but he guessed their shock would quickly melt to anger when Val confessed to her stupidity.

For the time being, she simply swatted Adriano's hands away from her bloody forehead. "Stop it, I'm fine. Seriously, you should see the other guy."

"The other guy?" Leonardo echoed, his dark eyes flashing momentarily toward Matteo.

"Don't worry. He's been..." Val tucked a strand of disheveled hair behind her ear, the dried blood cracking in her hairline. "Taken care of."

Matteo snorted. 'Taken care of' was a nice way of saying 'Matteo blasted a hole through his ugly fat head to save my life.'

At his unceremonious scoff, Leonardo and Adriano looked up at Matteo with narrowed eyes.

"Is that not true, Costa?" Leonardo questioned.

"That part is true." Matteo uncrossed his arms and held the boss' gaze, although he felt Val's own eyes burning into him. "But I don't know if we can trust anything else your daughter says."

Val stiffened beside her father, and Matteo guessed that, if looks could kill, he'd be a pile of bones right now.

"I've never lied to you, papà, and I don't plan on starting now," she muttered, and, despite his assumption, Matteo detected no deception in her words. When she continued, her voice dripped with poison. "Matteo is only angry that I managed to evade him in Lo Specchio. The great Romano hitman, outsmarted by a princess in heels."

The little brat. Matteo might've rolled his eyes if he wasn't so consumed by anger. She hadn't outsmarted anyone. She'd slipped away while his back was turned and disappeared into a crowd of one hundred women that looked exactly like her. Her next bodyguard needed to invest in a leash.

"Jesus, are either one of you planning on actually telling us what happened?" Adriano complained, dabbing at Val's forehead with a handkerchief he pulled out of his breast pocket.

Matteo took the sottocapo's cue to shut the hell up. This wasn't his story to tell, after all.

Val took a deep breath, leveled one last, hard glare in Matteo's direction, and moved to sit on the edge of the office's conference table. Her fingers never stopped fidgeting with the cellphones in her lap while she began to explain the situation to her father and uncle.

She recounted the same tale that she'd told in Matteo. Finding the discrepancies in Lo Specchio's accounts. Tracing the cash withdrawals to the club's Saturday night drink delivery. Wanting to visit the club that night to gather concrete evidence before bringing any accusations to her father.

The Hollowman, to his credit, remained silent while his daughter spoke. He wore an unreadable mask–one that Matteo had seen on his face at every business deal and meeting. The cool, calculating mask of a man who, perhaps for the first time in his life, wasn't looking at his daughter. Instead, he looked at Val like a business associate. And a business associate that he didn't trust yet.

"So you snuck away from Matteo to spy on the beverage delivery?" Adriano clarified.

"Yes," Val answered, holding her chin high. "I thought I'd find someone conducting a drug or weapons trade behind papà's back."