Cold Burn of Magic(68)

“Anyway, we should go,” Devon continued. “We don’t want to keep the others waiting.”

We headed outside. Claudia, Reginald, and Angelo were already in one car. Felix said that he was going to ride with his dad and headed in that direction. That left me, Devon, and Grant to follow in the second SUV. We rode in silence down the mountain and over to the Midway. Grant parked in the lot reserved for the Families, and the three of us got out and walked over to the restaurant where the dinner was being held. I stopped on the sidewalk and stared up at the neon sign burning a bloody red. Then I started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Grant asked.

I pointed up at the sign. “The Red Cannoli? Really?”

“What about it?” Devon asked.

“Don’t you find that just a little ironic?”

Devon and Grant both shrugged. Apparently, I was the only one around here who watched mob movies where bad things happened in Italian restaurants. With its oh-so-appropriate name, the Red Cannoli could have come right out of a gangster flick.

The inside of the restaurant was exactly what I expected. The walls were made of a dark cherry wood and flanked by red leather booths, while thick white cloths covered all the tables. A bar lined the back wall, the bottles of liquor shining like polished gems underneath the muted white lights. An enormous painting of an old Spanish hacienda that was a mix of reds, oranges, yellows, and greens took up most of the wall behind the bar. The hacienda could also be seen stamped into the bronze cuffs the bartender and the wait staff were wearing, since it was the crest of the Salazar Family.

“This is one of the Salazars’ joints, right?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Devon answered. “The Families rotate who hosts the dinner as well as the location. It was the Salazars’ turn this time. So here we are.”

We moved deeper into the restaurant. Devon, Grant, and I joined Claudia, Angelo, Felix, and Reginald, who were standing in front of the booths on the right side of the restaurant. The smells of garlic, seared onions, and crushed red pepper tickled my nose, and my stomach rumbled in anticipation.

Felix eyed me. “You cannot possibly be hungry again. We just had dinner, like, two hours ago. And you ate twice as much as I did.”

I grinned. “I could always eat. Besides, it smells fantastic.”

Everyone from the other Families kept more or less to themselves, all of them standing in tightly clustered groups like we were. Everyone had on a black suit, and the only real differences between folks were the color of their shirts and the cuffs on their right wrists. I spotted Poppy standing close to her father. She waved at me, and I waved back.

A large circular table stood in the center of the room, with several other, smaller circular tables spiraling out from it. The table in the middle was for the heads of the Families, some of whom had already taken their seats. Hiroshi Ito, Roberto Salazar, Nikolai Volkov, and a few others from the less powerful Families. Only two empty seats remained at the table. One of those had to be for Claudia, who was moving around the restaurant, shaking hands with members of all the other Families. The other had to be for Victor Draconi, but he wasn’t here yet— The restaurant doors banged open, and several people strode inside. A hush fell over the room, and everyone turned to face the new arrivals.

The Draconi Family.

They wore black suits with red shirts and gold cuffs, all of which were stamped with that snarling dragon crest. Every single one of them looked either tall, angry, and vaguely threatening, or short, mean, and openly hostile. The guards came in first, followed by Blake, who swaggered in as if he owned the joint. Deah followed her brother, looking cold, beautiful, and only slightly less menacing than the rest of her Family.

Beside me, Felix sucked in a breath. Deah scanned the room, and her eyes met his for a second before skittering away.

Blake and Deah moved about halfway into the room, then stopped, turned, and faced each other. The rest of the guards formed two lines, one behind Blake, and the other behind Deah.

Blake, Deah, and the guards each snapped to attention and took three steps back, and a man strode into the restaurant, walking through the center of the aisle they’d created for him.

He was handsome, with a lean, trim figure, thick, wavy blond hair, and eyes that were more gold than brown. He wasn’t as large and beefy as the other men, but it was easy to tell that he was the most powerful. He just had that sort of commanding presence about him, and practically everyone in the restaurant bowed their heads to him. I could feel the chill of magic rolling off him from all the way across the room. I wondered what his Talent was—and if he had more than one, given the cold crush of power he wore like a crown perched on top of a king’s head.

Victor Draconi, the big cannoli himself.

The man who’d murdered my mom.





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE


Since my mom’s death, I had seen Victor Draconi several times over the years, moving through the crowds in the Midway, cruising around town in some dark, expensive car, even once through the window of a fancy steakhouse where he was eating. And I’d known that he was going to be here tonight.

But knowing that and seeing him were two different things. He stopped in between Blake and Deah, and that solid wall of white swept through my mind, blotting out everything else, except the horrible memories of that day . . .

“What are you doing?” I asked my mom, watching her frantically throw my clothes into a suitcase.