Free Vendetta: A DeLuca Family Novel (The DeLuca Family Book 2) by K.A. Ware Page A

when he was finished wiping the ink from his fingers.
    “Not long. Have a little patience big guy,” Mallory said without looking up from her magnifying glass.
    Enzo went back to his brooding while she worked. I, on the other hand, was racking my brain for who it could possibly be. The letter and address on the envelope had been typed, so there weren’t any clues to be found there. The fact that we had nothing to go on was driving me insane.
    “It’s clean,” Mallory announced, much to everyone’s disappointment. “Don’t shoot the messenger,” she said in response to our accumulative groans and curses.
    “Back to square one,” I complained.
    “There is something that might be useful. See here,” she said, pointing to a particular part of the text. “He uses positive contractions but not negative contractions.”
    “He? So it’s for sure a man?” Angelo asked.
    “The letter is aggressive and direct so you’re most likely dealing with a man, yes.”
    “Is it unusual? The thing with the contractions?” I asked.
    “I’m not an expert, but yeah, I’d say it’s unusual. It’s not the fact that he’s sometimes using them and sometimes not. What is strange is that he only uses positive contractions. Not many people do that. If you were to read this out loud, it would sound strange and stilted. The good thing is, if you get a hold of something else this person has written, there’s a good chance you’ll find the same pattern.”
    We thanked Mallory and left. I couldn’t find Carlo, so I was sure I’d get a call from Mia at some point berating me about not keeping her in the loop, but I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was go home and curl up on the couch. The events of the day had left my mind spinning and my emotions drained.
    “You don’t think it could be someone from your past do you?” I asked Enzo on the ride home.
    “I’m not sure; but if it was, it would be someone we both know.”
    He was right. We’d grown up together, so everyone he knew, I knew as well. Except... “What about the guys in your unit? Did you ever show anyone my picture or anything? Tell them about the flowers?” I was legitimately asking because it was a possibility we hadn’t explored yet. It wasn’t just because I wanted to know if he talked about me.
    “Well, yeah,” he said distractedly. “I mean, I had a picture that I kept on me, and one of us together hanging in my bunk. Anyone could have seen it, but no one ever knew about the flowers. And if it had been one of them, this would have come to a head a long time ago. I haven’t been in the military since before we got married.”
    I inwardly flinched every time he said the word married. It was as if he thought since the cat was out of the bag, he could just bring it up whenever. Ignoring the ache in my chest, I pressed further.
    “What about after the Marines? You did private security for a while, right? What about those guys?”
    “No,” he said immediately, his entire demeanor changing.
    “No? Care to elaborate?”
    “It wasn’t the same thing. The people I worked with, and especially the people I worked for , weren’t the kind you open up to. You don’t give them anything they can hold against you. I didn’t talk about you, ever. The one picture I kept on me? No one ever saw that.”
    “Is that why I could only send emails and couldn’t write you letters?”
    “Yeah.”
    We’d never talked about that job. It was as if he went from the Marines to Carlo with just a black cavern of nothingness in between. After his second tour overseas, he’d been a little rougher around the edges, but he was still my Enzo. The three years he’d spent working private security though; they’d changed him. Only, I was starting to realize he might not be as different as I’d originally thought.
    “Why are you different around them than you are when we’re alone?” I asked suddenly.
    Enzo’s eyebrows slammed together. “What do you mean?”
    “We