Page 5 of Lost Prince

“What sort of mission?” This is the area of my past life that is most unsettling. For the last three years, I’ve lived my life simply. I went to work as a mechanic and then home where I lived alone. Occasionally, I had beers with guys I knew from work. Every so often, I’d spend the evening with a woman, having a good fuck, and then back to an ordinary life.

But apparently, before that, I was a Mafia enforcer. Fucking hell.

Lana leans forward, her eyes searching mine. "You were tracking down a traitor in the family. Someone who'd been selling information to our rivals."

Tracking down? I can only infer that my job was to eliminate this traitor. The implication makes me feel sick. “So I’m a murderer?”

Matteo steps forward, his expression grim. "You were protecting the family. It's what we do."

"And what exactly does 'protecting the family' entail? Roughing people up? Killing them?"

The silence that follows is deafening. I look from face to face, searching for denial but finding only grim acceptance.

"Jesus Christ," I mutter, running a hand through my hair. "So I was a murderer?"

"It's not that simple," Elio says. "Our world… It's complicated. Sometimes, hard choices have to be made."

I laugh bitterly. "Hard choices? Is that what we're calling it now?" I turn to Henry, the guy who is supposed to have been a cop. “Are you on their payroll? A dirty cop?”

He shakes his head, and I see that he’s a little uncomfortable by the conversation as well.

Lana reaches a hand out toward me, but I recoil. "Please, Lazaro, you have to understand?—"

"Understand what?" I snap. "That I was sent to hunt down and probably kill someone? That this is what passes for normal in this family?"

The weight of it all crashes down on me. The person they want me to remember, the person I was… he was capable of violence, of taking lives. And for what? Family loyalty? The thought makes me nauseous.

“Let’s not focus on that,” she says. “Let’s think about who took you and why.”

“Probably, they were protecting their family.” I rub my temples, wondering if it’s too late to go back to Lafayette. To go back to being Danny Paine.

“Henry, tell him what you learned.” Lana’s voice is desperate.

“We know that you were jumped by several men and tossed into a van outside a shop.”

“What shop?”

Henry gives me the name and address that means nothing to me.

“It’s in the area you were supposed to meet with Talisker,” Elio says.

“Who’s Talisker?” God, they could speak Greek and I think I’d understand it better than I understand all this.

“The traitor,” Matteo says.

“We think maybe it was a setup,” Elio adds as he nods to Henry to continue.

“About a year before you disappeared, a cop was killed not far from there.”

My body tenses, bracing for whatever's coming next.

"Given your… position in the family and the location of the murder?—”

“You’re saying I killed a cop?” I was a terrible person. And this is the person they all want back?

Henry holds up his hands, placating. "I'm not saying you did?—”

“Then why mention it?”