He wanted to beat the holy hell out of both men, even though Emilio had already done it. There would have been great satisfaction in feeling his fists sinking into them, breaking bones and causing as much damage as possible, but that was against his rules. He lived in a violent world and he had to have a code. He had to live by that code, no matter how personal this was to him.

Not trusting himself, he stepped back, away from them. He would abide by the decision of his family. They had all the facts and as far as he could see, these men had spent years robbing and viciously beating others. Stefano knew that when a person was hungry or desperate, they might resort to theft, but these men had escalated what they did into savage beatings. Ninety percent of their victims had handed over wallets, money and jewelry and yet they still were beaten. Even had they not touched Francesca, Stefano would have decided to end them.

According to the files his investigators Romano and Renato Greco had compiled, the beatings had gotten steadily more vicious over the years and the last few months, the men had put several people in the hospital, two of them with severe knife wounds. Clearly, the violence was escalating and Stefano believed, sooner or later, they would kill. The thrill was getting harder to get, so they upped the ante. He was certain once they killed, they would continue to do so.

Ricco, Giovanni, Taviano and Emmanuelle walked over together and stood facing the two muggers after they’d consulted just inside the doors of the building. Vittorio came right up to stand beside Stefano. “This is my mistake, my mess. I let them off with a warning,” he said softly.

Billings shook his head hard. “We’ll stay away. Leave town. Whatever you want us to do.”

Vittorio looked at him for a long while, the silence stretching out. “I should have ended you when I had the chance,” he said, no inflection in his voice. “It’s on me, the other victims. The ones you hurt. The ones in the hospital. It’s on me that you put a blade to my brother’s woman’s throat. You cut into her skin and made her bleed. That’s mine. I have to carry that burden for the rest of my life because I didn’t do my job.”

Tom Billings screamed, his voice high-pitched. Behind him, a shadow stretched out. Reached. Ricco, dressed as always in a dark pin-striped suit, just as they all were, emerged directly behind him, his hands on either side of his skull. Vittorio leaned forward and caught Fargo Johnson’s head in an implacable grip. Both men jerked hard. They’d been instructed practically since birth in this quick, hard motion. They were experts. Few people could snap a neck easily, but they knew the exact motion, the exact amount of power needed, the perfect angle.

Both men stepped away from the two muggers. “Justice is served,” Vittorio said.

Stefano took a deep breath and let it out. He had managed to maintain control even when it was the most personal job he had faced. Discipline had won out, although the anger still knotted his gut. Francesca had been cold and hungry when he’d first laid eyes on her. And terrified. Now a man had managed to slice into her throat and scare her, trying to rob her. The one person needing his protection the most and he’d let her down again.

“Hey, brother.” Emmanuelle curled an arm around his waist, tucked herself in close against his side and hugged him tightly the way she had from the time she was a toddler. “I’m so excited for you. We all are.” She didn’t even glance at the two dead men slumped in the chairs.

Stefano didn’t like her being there. He wrapped his arm around her and walked her back outside. From the beginning, when Emmanuelle had been born, he had known she would be trained. She was a shadow rider as well. The telltale feelers fed out of her shadow, seeking the shadows of others. He hadn’t liked it then—and he’d been a young boy, nine years old, when she’d been born. He had tried protesting, as had his other brothers, hoping to spare her their life, but there were so few of the riders anymore that the family insisted she be trained.

Emmanuelle knew what he was doing, taking her out of that place of death, but she didn’t protest. All of her brothers preferred to protect her. They had been raised to respect women. To treasure them. To protect them. They wanted her to have a life like all the other girls in the neighborhood, not one of violence and death. She had grown up with four big brothers always hovering close and she’d never protested or gotten angry with them. Instead, she’d developed a sense of humor and, much to their mortification, the ability to ignore them and do what she wanted anyway.

“I want to meet her.”

“You will, bella bambina, as soon as I have managed to make her mine. She has no idea. I have to go carefully.”