Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
“Does Sawyer have this on video, perchance?” she asked.
“Thankfully, my teenaged shenanigans took place before the rampant use of recording shit. No one knows that story but me, Sawyer, and now you.”
“We really were lucky that way,” she agreed, nodding. “There’s not a lot of evidence of my overly plucked eyebrow phase. Or when I used to wear beige lipstick with bold brown liner. It was… a look. One I am glad no one remembers.”
“I had a extremely long and wide-legged pants phase,” I admitted.
“Six inches deep in the water on rainy days?” she asked, remembering that phase of male fashion well, clearly. “And chains from your belt to your empty wallet?”
“Hey, it wasn’t empty. There was an old condom in there that I snagged from a friend’s older brother. And, yes, in case you were wondering, by the time I found someone who wanted to go to bed with me, the damn thing had expired.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“They expire,” I said, nodding, deliberately pretending to misunderstand her.
“I meant that it would take you that long to find a willing girl.”
“I was a gangly kid with a pizza face,” I admitted. “It took me years to develop into the disarmingly good-looking man I am today,” I told her, watching as she gave me a big smile. “And by then, I managed to develop some personality. So now I’m the best of both worlds.”
“I’ve met many a men who clearly grew up attractive and their personalities are as deep as a puddle,” she said, shrugging. “I think awkward phases make us well-rounded people. So… what passes for food in this town?” she asked, smirking at me, a silent dare for me to knock her socks off.
And, well, Navesink Bank might not have been NYC with hundreds of restaurants offering up crazy fare, but what we did, we did well.
“Are you in the mood for Italian?” I asked.
“Always,” she answered immediately.
“Then I have a place with great food, nice wine, fantastic atmosphere, and one hell of a story…”
Because I was pretty sure she hadn’t eaten at a restaurant owned by the mob before…
CHAPTER TEN
Miranda
“No way,” I said, shaking my head as I swirled the wine that the owner himself had come over to bring to us. “That sweet gentleman?” I asked, thinking of his great suit and his attractive face with his salt and pepper hair.
“That sweet gentleman runs the most prominent mafia family in the state,” he told me, nodding. “Him and his sons,” he clarified.
“And people just… know this?”
“I’m not sure how many normal, average people know that,” he admitted, looking around. “The Grassi Family works hard not to have their names end up in the papers or on the news, so it’s entirely possible that more than two-thirds of the people in here have no idea.”
“But that means a third of them do? And they keep coming here to eat?”
“You’ve seen the place,” he said, waving out toward the balcony over the water. I’d bet, weather permitting, it was amazing to sit out there and eat. Especially at night. “And the food is the best you are going to find in the area. Navesink Bank is a… curious town.”
There was just something about the way he’d said ‘curious’ that had my curiosity immediately piqued.
“Curious how?”
“So, you know how the mob used to really pretty much run the city?”
“Yeah, of course,” I agreed, nodding. They’d had their hand in literally everything.
“Well, it’s like that here. Except it isn’t just the mob.”
“Who else is it?”
“There’s the outlaw bikers, the family of loan sharks, the paramilitary camp, then at least a dozen other people working independently, with deep enough pockets to grease the palms of the local police force.”
“You have to be exaggerating. Why would people live here if the crime was that rampant?”
“That’s the thing, though. Most of the organizations here have a code. They don’t let their crimes put the locals at risk. In a way, it is almost safer here for the normal families because of them. And the cops, with their hands tied with the organizations around here, focus more on the petty crime shit, so that is kept to a minimum as well.”
“It’s still a little hard to believe,” I said, taking another sip of my wine as the owner of the place came from the back with another bottle of wine, walking over toward a table and greeting them like old friends.
“See that table Antony just went to?” Brock asked, jerking his chin toward it.
“Yes,” I said, nodding, as I glanced at the lovely dark-haired woman and her distinguished-looking man with some graying hair and bright blue eyes.
“That is Charlie and Helen Mallick. The heads of the loan shark family I was telling you about. They and their sons lend out money and break kneecaps if you don’t pay.”