Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 96129 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96129 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
Dean’s brows rose. “The plot thickens.”
“I’m not trying to fuck her.”
“We don’t believe you,” Rocco said.
“I don’t give a shit whether or not you believe me. I’m not.”
“Right. Because she’s fucking your brother,” Dean said, and the gleam in his eyes told me he was fucking with me and winning, because that little statement made my blood run cold.
“How many men do the Costellos have now?” I snapped.
“Enough. He recruited some of Bonetti’s men when he died.”
“Fuck,” I breathed.
Charles Bonetti was a stone-cold killer and he’d surrounded himself with a very particular group of men. They wouldn’t be the easiest to get rid of or control. I looked around again. There wasn’t much to see. In the evening, most businesses were already closed.
“He owns three bodegas total?” I kept my eyes on the one down the street.
“All within a few blocks from each other.”
That gave me pause. “How much money could he have possibly borrowed?”
“No idea.” Dean pushed off the truck and straightened.
I turned toward the bodega in question. We really didn’t have a clear line of vision from two blocks away, but the lights were on and that was enough. Would Anthony go in there today to collect payment? Was that where he set his eyes on Rosie? She said she didn’t go there anymore, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t before. As if reading my thoughts, Dean’s voice broke through them.
“According to my guy, neither Rosie nor her brother has been around here since Santiago was locked up.”
Did her father want her to avoid Tommy or Anthony? If that was the case, why work at Tempt?
“Crazy how she was here all along,” Rocco mused. “Not even ten blocks away from us.”
I’d been having the same thought way too often lately. We were standing right at the edge of their territory now in a safe zone, though safety was an illusion. I wondered if she’d been living around here, surrounded by concrete, while I’d been living in my father’s sprawling Italian estate, on land that would someday belong to me. I thought about the sense of responsibility I felt for my father, for Gabe, and for Lenora, who was barely twenty-one. Rosie must have felt the same way about her brother. She probably felt that way about her father, even though it should’ve been the other way around. I thought about everything my tiny dancer had given up to make things right for them, and that same knife that had been twisting in my gut since I heard the voice message from my brother, twisted again. He’d told me to take care of her and I would.
I looked at Dean again. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” He swung his key ring around his finger. “I know the way you two operate, and I think you should wait until we know exactly how many people we’re up against before you put on your masks and capes and start doing the vigilante shit you love to do.”
Rocco laughed. I felt myself smile.
There was no use in denying that it was exactly what we were itching to do.
13
ROSIE
I hadn’t seen Dominic in two days. Evidently, our schedules didn’t coincide at all, which made me wonder if he’d moved everything out of the way that day he took me to rehearsal. I thought I’d at least hear him on the treadmill when I woke up in the early morning hours, but either I’d shockingly slept through it, or he hadn’t been running in the mornings. My time was taken up by studio time since Josh and I were finally on the same schedule for rehearsals. Opening weekend was two days away and we were getting butterflies over it. The thing about playing the role of Sugar Plum Fairy was that you sat around ninety percent of the time and danced ten. It was also one of the most memorable and tough, albeit random, roles in the ballet. The moment we picked up our lives and moved here, I decided that the one thing no one would ever take away from me was dance. After years of hard work, I’d been thriving in the company, which was why it killed me to hit pause on all of it. Thankfully, Madam Albert understood that I couldn’t fill the role of principal dancer right now.
Not until all of this was over.
Thankfully, she didn’t push or question too much. Madam knew I would never say no to a promotion unless the situation was dire, which it was. Besides, I was only taking a short break, and not even much of one obviously, considering that the moment she called to offer me the role of Sugar Plum Fairy, I’d screamed and jumped and readily agreed. “Only if you can,” she’d said. “Don’t take it if it will overwhelm you.”
I’d been trying to move mountains to take that role and I’d be damned if I gave it up because of an asshole like Anthony Costello. Whenever I thought about him, my stomach flipped, and not in a good way either. Not in the way it flipped whenever I saw Dominic. I was trying really hard not to feel this way about him. Not because of Gabe, but because I’d spent the last ten years of my life trying to erase my past, and when I couldn’t do that, I decided to focus on the things I could control. At the top of that list was not falling for a man like my father. Like Anthony. Like Dominic. Those were the kind of guys responsible for what happened that Tuesday.