Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 43829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 219(@200wpm)___ 175(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 219(@200wpm)___ 175(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
He does as I say, then retrieves a medium-sized gift bag from the floor next to his snow-covered boots.
He always was a big guy. I remember him as a kid in the streets of South Chicago, running around everyone’s ankles when I was in my early twenties, and fuck his mother made the world’s best cannoli’s.
Can’t blame him for getting fat. It’s no crime. I just wish I had a fucking cannoli right now.
“Your wife here with you?” I ask, smelling a faint whiff of alcohol on him, as if he needed a little Dutch courage to come in here and make his greetings.
He shakes his head, clearing his throat. “We’re still settling in, you know? Just came to give you these—” He shakes the bag by his side. “—and make my apologies that I can’t come tomorrow. Our apologies, I mean. Shelly and me.”
There’s a lot more in those words than he’s letting on, but I won’t press it. She’s likely mad at him, upset that his life has led her here, away from friends and family and the life she thought she was building in the high rises of New York.
“How long you been here?” I ask. “A month? That first month or two can be tough, but she will get used to it.”
That’s the truth of this existence in exile, whether it be by the feds for witness protection or an agreement among families for whatever reason. I needed a truce, and this life bought that for me. A tense truce, but a truce nonetheless.
“That’s what Don Pugliesi told me, too,” he says with a nod, and a tickle of bile bites at the back of my throat.
I don’t hate Alfredo ‘the Don’ Pugliesi. We’ve been allies a long time and I’d even go as far as to call him a friend. Such as friends are in my world.
But for the last two years, he’s been pressuring me to marry Carina to his son, Sully.
That’s not going to happen.
Not a chance I was going to perpetuate with my granddaughter the cycle that started generations ago—marrying for the sake of alliances, never love. I won’t do it to Lucy and I sure as hell won’t do it to Carina.
As my mind wanders back to the way Carina’s tongue felt in my mouth, the taste of our kiss, I see Lucy coming at me with a kitchen knife, slashing at the air as I back away, spewing her hatred at me for what I have done with her sister.
I growl, then shake my head at Bobby’s expression. His eyes bulge, his chest caved in. “You are fine. Reminded me I have business to settle with Alfredo, that’s all,” I say, trying to keep my dick from rising as the image of my teeth marks on her tit assault me.
When the Don arrives tomorrow with his fucking son, I’ll be polite, but if he so much as mentions Carina, the Christmas truce will quickly become the Christmas massacre.
“It’s a… nice place you got here,” Bobby stutters, handing me the bag as I take my seat in a leather armchair and point him to the one next to me flanking the fireplace. “Someone said you got reindeer?”
I nod. “It’s a reindeer farm. That’s my cover. Really just pets for my granddaughters.”
He grins. “How are they? They’re almost teenagers?”
“Carina’s eighteen,” I say, my voice breaking as I swallow back a sudden lump in my throat. “Lucy is twenty.”
“Wow. Time flies.”
I lift the bag onto my lap to cover my out-of-control dick that’s thickening by the second as I fight off the thoughts of breeding her, so next year, every-fucking-one at this yearly party will know she’s off fucking limits.
I have a lot of old enemies. Most know I’m in exile but not exactly where; if they did, there’s no guarantee they wouldn’t seek me out.
Bobby says the wrong thing to Shelly and she tells her sister back home because she’s got a bee in her bonnet about moving to the fucking wilderness with no Hermes shop within five thousand miles…and before we know it, somebody is trying to get to Carina to hurt me.
I can’t allow that. She needs to have a life free of this shit. But, not free of me.
How I’ll put those two opposing forces together, I still have to puzzle out.
“What’s in the packages?” I ask, staring into the bag. There are several neatly wrapped gifts inside.
Bobby jerks his head toward the bag. “Stuffed Elf on a Shelf deal, sets of those sparkly press on nails, some Christmas paint by number sets. I guess I forgot how old they were. I had to do the shopping this year. Shelly is boycotting Christmas. No disrespect to your granddaughters.”
God. Fucking hell.
I choke out a thank you thinking about how I dry-humped one of those granddaughters a couple hours ago telling her she and her pussy belonged to me now.