Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“You should go up and talk to her,” Matteo said.
“Right. Yeah,” I agreed, exhaling hard as I sat my gun down on the table.
“Here,” Santo said, handing me a bottle of scotch. “She might need a drink for this.”
I took the bottle, then made my way up the stairs.
A part of me noticed the wreckage all around. The holes in priceless antiques. The real glass window panes shattered.
The other part, though, was focused on the talk I was going to have, the woman I was going to need to break some not great news to.
Taking a deep breath, I pushed open the bathroom door.
And there she was.
In the tub, the sheet draped over her.
Shaking.
Fuck.
“Hey, sweetheart,” I said, trying to keep my tone calm, reassuring, as I moved in, closing the door behind me.
“Hey,” she said, a little breathless.
“Everything is okay.”
“I heard voices,” she said.
“My family,” I told her.
“Oh,” she said, brows pinching. “I thought it was the police.”
And there we were.
Right at the conversation I had to have but didn’t want to.
“Here,” I said, uncapping the scotch. “Take a shot. Trust me,” I added, passing it into her hands. “You’re going to need it for this,” I told her.
“Okay,” she said in a shaky little voice, but not nearly as shaky as her hands as she raised the bottle and took a long swig, then let out a few coughs at the burn. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“So, you know my family, right?”
“Ah, yeah. I mean, I’ve met a lot of them. Mostly the women, but your brother too. And your cousin.”
“Right. The thing is, sweetheart, I haven’t exactly been honest with you from the beginning,” I told her.
“Alright. What were you… dishonest about?”
“The first shooting, to begin with. Those bullets, those were meant for me, Savannah.”
“You don’t know that,” she tried to insist.
“No, honey, I do. I know. See, I have the kind of… profession that means that sometimes people want to shoot me.”
“You’re in… imports,” she recalled.
“That’s true. But only partially.”
God, how the fuck was I supposed to say this to her? To shatter the image she had of me in her head?
“Hey, remember that crack you made once? When I’d said that someone did a lot of work for my family?” I asked. “Do you remember what you said?”
“I said that you sounded like one of those… oh,” she said, her mouth opening into a little O as her eyes widened. “Oh,” she said again.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding, tapping the bottle again.
She didn’t pretend not to know what I was talking about.
She lifted the bottle, and took another long swig.
Then another.
“You’re in the mafia?” she asked, voice choked. “I mean… people are actually in the mafia?”
“Yes,” I confirmed. “They are. We are,” I added.
“So that’s… okay,” she said, gears spinning. “It makes a lot more sense now,” she decided.
“What does?”
“Why you have felt so guilty from the beginning,” she said. “Why your family has been dropping off meals and coming to the restaurant. Why your brother had a gun.”
“It’s a lot, I know,” I agreed. “I get that you’re going to need to process this. And it’s… fine if you decide in the end that you hate me, but…”
“It’s fine?” she interrupted.
“What?”
“That’s fine?” she asked.
“Sorry… uhm… it’s fine if I hate you?” she asked, slow blinking at me. “I thought… I thought that things were moving in a, ah, different direction.”
Fuck, she was making this hard.
“They were. But I understand if you are changing your mind now that I almost got you shot a second time.”
“I don’t think it really works that way,” I said.
“What doesn’t?”
“How I feel,” she said, shaking her head at me. “I don’t think it’s conditional like that. I mean, yeah, this is a lot to process,” she admitted, not letting me off the hook entirely. “And I’m not saying there won’t be some… complicated feelings. But I don’t hate you. I don’t think I can hate you. Besides, I mean, it’s not like you purposely tried to get me shot. Or almost shot.”
“No,” I agreed. “And we are doing everything in our power to figure this out. Which brings me to the next part of this conversation,” I started. At that, she lifted the scotch and took another swig, this time barely even grimacing, getting used to the burn. “Smart,” I said, giving her a small smile.
“Okay. Give it to me.”
“We need to leave. Tonight.”
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere safe,” I told her since, well, I didn’t even know where we were going. Not yet. We had a few different places where we stuck someone when shit was going down. Everywhere from cabins in the woods to penthouse hotel rooms with only one private elevator access that only worked with a key that Luca had.
“For how long?”
“I wish I could tell you that. I do know that everyone is on this, twenty-four/seven now. This is the only priority. It shouldn’t be too long.”