His dad shook his head.
“Is that a no you don’t have any more, or no you’re not going to?”
“Don’t have any more,” he said, splaying out his fingers and holding out his hands to show them empty.
“Sit.” I gestured at his chair. He sat down and Sage and I followed suit, except before I settled, I slammed the mag back into Rosetti’s pistol. I sat, folding one leg over the other and resting the piece on my thigh, pointing exactly where I wanted it.
“Maybe I was wrong,” I murmured to Sage, giving him a knowing look. “This part is a bit romantic.”
Sage’s stare flickered down, clearly noticing the way my cock bulged behind the fly of my slacks. I’d wanted to wear jeans, but he’d insisted, and now here we were. A fucking standoff and my cock wanted to join the party.
Highly inappropriate, but very on brand.
“So,” I said, turning my attention back to Sage’s father. “Let’s start with you telling me who the fuck you think you are.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sage
“Iasked you to be polite,” I groaned, leaning back in the chair and dropping my hands onto the armrests.
“Politeness went out the door when your father pointed a fucking firearm at my face,” Golden snapped. He looked at me with a tight expression. “Let’s not forget why we’re here now.”
The words were reminder enough. Everything that had happened between Golden and me had brought us to this point. It was easy to forget my family laundered money through the vineyard, that Golden was a hired gun, that both of us had attempts made on our lives and it wasn’t even sixty days into the new year.
Fuck, when all this dust settled, I was going to pack Golden up and take him to my cabin where I didn’t have to think about anything besides making him cry and come and bleed.
“Please tell me you didn’t try to kill him,” I said, sighing and leveling a displeased look at my father. His blush, his trembling hands, the fact that he’d raised a gun at Golden just minutes earlier…it was all the answer I needed.
“He was going to kill you.”
“Says who?” Golden asked before the words could even leave my mouth. “Tell me it was that little Molinaro twit.”
My father wasn’t cut out for this business.
I’d lived my whole life being afraid of this man, spent so many years thinking that he had a right to treat me and my mom the way he did. That he was worthy of respect and fear—and I didn’t know if my view of him had been clouded from the way I’d perceived him as a child—but now the truth sat in front of me.
I was seeing my father clearly for the first time.
He wasn’t a man to be feared. He wasn’t a man deserving of power or respect or authority. He was weak and he was cowardly, and as soon as I had a chance, I was going to pop him one for every time he’d laid a hand on my mother.
“You let a fucking child manipulate you into murder?” I scoffed. “I wish that cunt would have come around sooner so I could have seen you for the man you are…or rather, the man you aren’t.”
“Watch your mouth,” my father tried to protest, but there wasn’t any force behind the words.
“You watch your mouth.”
“So.” Golden picked the gun up off his leg and examined it, tracing his finger over the woodgrain pattern on the butt of the piece. “Molinaro, then?”
“Yes.”
“The older one or the younger one?” he asked.
“Junior,” my father answered.
Golden turned to face me, his face utterly devoid of any expression besides boredom. God, I was hot for him. He was fucking terrifying like this—when he wason. No wonder he’d been so adamant about what he’d wanted in a play partner, so concise in asking for the things he needed. Golden was a force to be reckoned with and I was ready to do the reckoning.
“There’s no way.” Golden rolled his eyes. “That kid is spineless.”
