I cleared my throat, my eyes hard on Angelo. “Linda Davies.”
“Standing outside in her pajamas, watching as the place continues to smoke. One of the firemen said she used the fire to light her last cigarette.” Umberto pronounced cigarette assigar-etta.
“Find her a safe place until I can get this all sorted out. This wasn’t an accident.” I didn’t have to tell him to keep me updated. It was his job to keep me updated, and if he didn’t, he wouldn’t still be around. People who didn’t have common sense were not on my payroll.
Umberto told me he agreed in Italian, and we hung up. The shooting was aimed at me, but torching the building seemed to be sending a different message. It was mine, but Linda lived in it, and Linda was connected to my wife.
My wife, who finally met my eyes when she noticed how Angelo was staring at Rocco and Georgia dancing to a catchy Italian song the band was playing. I nodded once,I’ll take care of it, but before I could talk to Angelo about keeping his insulting eyes off Rocco Fucking Fausti, the dance ended and Rocco came to me.
We spoke in Italian.
“The boy,” he called Angelo. “He is your wife’s brother.”
I refused to lie, and calling what Angelo felt for Georgia a crush was a lie. It was more than that. Angelo was convinced he was in love with Georgia, and she was his. I decided to go with the truth, since it might appeal to Rocco. When it came to a love story, it usually did.
Rocco’s eyes were on Angelo’s the entire time I spoke. Angelo was holding his own, but I had no doubt he was sweating underneath the suit, and not from the heat. Angelo knew who the Faustis were. He’d inquired about joining their ranks. He found their MO of stealing hearts in the name of love romantic. But not every man was given that right. It was their thing, meaning only men of the blood had the honor. The rest of us had to get more creative.
Rocco nodded after I was done talking. Then he looked at me. “Your feelings on this.”
I shrugged. “He is still young. She’s my wife’s sister, even though they do not share blood.”
“She is married,” Rocco said.
“She is.”
“She is stunning.”
I didn’t touch his comment. Sometimes Rocco’s romantic thoughts came out and there was nothing to say to them.
He fixed his suit, and whatever else he was thinking, he kept to himself. But if I could have guessed, it was that Georgia’s husband was wasting a beautiful woman, and he might even kill Joe himself. Rocco told me someone would be in touch about what I owed the family and Mario for what I’d done on the track after the crash. I’d broken Mario’s jaw. Mario would owe the family, too, but since I came out unscathed, he owed me nothing. He wasn’t smart enough to keep his helmet on. The one or two hits he landed on me only damaged his hands.
The money was well spent. I’d pay triple just for the chance to feel my fists breaking his bones again.
Rocco left me with that and walked over to Leonora. He took her hand and kissed it, and I could hear him thank her for giving him the honor to sing at our wedding. They chatted for a minute or two before he stood before Angelo. I couldn’t hear the entire conversation, but I knew my wife was holding her breath the entire time, especially when Rocco said easily, “Your romantic heart saves you,ragazzo.”
Angelo probably didn’t catch it, but Rocco had insulted him by calling himboy. In his world, if you were not a man, you were a boy, and you were treated as one. If Angelo had been a man in Rocco’s eyes, he would have killed him for the disrespect.
I sighed into my glass of water. For something that was meant to put fires out, it wasn’t touching the ones blazing around me. Especially the one in the center of my chest.
CHAPTER23
Mrs. Big
“You’re still stickingwith the old silent treatment, ah?” Kitty lifted her over-sized Bloody Mary and took a slurp.
We were waiting in the dining area for Georgia and Rocky after finishing an early breakfast. We had a day of pampering and shopping in Portofino planned for my girls’…whatever anyone wanted to call it. I wasn’t a bachelorette, so this wasn’t to celebrate the end of my single status. I was already locked in tight to a man who didn’t mind free falling from absurd heights. I wasn’t a person who didn’t take risks, I took them too, but I guess where Big and I differed on opinion was the worth-it factor.
I wasn’t feeling our plans. Not time with my girls, but more pampering and shopping. Big had told me about the fire to my mom’s apartment the night before, and I was still mad at Big, and the thought of getting made over just didn’t appeal to me for some reason. I wanted to blow off some steam, just not with his credit card. I know, I know, call me crazy, but I had a lifetime of that sort of life, if I wanted it. For some reason, I wanted to set my feet on the earth and sweat. Release all the pent-up tension and aggression that felt trapped in my pores.
Maybe because with my silent treatment, I wasn’t having sex with Big, and having sex with Big was a cathartic connection, and not having sex with Big felt like it was messing me up in ways I wasn’t used to. I felt blocked from…relief.
Part of this, too, was that…I just missed him.
I sighed. “I don’t have anything nice to say to him right now.”
“Why wait until you do?” Kitty raised an eyebrow at me before she took another drink of her Bloody Mary. “When men do wrong, it’s best not to sugarcoat. It’s best to walk them down a path of thorns so they won’t forget it. Baby Tullio is hardwired a certain way. He needs the thorns. Not all the time, like thatchiche had a momentary lapse in judgment with, the one connected to the Faustis, but…what he did was reckless. I’m not going to give him right when he’s wrong. Your anger is coming from a place of love. Thatchicdoesn’t know what love is, and she wouldn’t, not even if it bit her.”
Kitty got a grin out of me. She was the only one who could get away with calling Big Baby Tullio. Hitting his heels with her scooter too. Andchick? She must have picked that up from Dynamic, but she was saying it likechic.
