“He’s really pissed this time,”Mateo says as we walk the long hallway outside Angelo’s office.
“Did you think he wouldn’t be?” Brando asks, arching a brow. While he is only eighteen and recently graduated from high school, he is sharp as a tack, and he shows lots of promise. If I need to pull a crew together for a job, I always ask if Brando is available because he’s the kind of man I want to have by my side.
“It’s not like it’s my fault,” Mateo protests. “If they were coming for Nat, nothing would have stopped them. And I’m not the one who hired the mole.”
I feel for my best friend. I know he wants to fill Angelo’s shoes, and he tries to be a good made man, but he just doesn’t have it in him. Mateo would make a great enforcer. He loves getting his hands bloody and dirty, and he’s good at that. Leadership, ownership, and decision-making ability is not in his repertoire of talents. I think, deep down, Mateo knows this too. But he doesn’t want to let his father down. If what Angelo insinuated back there is true, Mateo will now have an added incentive to succeed.
“You know you have to lead by example.” I remind him of something his father has tried to drill into him. “You didn’t do that today, and it made it easier for the enemy to make a move. I think if you accepted that responsibility Angelo would go easier on you.”
“I accept responsibility,” Mateo snaps through clenched teeth. “And I don’t need my supposed best friend giving me shit. I get enough of that from my father.”
I slap a hand over his back. “I’m only trying to help.”
“I’m going to see my sister,” he huffs when we reach the stairs.
“I’ll come with.”
“Why?” Mateo turns to face me, eyeing me suspiciously.
“I want to make sure she’s okay. He hit her pretty hard in the temple.”
“I’m going back to the front gate,” Brando says, as Mateo and I stare at one another, unspoken accusations and untruths stretching between us.
Brando’s heels thud on the tile floor as he walks off while tension mounts between me and my best friend. “Out with it,” I say when Brando closes the front door behind him with a loud clang.
“Why were you out in the orchard with my sister?” Suspicion is threaded through his tone.
I have been expecting this, and I’m torn on how to reply. I don’t want Mateo to know what went down between Nat and Santino or Nat and me. The former because he would tell Angelo, and the latter because he’s likely to strangle me with his bare hands. But I have to give him something plausible, so I run with an altered version of the truth.
Santino got caught in the crossfire, so he isn’t alive any longer to contest this. And Alonso is so overwhelmed with grief at witnessing his brother shot down in broad daylight that he won’t remember anything about the previous events. “Santino made a play for her, and he got her away before I could do anything about it. I went after him to protect her.”
“Is that the truth?” Mateo asks, his gaze boring into my skull.
“It is,” I lie, staring him directly in the eyes.
Silence claws through the heavy air as we face off.
“Okay,” Mateo says, and I release the breath I was holding.
9
Natalia
“Something smells delicious, Mama Rosa,” Leo says, entering the kitchen.
I spin around, in a cloud of flour, glaring at him. “What are you doing up?! You should be at home resting.”
Leo smirks, propping one hip against the table. “It’s not the first time I’ve gotten shot, and it won’t be the last.”
I hate the truth of those words. Papa may have shielded me from a lot of the underworld, but I have always known who he is and what he does for a living. Bloody, wounded men in my house are nothing new, and I have tended to some of Mateo’s and Leo’s injuries in the past.
When I woke yesterday evening to find my brother and Leo sitting by my bed, waiting for me to wake up, I nearly freaked out at the sight of Leo’s bloody upper torso. Though the doc had patched him up and a large white bandage covered his wound, there was so much blood, and I was terrified he had been seriously injured.
Leo explained the bullet had only grazed his shoulder and it looked worse than it was, but I knew he was lying because little beads of sweat coated his brow and he was looking pale under his tan skin. He was in pain because he refused to take the pain pills the doc had given him. Stupid man.
“That is no excuse. You won’t heal if you don’t rest.”
“Touché,dolcezza. I could say the same to you. You were hurt too. What are you doing up out of bed?”
