“Kept her up late last night,” Weston says with a smirk. “She’s making up some time on her project.”
“I didn’t need to hear that,” Wyatt groans.
“We’ll be at the s’mores party though.” Weston cranes his neck to see me around his brother. “You coming to that one?” he asks.
No one new in the bar. I let my eyes bounce back at him.
“Why would I be there?” I ask.
“It’s the worst-kept secret in the Heights that you and Lexi are a thing. Turtlenecks? Really?”
It pulls a snort from me, but that’s all he gets, so he keeps going.
“I assume that means you’re going to start coming to family dinners and all the other shit that comes with being in the Weiss-Grady clan.”
“Hey,” Ronnie interjects. “I come to all the other shit, why aren’t we invited to family dinner?”
“You’re not family,” Wyatt says, voice dry.
“Like hell I’m not!” Ronnie puffs up his chest, half a head shorter than either brother, and a whole head shorter than me.
“Listen, my yard’s only so big,” he says.
“Your yard is, like, four acres,” Ronnie refutes.
“Yeah, your ego and Weston’s would never fit.”
Laughter breaks out, and the last game of darts wraps up around the same time Wyatt pulls his phone out of his pants for the sixty-eighth time. In my experience sixty-nine is usually the charm, but for him it seemed to be this one.
Reading his text, his eyes move quickly over the screen and he makes quick work of wrapping up at the high-top we commandeered for our drinks while we played.
“Gotta go pick up my daughter,” he says, voice tight.
“Everything okay?” West asks.
“Not sure. She said she has to go follow Lexi.”
“Let’s go then!” Ronnie calls, and we make our way to the front of the building.
As we round the exit, taking the path around the side of the building to the eastern parking lot, the same guy from inside, the one with the dark hat that hides his face, is out there smoking.
Walking by him, I keep an eye trained on thecoglione, looking for familiar signs. Maybe I’m out of practice, but I don’t see any obvious ones.
Still, he opens his mouth just as I clear his legs, and the New York accent makes a chill of awareness run down my spine.
“Watch yourself,” he says in a thick, nasal Brooklyn drawl.
Before any of the guys realize what’s happened, I have him against the wall, my forearm pressed to his throat, his cigarette fallen to the ground.
“What did you say to me,stronzo?” I growl, as his legs kick, trying to reach me. “Was that a warning?”
Ronnie, Wyatt, and Weston surround me in a flash, yanking on me, and it takes all three of them to pull me off of him.
“Hey, now,” Weston mediates, looking between the stranger and me.
The man rubs his throat, glaring at me and coughing.
Ignoring my friends, I get straight to the point. “If you’ve got something to say, big man, now’s your chance, before you’re missing all your teeth and you can’t make those consonants anymore.”
