When was the last time I went on a date? One that didn’t involve fast food and at least a mack-down make-out session in the back seat of some dude’s car?I count down the months silently.A year? Hasit been a year? Okay, so… since I moved to New York, then.I look around the rooftop with new eyes.So, this is New York dating.
“We need to talk, though, before we go on with our date,” Giulio says, and from his tone, I know I’m not going to enjoy what we talk about.Fuck. I thought guys didn’t do the whole talking thing?
Straightening in my seat and adjusting my skirt with a nervous flip, I raise my eyes back to his. “Talk about what?” I ask, reaching for my drink.
“Your friend.”
My stomach contracts. “She won’t say anything,” I tell him. “It’s not like she can now.” Not when she’s involved in another murder and is, technically, an accomplice.
Giulio’s expression darkens. “That’s the only reason why she’s been allowed to return to her life,” he states. “She’s been warned about what might happen should she decide to talk about what happened or about me and the Family.”
Cold fury drives up through my chest, not unlike the rage that filled me in the face of a conniving would-be killer. Placing both hands flat on the table, I lean forward and let the emotions from that day refill me. “Don’tthreaten my best friend,” I growl. “Do whatever you want with me, fine. Marry me. Threaten me. Steal me from my life. Kill me. I don’t care. But if you dare harm her, I will slit your throat while you’re sleeping, and you’ll never see me coming.”
No one ever would. I look just like any average girl. I laugh louder than most. Smile like I’m supposed to. I know that I don’t look like the type to kill. But to protect those close to me, I absolutely will.
Giulio’s ice-blue eyes sharpen, but not in fury. Underneath the table, his leg bumps against mine. Awareness floods out the anger and turns it into something else, something that has the place between my thighs softening. Fuck me. Can he tell? “Are you threatening me?” He doesn’t sound particularly worried by my statement as he asks the question.
I sit back and lift my drink to my lips. “Nope. Not at all.” Threatening a mafia man is a bad idea. I’m just giving him some insight into the future should anything untoward happen to my best friend. I cast my eyes down to my cuticles. They’re in rough shape. Damn.
The low chuckle that comes across the table has my gaze shooting back up. Giulio sits back and smiles at me. “I think you and I are cut from the same cloth, Daisy Turner.”
“Isn’t it La Rosa now?” The question pops out of my mouth before I realize what I’ve said.
For a moment, Giulio’s smile slackens, but then it takes on a new tone. “Yes,” he murmurs, stroking a hand down his jaw. “It is. Daisy La Rosa.”
I swallow roughly and move to open my mouth. Just as I do, though, the waiter reappears and delivers our appetizers. My stomach rumbles with hunger, and the second the waiter disappears back into the shadows, I dive into the platter of stuffed potato wedges. Greasy, cheesy, bacony, starchy goodness hits my tongue, and a moan leaves my lips.
“Oddio.” Giulio’s low, accented voice hits my ears, and I lift my head, eyes locking back on his.
His lips are parted, and his gaze is slightly glassy, but they’re not fixed on mine. Instead, Giulio’s attention is fully trainedon my mouth. Nervousness has me swallowing the bite. My tongue comes out and swipes across my lower lip, hoping I don’t have something clinging to my face. Giulio’s eyes melt into a firestorm of wicked blue. Slowly—infinitely slowly—his focus rises, inch by inch, until our eyes clash.
I swallow again.Talk. I so need to start talking. I’m good at that. The best. A chatterer to the bone.Yet… no words come to mind as the two of us stare at each other, locked in some ridiculous contest that neither of us consented to. My heart begins to hammer.
To my shock, Giulio is the one to break the spell. “I wasn’t raised in places like this, you know,” he says, his voice gruff.
I use my fork to cut a potato wedge in half. “No?” I reply. “How were you raised?” In Italy, maybe? Boarding school? I pop the wedge into my mouth and chew slowly.
“In a shithole apartment in Brooklyn with at least three other foster children.” Giulio uses his fork and knife to do the whole cutting thing on his own appetizer. The green pepper splits open to reveal cooked pork and other things on the inside. He takes a bite and hums in the back of his throat before continuing.
“I was moved around from place to place for a while,” he says. “Brooklyn. Queens.” He shrugs. “Even Jersey—though they’re not supposed to switch kids over state lines.” His lips twitch as if remembering something funny. “I was a bit of a shit and kept getting kicked out of places. They wanted to keep me in the area, though. Didn’t know why until later.”
“How did you become a Luciani?” I ask.
He methodically cuts his pepper into slices as he talks. “Throughout all those places, the one thing that remained the same was my best friend. Dante and I were tight. Thick asthieves. Brothers before his father ever took me in. We met at school around age ten, I think. It’s been so long and those years all kind of run together in my head,” he admits. “I can’t be too sure of the timeline, but we’d been friends for a while when his dad approached me.”
My breath catches in my throat as I imagine a teenage Giulio faced with the man he introduced me to in Madison Park. No doubt Stefano Luciani had been a formidable man back then. Even if it’s clear that age has taken much from him, he still seemed that way when I met him. If Don Luciani had taken him out of foster care, though, that explains why Giulio is so loyal to the man. Like me, Giulio hadn’t had anyone to care if he didn’t come home. Some foster parents didn’t even care if their charges ended up dead so long as they weren’t blamed.
After all, wasn’t that exactly what happened to Ginny?
Vicious nails rake my insides at the insidious thought, and I shake my head, returning my attention to the man in front of me. Theliving man, and not the ghosts in my head.
“Don Luciani had contacts in the system,” Giulio says. “He’d heard about me from Dante for a long time, and apparently, as his son, Dante had a hard time keeping friends once they found out.”
“You knew about him the whole time?” I ask.
He nods and glances up as he finishes cutting up his pepper. “Eat,” he orders. “You’re hungry.”
I don’t deny it, and I don’t want him to stop talking. Another potato hits my tongue with that blissful salt and starch combo that comes with loving carbs. Carbs don’t count, though, when I look as good as I do in this outfit. That’s just facts. I don’tmake the rules.
