I wait. I have learned over the course of my 36 years that waiting is the only thing that works on Lucia.
She sets the glass in the rack.
“I like her,” Lucia says simply and continues washing dishes.
Lucia, the woman who made every woman I ever fucked use the service entrance. The woman who refused to acknowledge, much less speak to them when they spoke to her. But she likes Sophie? I feel like I just got the blessing of God.
“So why’d you help her leave when you knew I wanted her to stay?”
“You cannot force a woman to do your bidding, Vincenzo. That is not a love you want.”
Those words don’t even fucking making sense to me.
I push off the counter and go back to my bedroom, standing infront of the pressed suit that Marta hung up for me.
Sophie arranged a suit for a funeral she’s not going to attend. She got past my guards, got out of my house, went back to her restaurant, and somewhere in the middle of all of that she made sure I’d be fed for a week.
Lucia likes her. Yeah. Well. Me too.
I pick up my phone and call Matti and Tommy. Tommy picks up right away, and I add Matti to the call.
“I’m pushing the funeral.” This isn’t up for discussion. If Sophie isn’t with me, I’m not doing this shit. Period.
“FUCK.” Matti pulls the phone away when he yells, but it still almost blows out my ear drum.
“Why are you postponing?” Tommy’s trying to stay calm, but I can hear the irritation in his voice.
Fuck him. It’s not his call.
“I have shit to do first. When I’m done, we’ll do it immediately.”
“Vin, how long is this going to take?” Matti sounds like he’s reached the end of his rope.
“It takes as long as it takes.” However fucking long it takes to convince a woman that she’s fucking mine. And another woman that she’s not.
I hang up before they can ask any more questions.
**
I track down Ashlyn at a townhouse on the Upper East Side. It wasn’t hard. I’ve had a man trailing her since the whole fucked up engagement agreement we made, and she spends every second she can here playing house with her man.
I open the door without knocking and find her man balls deep inside her on the dining room table. He’s pulls his gun almost as fast as I draw mine. I know him from the MacCuinn Clan gatherings I’ve attended, but I don’t think we’ve ever spoken.
Ashlyn’s eyes go wide for one second before she places her hand on her man’s gun.
“You’re not doing a very good job of hiding this,” I say it to Ashlyn, but it’s her man who responds.
“I don’t need to hide shit.” His gun doesn’t move. “She’s fucking mine.”
“I don’t disagree with that, but your woman and I have an agreement. And she’s breaking it.” I raise an eyebrow at Ashlyn. “You haven’t filled your man in on the details of our arrangement? I find that disappointing.”
I reach into my jacket for my cigarettes, find the pack, and remember the look on Sophie’s face when I lit one inside her apartment that first night at her house. I toss the pack onto the side table instead.
Quitting again. Apparently.
“Just because you twopretendedto fuck for her brothers sake doesn’t mean she’s yours.” His jaw tightens as Ashlyn maneuvers out from underneath him and walks slowly across the room to grab a blanket on the couch, wearing only heels.“And from what I understand, you broke your end of this when you disappeared for weeks with no word, which frees her from any commitment to you.”
He’s not wrong about any of that.
