Sitting here, in this seat, was the first time I actually felt like I was worthy of that title.
Why I reached for my cell phone and sent a message to Jennifer was beyond me.
It just felt right.
Me: I want to see you.
In the lead up to the raid, Stan had been researching her background. She was not the type of woman I should be thinking about tangling with, but there was something about her. Stan's report be damned.
I needed to see her.
I had no idea what made her leave that night at Russu, but I was pissed she left when she did.
If she thought I was going to disappear, I wasn’t.
But I couldn’t throw away plans that were a decade in the making. I couldn’t forget my real purpose for being in this fucking country in the first place.
Stan made an appearance and told me, "Cops showed up."
"Dealt with?" I asked, even though I knew the answer.
It had taken a lot of cash to make the night’s events slip under the radar. I considered it an investment in our future.
Commissioner Kingston was the most corrupt bastard I’d ever had the misfortune of running into in my whole goddamn life.
He made the officials back in Sicily look transparent.
"Of course."
His face was too serious to make me think that was the only reason he'd come to me. "What is it?" If not the cops, then… what?
"Accursio’s dead."
I closed my eyes. "Fuck."
"Se. Mancuso and Pietro as well."
Three men who’d fought with us since the beginning. Stan had gone to school with Accursio. They'd been friends since they were children.
"You okay, frate?" I rasped, grief for him and for Accursio etched into each word.
"No. You?"
I shook my head. "No."
We hadn’t brought this war to the Fieris; they’d done that to us. But having lost more men who mattered to us, the triumph I’d felt at sitting at this godforsaken table shrank away into nothingness.
"Maybe now we can have peace," I rumbled.
"I wouldn’t bet on it," was Stan’s grim retort.
And I knew he was right.
"I wouldn’t either," I muttered to the room itself before I tipped my head and saw the ‘read’ notification on the message that I’d sent her, but there was no reply.
I should have known I was fucked over her when that had me hurling my cell at the wall...
Seven
Jen
New Year’s
I couldn’t breathe.
I really couldn’t.
Air was flowing into my mouth, but I couldn’t seem to get it into my lungs.
Was this how I was going to die?
Running out of the O’Donnelly NYE party while everyone was in full celebration mode had been surprisingly easy considering I was gulping down air like a dying fish.
Or maybe they were just glad I was gone.
Did they know?
"You’re Padraig O’Donnelly’s illegitimate daughter, Jen, and I have the DNA test results to prove it."
Savannah had betrayed me to get those DNA test results. She’d lied about how we met. She’d lied about everything.
My cell buzzed. I almost didn’t hear it with the loud raucous cheers of the crowds as they celebrated in the streets.
Luciu: Happy New Year, cara mia.
I stared at the message, stared at it long and hard, and suddenly, I could breathe again.
Air flowed.
My lungs sucked it up.
My back to the wall in the alley I was hiding from Savannah in, the bitter cold sinking into my bones, I stared at his message.
Me: Where are you?
The second I sent it, I regretted it.
Cursing myself for a fool, I huddled into my coat, but even the wicked wind chill didn’t numb my panic.
Savannah, my BFF, was a liar.
My dad was an Irish mobster.
Luciu: Russu
Luciu: Come dance with me? The guards know to let you in if you turn up at the club.
Dance?
No.
I didn’t need to dance. I needed something, anything, to stop this panic.
Fucking.
That would work.
I wanted to forget.
I knew he’d help me with that.
Not answering his message, I arranged for an Uber to collect me.
I needed another one of those orgasms Luciu was so good at handing out.
Stat.
Part Three
New Year’s Day
Eight
Luciu
"My wife?"
Even as I boomed the question, a banging sounded at my office door.
Before I could process what the hell she was talking about—what fucking wife?—irritation whipped me as one of my men pounded on the door loud enough to wake the hounds of hell.
"Trasi!" I snarled.
When she started toward the exit, I grabbed her arm and hauled her back toward me. She struggled, her hand coming up to slap my shoulder as she snapped, "Let go of me!"
"Not until we hash this out."
"I’ll hash something out," she hissed, "on your face."
As pissed as I was, as much as another buttana might be banished from my sight for such an insult, and a man might feel my blade in his cheek, the focu, the fire, in her set me alight.
She was scared.
But she was not beaten.
She was nervous.
But she was not weak.
Her strength called to me. She called to me.
When Giovi opened the door and made eye contact with me, I raised a hand to make him wait. "I have no wife, Jennifer."
"My name’s Jen."
Technically, her name was Fionnabhair. But I couldn’t pronounce that yet. The only Irish I knew who spoke Gaelic were the O’Donnellys and while I’d had dealings with them recently, asking them for a pronunciation guide on the world’s most exasperating woman wasn’t a priority.
I narrowed my eyes at her. "Jennifer," I enunciated carefully, forcing her to realize that I was not like everyone else, that I would not be like anyone else in her life. "You will wait for me here. You will sit that culu biddicchiu down and wait for me to discuss this with you."
"I have nothing to discuss," she spat. "I should never have—"
"You should never have," I agreed darkly, "because if you think that’s the one and only taste of you that I’m going to have, you’re mistaken."
Her nostrils flared in agitation, and in front of my soldier, she razed me with that focu once more, stepped into me and growled, "I’m leaving."
"You’re not," I intoned before Giovi launched a flurry of Sicilian at me.
"Sir, there’s an issue out back."
"I heard," was my cold retort as I stared down at her, not stopping, needing that fire banked and for her to back off.
I’d never known a woman to be so aggressive outside of my family. Maybe that was what attracted me to her. Maybe the coy shyness of before would have bored me. Seeing this other facet of her nature gave me hope.
If she saw me, the real me, maybe she wouldn’t cower.