 by Jessica Gadziala.jpg)
Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 73732 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73732 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Except for the woman who came literally tripping into his life, spilling her coffee over her paperwork, and cussing like a sailor.
Avery was everything a house manager shouldn’t be. Inexperienced, clumsy, and way, way too tempting.
But she was a flicker of light in his increasingly dark world, a spark he couldn’t help but be drawn to.
The problem was, Avery was harboring a dangerous secret. One that threatened to tear them apart just as they started to get close…
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER ONE
Emilio
“Are you opening up a brothel?” a voice asked, making me look up from my phone to see my cousin, Silvano, standing there, his dark blue eyes scanning the place.
“What?” I asked, half distracted by the text I’d just gotten, wondering if it was something I needed to worry about or not.
“Living room,” he said, gesturing out toward the front of the Brownstone. “Full of women. All of ‘em pretty.”
“Seriously?” I asked, attention finally fully on him.
Silvano was the Family’s, well, let’s call him a ‘crime scene cleaner,’ since he was skilled in making bodies and all their trace evidence disappear.
He was tall and on the thin side with olive skin, dark blue eyes, black hair, and rugged bone structure. He had a voice that was so rough I’d once heard someone claim that listening to him made them feel like they’d been run over with a cheese grater.
Silvano was a cousin through marriage, but had been raised almost his whole life in the Family.
“Yeah. What? You didn’t invite them here?” he asked, brows lifting.
“No. But I’m assuming my mother did,” I said, exhaling hard. “She mentioned thinking I need a housekeeper now that I bought the Brownstone. I didn’t think she’d set up a meeting without my permission.”
“No? ‘Cause that sounds exactly like your ma,” Silvano said. And he wasn’t wrong.
“Your mother still trying to set you up?” I asked, wondering if I was the only one. My sisters had found their people. Which only left me and my kid brother who was, probably, a little too young for my mother to insist he settle down yet.
“Still?” he asked, shaking his head. “My ma always knew that it wasn’t worth the effort. Marriage? Me? Never gonna fuckin’ happen.”
I went ahead and didn’t mention that I’d heard that same thing from several of our cousins who were currently shacked up and popping out babies like crazy.
“I have to get to Lorenzo’s,” I said, meaning our Capo dei Capi, the boss of all bosses. “I don’t have time for this shit today.” Not after that weird as fuck text I’d gotten from another member of our Family. “You’re here for…” I said, trying to remember setting up the meeting with Silvano, but I was drawing a blank.
“The Baker job,” he said, jogging my memory. The envelope of cash the Family owed him for cleaning up another of our messes.
“Right,” I agreed, turning to dig in the desk for it.
The house was a disaster. But I at least knew where the cash was.
“Alright. This is it,” I said, passing it to him. “Hopefully you get a break for a while.”
“In this Family?” he asked, shaking his head as he slipped the envelope into his pocket. “Anything else going on I need to know about?”
“No, well, actually… do you know what’s going on with your brother?” I asked, thinking of the text I’d gotten.
“Step-brother,” Silvano clarified, and I barely managed to stifle a sigh.
Silvano’s mom had married into the Family when Silvano was maybe five or six. His step-brother, Cosimo, had been all of two years older. But I don’t remember a single time I’d been around them growing up that they weren’t fighting like cats and dogs. And, being already sensitive to the lack of blood relation, Silvano had always assumed that had something to do with it. Clearly, some of that bitterness was still there.
“Whatever,” I said. “Do you know what’s up with him? Got a weird text today.”
“Haven’t talked to him in weeks,” Silvano said, shrugging.
I wasn’t entirely sure how that was possible. I could barely go a day without talking to my brother. It was part of being in the Family, sure, but also just a family.
“Don’t you see him at dinner and shit?”
“We just happen to miss each other at those,” he said, likely meaning he skipped the ones Cosimo was going to attend. Or that he showed up after his brother had departed. “Gotta talk to him about it yourself. I’m no help,” he said, then gave me a small wave, turned, and walked out of the office.
Alone, I reached for my phone, dialing up my mother, figuring it was better to get it over with now, than wait until after I walked out there and saw all of my marriage prospects.
Because, Lord knew, she wasn’t setting up meetings with a bunch of pretty housekeepers to help me put my life in order.
“Hey, sweetie,” she greeted, all high-pitched faux innocence.
“Mom, I didn’t have time for this today,” I told her.
“Well, sweetheart, to be fair, you never have time for anything any day,” she said.
That was fair.
Since my cousin, and best friend, became the Capo dei Capi, I’d been bumped up to a higher position in the Family too. Lorenzo’s right-hand kind of shit, despite both of us knowing being a workaholic didn’t exactly suit my personality. Or… it hadn’t. Back in the day. Before all that shit went down that changed everything. Now I was glad for the distraction from my own thoughts and moods.