Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 96129 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96129 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
“You look comfortable with that ballerina guy.”
“Ballerina guy?”
“What should I say? Ballerino?”
“Actually, yeah.” I laughed at the expression on his face. “Or danseur, or just a dancer. In Josh’s case, he’s a principal dancer though, which is a big deal, so I’d refer to him as such.”
“Hm.” His eyes didn’t leave my face, my mouth, my eyes, my neck. “What did Josh say about your bruises?”
“Nothing.” I looked out the window briefly and back at him. “Not everyone scrutinizes me the way you do.”
He didn’t say anything at all to that, but the way he stared at me made heat spread through my body.
9
DOMINIC
I decided that I wouldn’t join Rosie on any of her little ballet adventures anymore. It was best to have Marco drive her around and watch her. Having her sitting next to me was too tempting. Even covered in sweat, she was fucking gorgeous. I hadn’t expected her to walk out of the rehearsal room with that principal dancer’s arm around her shoulder. For a long second, I envisioned all the ways I’d break his limbs and that was before I realized how comfortable they were with each other. It was clear they danced together often and that she trusted him. With the way my chest squeezed, it was also clear that this ridiculous jealousy wasn’t going away.
After I dropped her off, I focused on my brother again. I hadn’t called my father yet, but it was inevitable. First, I needed to find out whether or not Gabe had gone to the police with what Rosie told him. If he had gone to them, it could potentially pose a threat to all of us, and I wasn’t sure how my father would react to that kind of news. If Gabe had gone that route, maybe he didn’t deserve my loyalty, but the asshole would have it anyway. Deep down, he must’ve known that.
The only person we had on the inside that I actually trusted was a homicide detective who happened to be Rocco’s brother. He didn’t make it a habit of telling us much about his cases unless he thought we were somehow linked to them, in which case he’d call Rocco to ask. I imagined that to be both frustrating and nerve-racking for someone like Michael Marchetti. It wasn’t like Rocco would ever confess to anything, but if he did, what exactly was Mike supposed to do?
We’d been sitting in the Newport Centre parking lot waiting for him for almost thirty minutes and as annoyed as I was about it, we all knew he could make me wait three hours and I wouldn’t drive away. When he finally opened the door and slid into the backseat, Rocco and I turned as much as our seats allowed. The look Mike gave us made me feel like he was liable to murder us and pin the crime on someone else. Despite his chosen line of work, he had Marchetti blood flowing through his veins, so I wouldn’t put it past him to be on some Dexter-type shit.
“What the fuck have you gotten yourselves into now?” he asked, eyes dropping to the cup holder. “One of those coffees better be mine.”
Rocco sighed, making a show of it as if he hadn’t been the one to pick up his brother’s coffee of choice. “Gabe’s missing and he’s allegedly been working with the cops.”
“What cops?” He took a sip of his coffee.
“We don’t know. I don’t even know if he’s working with cops or not,” I said. “If he is, it could be anyone, regular cops, the FBI. We don’t know.”
“Where did you hear this?”
“Roselyn Vega.”
“Vega? Little Rosie from back home? The dancer?” Mike frowned deeply. “Santiago’s kid?”
“That one. The one Dom had a crush on,” Rocco supplied. I glared at him.
Mike let out an unamused laugh. “Funny how we tried to get away from each other and ended up in the same place.”
I’d had the same thought when I saw Rosie at that nightclub. The aftermath of what happened was a blur. Rocco and Mike moved down here with their dad. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that Rosie’s dad did the same since they had family nearby. Yet it never occurred to me. When I convinced my father to let me move back here, he agreed as long as it was New York, and only because Lorenzo was here and would take me under his wing. At the time, Loren had been in law school and working closely with Silvio Costello. Silvio had him mostly looking for people, hunting them really. He’d look for them, pluck them from wherever they were, and deliver them to Silvio’s men. I’d learned that skill from him, and soon Lorenzo was practicing law and I was the one doing the hunting for him.
I’d been all over New York, including Costello territory, which was why it was mind-blowing that I’d never run into Rosie. When Loren got out of his uncle Silvio’s inner circle, he stopped sending me to Costello territory. I was a De Luca, not a Costello, and Silvio and my father butted heads too much, but for the sake of keeping the peace, they came up with an agreement. We wouldn’t go into their territory, and they wouldn’t come into ours. Since all of Santiago Vega’s bodegas were in Costello territory, I was sure I never would have crossed paths with Rosie had it not been for this.