Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 95833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 479(@200wpm)___ 383(@250wpm)___ 319(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 479(@200wpm)___ 383(@250wpm)___ 319(@300wpm)
It doesn’t matter. I can either accept that he has his reasons or I can obsess over what they might be, but either way I’d better find a husband and do it fast.
One week.
I have no clue who I’m going to marry, but I have one week to figure it out—or I’ll be sold to some stranger and shipped away from my home forever.
Chapter 2
Nico
Walking through Villa Bruno is like skinny dipping in snake-infested waters. Except I’d rather get my cock bitten off by a cobra than have to spend my life smiling and nodding and pretending like everything the old shit Don Bruno has to say was pure gold.
This isn’t forever. I won’t let it be.
I hurry down the basement steps. As I walk, the overhead lights turn on like I’m in some kind of movie, the depths illuminated in a ghostly white glow. I reach the concrete landing and step into a large room with six-inch-thick poured concrete walls packed with tables, each one covered in row after row of cash.
It’s like the basement vault in a bank.
Except there’s more money.
I remember the first time I saw the Famiglia’s treasure stash. It was years back when I was new to the Bruno family and just starting to get close to Casso. He brought me down here to brag—I still remember the stupid grin on his face and the casual way he took a stack of twenties and shoved them into my hands saying, here you go, you earned this, just don’t tell my papa—but all I see now is endless horror.
Cash, cold hard cash, the product of the Bruno family’s hard work.
All of it dripping with blood.
I bypass the nearest table and walk over to a clipboard tossed casually beside an industrial-sized counting machine. Numbers are written in a tight script down the side and I quickly pick up the pencil as I scan down the list. The room’s dead silent and I can hear footsteps above—staff, family, whatever.
Better be fast then.
I make a few small changes, turning sevens into nines and eights, ones into sevens and nines, and on and on until the count is so thoroughly fucked they’ll have to redo the whole thing a dozen times just to make all this shit add up.
I don’t feel better when I turn away.
The door above opens and I freeze. I don’t move, listening intently as someone starts down the steps. I walk away from the clipboard and pause in front of the cash at the far side of the room, my jaw clenched tight.
I’m allowed down here—I help with various things for the Bruno Famiglia, including taking care of their vast reserves of paper bills—but it’s unusual for me to be here alone. My heart double-beats and I prepare myself for possible violence, a specter that haunts my every waking moment.
Casso comes into view and grins. “Enjoying the spoils, brother?”
I smile back, relaxing marginally. I hate when he calls me brother. “Can’t help myself. Sometimes I come down here and just breathe. You know how cash smells?”
“Smells like power.” Casso’s tall and broad with dark eyes, a lazy grin, and tattoos snaking up his throat, just like me. He’s got an easy demeanor like he expects the world to present itself at his feet like a supplicant before a king—and for the most part, it does.
We have a lot in common, like a penchant for vice and killing and a reckless outlook on life, except he was born to wealth and power, and I was born to misery.
“Were you hunting me down or did you come to steal some for yourself?”
“I saw the light on and wondered who was admiring the plunder.” He walks to the nearest table and takes a few twenties. “But while I’m here.” He shrugs and turns back to the steps.
If I did that, just casually stole from the Don of the Bruno Famiglia, they’d take me out back and shoot me in the head.
If they knew what I’d done to the clipboard, they’d torture me before shooting me in the head, but that’s beside the point.
Casso tosses a casual arm across my shoulders and steers me away. “Did you hear about the new restaurant?”
“Your father opened it up across town. The boys say it’s nice.”
“Extremely nice. Papa’s overpaying some fancy chef to cook pasta. Can you imagine? How many fucking restaurants do we need?”
I laugh and pat his back. “I can imagine, brother. Your papa’s getting to the point where he cares more about prestige than money.”
Casso’s eye is sharp as he gazes at me. “Papa, yes, but me and my brothers? We still know what’s valuable.”
“Blood and treasure.”
“Blood and treasure,” he echoes and walks upstairs.
I follow after, sparing only a glance at the clipboard.
It’ll take them another few days to sort that out and someone will be severely punished for the mistake.