Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 80471 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80471 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
“Looking for someone?” I asked as Rico’s gaze slid over the crowd, brows furrowed.
“Where the fuck is Cinna?” he asked, making my stomach tense. Not just lying to the boss then, it seemed.
“I saw her on my way here,” I told him, the partial lie slipping easily from between my lips. “Looked like she was in the middle of something.” At this point, that was likely eating the dinner I’d picked up for her. “Dunno if she’s gonna be here tonight.”
“Oh,” Rico said, face tangled in confusion, but his shoulders relaxed a bit.
“Why?” I asked.
“Just heard one of her soldiers talking earlier, saying they hadn’t seen her in weeks.”
“Hadn’t they heard from her at least?” I asked.
“I mean, yeah.”
“You know Cinna,” I said, shrugging. “She’s always busy.”
“True,” Rico agreed.
“Or maybe she found herself a personal life,” I said, getting a chuckle out of Rico.
“That’ll be the day,” he said.
“Hey, we never thought Renzo would slow down either,” I reasoned, jerking my chin toward our boss, who was leaning against the bar, watching his wife talking to Elian, her clear favorite of all the capos, a man who’d championed for Renzo to understand what a prize he had in his wife.
I liked Lore. Everyone did. She just… wasn’t my type. Soft and sweet and timid. A mafia princess raised in a sheltered life thanks to her father and five mafia capo brothers. But I could see that she was exactly what Renzo needed. Someone to come home to. A reason not to work himself to the bone.
“Gonna go say hi to the boss,” I told Rico, moving in that direction.
I was a solid ten feet away still, though, when someone came charging through the crush of people, making a beeline for the pool table, and snatching up the eight ball, turning, aiming, and sending the fucking thing sailing through the air, missing Renzo’s head by two inches, and crashing into the bar behind him, a bottle of liquor smashing with the impact.
“Jesus Christ, Saff,” Renzo said, brows pinched.
The man didn’t even flinch.
“You had no right to do that,” Saff snapped, charging toward him.
All five-feet-three-inches of fury.
When it came to mafia bosses, Renzo Lombardi was probably the most progressive out there. Because he not only tolerated, but encouraged, the idea of female capos in his organization.
I think a lot of us thought Cinna was a one-off back in the day. Because she was so tough and badass. Because everyone who ever met her knew she was meant for a life like this.
But, slowly over the years, he added more and more female soldiers and capos.
Saff was one of those.
Looking at her, you wouldn’t think she was every bit as tough—if not more so—as Cinna. She was short and thin with thick thighs and almost comically small feet. I was pretty sure the woman could shop in the children’s section still.
She had a pretty, deceptively sweet-looking heart-shaped face with big light brown eyes that almost hinted a bit grayish in the right light, a delicate nose with a ring, very defined cupid’s bow lips, and a smattering of subtle freckles over her nose and cheeks.
Her long hair was usually down, but tonight she had the dark blue wavy strands pulled up in a ponytail, the resulting effect making her look even younger than she was.
The real difference between Saff and Cinna, though, had nothing to do with looks.
Where Cinna was calm and collected with anger that ran cold, Saff was pure chaos whose anger ran hot enough to burn up everyone around her.
Like throwing a pool ball at a fucking mafia boss.
“Seeing as this is my family, Saff, yeah, I did have the right,” Renzo said, voice patient. Because, quite frankly, he’d been dealing with Saff’s explosions for years.
“I had it handled,” she raged, moving toward him, her heeled boots clicking on the floor as she went. They were a solid five inches, and they just barely made her average height.
“I never said you didn’t.”
That took some of the wind out of her sails. But this was Saff. She wasn’t going to let it go that easily.
“Then why the fuck would you step in?” she asked. “Would you have done that if this was Rico’s job? Or Elian? Davide?”
“This isn’t a sexist thing, Saff. You know better than that,” Renzo said, shaking his head.
“Would you have taken this from Cinna then?” she asked.
“I dunno. Maybe. You’re different people, Saff. Different strengths.”
“Bullshit. You don’t have the same respect for me as you do for her.”
“You haven’t been made as long as she has,” Renzo reasoned. “You have been a good capo so far, Saff. A great earner. But a lot of the people here, Cinna included,” he said, then scanned the crowd to look for her before looking back at Saff. “I might trust them with this job more than you because they’ve got a longer track record.”