Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75737 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75737 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
In a strange way, I was pretty sure he was almost, I don't know, proud of me in that moment.
Stranger still, I felt like I'd just gotten praise and approval, something that made me feel light and warm inside.
Silly?
Yes.
But true nonetheless.
Once Tina was gone, I ate my salad, catching some snippets of the news, curious if the police or FBI had found out anything else about my sister.
A part of me was worried now that they were on the case, that it would make the traffickers panic, have them scrapping the whole mission.
Luca had assured me that it was too late for the ship to turn around. He relented, though, when I pressed, agreeing that, yes, if the ship hadn't taken off yet, that this could scare them into not doing it.
There were no satisfactory solutions to that possible problem, but I was going to let myself choose hope. I was going to believe my sister was just a couple more days away, that qualified professionals would be there to meet her if she was, that she would be in my arms again after a trip to the hospital and a talk with the police.
There was no use worrying about every possible way this whole situation could go wrong. It wouldn't change the outcome, and would only accomplish making me sick every moment of the day up until we finally knew what was going on.
Besides, there were other things going on in Navesink Bank, other things to worry about.
Lorenzo was going to be in town.
I didn't know much about him, other than him being the underboss of the biggest crime family in New York.
But, apparently, there was some kind of connection to the Grassi family.
And his visit was important.
Just as the whole operation seemed to be in shambles.
I sat near my phone the entire day, my stomach in knots, praying everything would go right, that Luca would be able to come home to me.
And I waited.
And waited.
And waited...
Chapter Fourteen
Luca
Not much made me nervous.
I simply wasn't wired that way.
Maybe because my life came with so many uncertainties from such a young age. I never would have made it through if all I did was panic.
But I was nervous.
It was there in the tightness in my jaw, the thudding heartbeat, the churning discomfort of my stomach.
"Don't let it get to you," Lucky demanded, sitting beside me in the cafe at tables they only set up for us. We'd invested in their renovations a few years back, helping business pick up. They didn't care about the mafia connection, so they let us do whatever we wanted, having meetings at various places around their property.
Including this one.
Since the Costa family refused to have meetings at the docks or our restaurant, claiming safety reasons. Though, I was pretty sure that was Art talking, not Lorenzo who had always been a little less paranoid than his father.
"I don't know what the fuck my father wants us to tell him to excuse why we called in Feds to our operation."
Speaking of, he was late. Uncharacteristically late. And Matteo hadn't been seen in a day and a half, leading me to wonder if he had decided all the excitement was over, so he was going to go find some skirt to crawl up under.
"I don't know," Lucky agreed, reaching for his coffee. "Thank God it's Lorenzo, though," he added, shaking his head.
If it were up to the commission, we'd likely all be dead by now. But since Art had put his son in charge of dealing with us, the issue likely wouldn't come up in a sit down until he returned.
So this was big.
We had to spin the whole container thing as well as satisfy Art's desire for more money without having to let the Russians bring in guns, leaving us with a street war against the Henchmen MC in town.
And, let's face it, if you were going to have a war, you didn't want to go up against arms dealers.
Besides, we'd had a truce of sorts for longer than I'd been alive. We didn't want to start that shit.
Not even for New York.
"We've got to tell them to get an umbrella," Lucky decided, reaching up to wipe sweat off his brow.
Even if we had one, it was a day that meant it was ninety in the shade and the humidity was damn near one-hundred percent.
It was about half an hour before the planned meeting time when a long black sedan pulled up, parking a few feet away from us. We couldn't see much through the dark tint that would get him a ticket in Jersey if he stuck around for too long, but we knew it was Lorenzo.
First, because the car was damn near a hundred grand.
Second because there were no parking signs all over the curb in front of the cafe. And the only person who would so blatantly ignore them would be Lorenzo—someone who gave the middle finger to damn near any convention or rule he'd come across.