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)
Chapter Three
Luca
"New York isn't happy," my father told us, moving to sit down at the table at the back of our family restaurant, Famiglia, whiskey in a glass catching the soft overhead light.
Everything was bouncing with energy around us.
The bartender's knives tapped the cutting boards as they sliced fruit for the drinks. The hostesses made reservations, answered the phones. The serving staff and bussers rushed around dressed all in black, doing side work, prepping for the shift ahead.
Their practiced efficiency made my slow, sleep-deprived brain feel lazy and useless as I sat in the high-backed booth, one of several that lined the back of the restaurant, allowing privacy to couples or—in our case—family meetings.
Matteo was nowhere to be found, which had ceased to surprise me a decade ago. When God was divvying out the work ethic genes, I got all of them, and Matteo had to go without. He handled his niche—albeit very loosely—and left all the heavy lifting to me. And our father, to some extent.
So this family meeting was my father, me, Leandro, Dario, and my cousin Lucky. He and Matteo were the same age, had been close when they were younger, but where Matteo shirked off his responsibilities, Lucky dove headfirst into the family business, always looking for opportunities to prove himself. He'd once shown up to a meeting three hours out of the hospital with a bullet hole still fresh in his shoulder.
Tall and fit, he notoriously dressed all in black. That choice, paired with his jet hair and inky-dark eyes, gave him a menacing appearance. If you saw him darkening your door, you knew you'd fucked up.
"Is New York ever happy?" Lucky asked, leaning back, unconcerned with the news.
That was fair.
New York was forever on our ass, despite our family making more than any single one of the Five Families, or even a few of them grouped together, each year.
More.
They always wanted more.
We always did too. But we had to do it smart. There was too much at risk. Too many people wanted what we had. One misstep would have us all with bullets in the backs of our heads, bodies thrown off the docks.
If New York wanted the docks back when we were gone, they'd have to go to war for them.
Which was why we needed them to leave us to our own devices.
"What do they want?" I asked, watching as my father pinned me with dark eyes, his shoulders shrugging.
"They want to make a deal with the Russians."
Of course they did.
Because that kind of money was hard to turn down.
But a deal with the Russians meant risking our good standing with the local arms trade, an outlaw biker club called the Henchmen, who'd been running guns in our town since my father was young.
"This shit again," Lucky hissed, shaking his head. "How the fuck many times do we have to lay this out for them?"
"Watch it," my father demanded, voice firm.
Antony Grassi might have been the boss in Navesink Bank.
But every boss had a boss.
My father was old-school when it came to the code, though. You didn't talk shit about the capo dei capi.
Lucky, having seen his father murdered right before his eyes by the current boss when he was just eleven, well, he was a bit more new-school about it.
He'd never say it, but he was looking forward to the day when someone else got sick of Arturo Costa and his reign of terror, and his son stepped into his place.
"Are we expecting a visit?" I asked my father.
"Lorenzo will be around sometime in the near future. He is off on a job, but when he is on his way back to the city, he will be stopping here."
Lorenzo, Costa's eldest son, the underboss everyone knew would make a better boss, was no less ruthless than his father. If anything, he had more blood on his hands. But he was also more reasonable. If we had to have a drop-in, it was better if it was Lorenzo instead of Arturo.
"Which means we need to get our house in order," my father told us, eyes pinning me.
Because he knew I had a mess on my hands, that we had an unwanted mouse skittering around in our attic.
"I heard she was beautiful," Lucky said, giving me a sly smile. If there was anyone who liked women more than Matteo did, it was Lucky. And, given that women would always be into well-dressed men in powerful, dangerous positions, they loved him right back.
"She was," I agreed. Because it was the truth.
If you were going to have a problem on your hands, it made it more tolerable that the problem was easy on the eyes and ears, her voice somehow honey-sweet and smoky at the same time.
Dario had been working on Romina's—Romy's—file since we'd first gotten a name for her. He hadn't' been able to figure out much, though.