Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Santo’s body went as tense as mine, his eyes clearing of desire in a blink.
“It’s probably just an avalanche,” I said, but even I didn’t sound sure of that.
“I’m gonna check,” he said, his hand slipping out of my panties as I moved off of his lap.
I’d love to claim my desire didn’t ratchet right up at the way he jumped into action, how he so confidently strode through my house, ready to face whatever it was that he found.
My mind immediately flashed back to another guy I’d dated. I’d woken up in the middle of the night to a weird noise. And when I’d shaken him awake to ask him to go check it out, he’d rolled over and told me to do it myself if I was that worried about it.
Taking a deep breath, I climbed off the couch, following Santo’s path toward my garage.
It was still one of the messiest parts of the house—second only to the basement. But I had managed to create a walking path down the center. Only now, things were spilled into that path.
“Probably a raccoon or opossum,” Santo said, waving over toward the garage door. “You might want to make sure that’s closed all the way. Raccoons can be nasty.”
My gaze followed his gesture.
And, sure enough, the garage door was up a solid foot and a half.
The thing was, I hadn’t left that open.
I knew for a fact—with one hundred percent certainty—that I hadn’t left it open.
Because I hadn’t even been able to get it open.
I’d grunted and cursed for half an hour—wanting some fresh air while I worked—trying to get it to move with no luck.
I’d concluded that the springs must have been rusty or something and hadn’t touched it since.
“Dasha?” Santo asked as I stood there staring at the opening, my heart a drum in my chest, tapping out some erratic, unpredictable jazz beat.
“Can you close that for me?” I asked, hearing how choked my voice sounded.
My mouth was paper-dry, making it impossible to swallow past the lump in my throat.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, brows pinched before turning his back on me.
I watched as he brought the door down, but it wasn’t without some cursing on his part.
I needed that.
Some proof that I wasn’t losing my mind, that I hadn’t somehow left it open.
But if he could barely move the door, there was no way I could.
“Locking it too,” he added, turning the little metal handle. “I actually disconnect my door unless I’m actively using it,” he said, waving up toward a little red rope hanging down from the bar that went across the ceiling.
“Yes. Do that,” I said, hoping my voice didn’t sound as anxious as I felt. “It won’t open at all now?”
“Nope. Not until you reconnect the door. You okay?” he asked, finally looking more closely at me.
“What? Yes. I mean… I, uh, haven’t eaten,” I said. It was true. But definitely not why I was feeling so weird.
“Well, we can’t have that, can we?” he asked, throwing an arm over my shoulders and walking us back into the house. “How about we go check out my family’s restaurant?”
Part of me didn’t want to leave the house all alone with no one to keep an eye on it.
Then again, did I really want to be around if someone came back?
Because as Santo ushered me into his car, there was one thing I knew for certain.
Someone else had opened that garage door.
From the inside.
Likely looking for a quick escape when Santo and I came inside the house.
That was… terrifying.
And I needed time to figure out what to do about it.
So I let Santo take me to his fancy family restaurant, intending to let him wine and dine me while I tried to come up with some sort of solution.
But once we got there, everything else fell away but him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Santo
Something was going on with Dasha.
I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something about the way she sat silently in the car on the way to Famiglia, about even the way she looked at me in the garage, that wasn’t sitting right with me.
Some of the worries fell away as we were led to one of the back booth tables without having to wait—a major perk of being related to the owners—and she looked around the restaurant with wonder-filled eyes.
“Your family owns this?” she asked, pretty eyes scanning the wine wall behind the bar.
“My cousin Luca, yeah. And, technically, my Uncle Antony,” I said, gesturing over toward where Uncle Ant was standing beside a table, a woman’s hand clasped between both of his.
You wouldn’t know by looking at him now—the friendly, outgoing, warm restaurateur—that Antony Grassi had once ruled our Family with an iron grip. Times had been different when he’d been coming up. Harder. More unstable. Our Family name didn’t have the same respect back then. So he’d needed to force everyone to know they couldn’t fuck with us. Word was, it was violent and scary times, culminating in Antony’s wife—Luca and Matteo’s mom—being murdered in their own home.