Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
But I wasn’t disappointed that it had. So I let him stroke my skin and my hair while my eyelids drooped. And when sleep beckoned again, I didn’t fight it. Falling asleep in his strong arms seemed like the most comforting thing ever.
I felt cherished.
I felt safe.
MATTEO
Five days after my chance meeting with Maggie Owens-Roselli, I hadn’t forgotten a thing about it.
Quite the opposite.
I dissected those few minutes we spent together in that bar. I analyzed her words. Her attitude. The tone of her voice. I went over every single thing I could remember, again and again.
Clearly, she had a lot of money. She was also well-connected, which was why she had been able to find out so much about me and my friends.
The first question on my mind was why she would bother warning me off. Maybe she didn’t want us to upset the status quo. Maybe she was still a do-gooder at heart. After all, she had opened a domestic violence shelter for women. But it just didn’t add up for me.
This woman was the head of a mob family. She could spend millions on a charity, but it wasn’t going to change the fact that she had the means and the resources to take all three of us out. She could have put a hit out on us, and we wouldn’t even get a chance to hear about that out on the street. No one would warn us—I was sure of that. It was difficult for anyone to catch wind of a hit, especially if the organization had ordered it. In other words, it would’ve been easy for her to get rid of Cesare, Leonardo and me if she thought we were going to cause too much trouble. So why had she gone through the trouble of talking to me? Three bullets would have taken care of the problem we posed, once and for all. Then we would’ve been out of her admittedly pretty hair.
I did appreciate Cesare’s determination to carry on, however. It showed his complete lack of fear and his big, brass balls. Sadly, though, my friend didn’t have any answers. He just wanted to plunge into danger head-on. I had no problem taking risks, but I wasn’t Cesare. I needed to know as much as I could about a situation that affected me. I needed to know what Maggie’s motives actually were.
Finding her office wasn’t what you’d call difficult. That woman was hiding in plain sight. Under the cloak of the philanthropist. The boss’s office was in the Upper East Side. Spotting her building, I was somewhat surprised. It was a four-story structure situated next to the House of Angels, a home for abused women and children. The sign on the side of the building read:
“Maggie Owens-Roselli - Shelter Manager”
Those two words made me change my mind about the size of that structure. If she was a do-gooder, she apparently wasn’t above seeing her name really fucking large on the side of the building. From what I’d learned, Maggie hadn’t ever known her biological father, Emilio Roselli, nor his asshole son, her stepbrother. But the apple apparently hadn’t fallen far from the tree.
I walked through the open entrance of Maggie’s workplace, not the shelter. I had a thousand questions about Maggie’s organization, not her charitable work.
I thought about how I wanted to play it as I took an elevator up to the fourth floor. Anger was not going to resolve much. It was just going to complicate an already strange situation. Yes, I did have a lot to discuss with that woman, but barging in there yelling would not avail me at all. Plus, it wasn’t my way. Cesare often got quieter—scarily quiet sometimes—when he was upset. Of the three of us, Leonardo was the only one who regularly flew off the handle, but he was still young. He’d gain more control when he was our age. Maybe.
Stepping out of that elevator and into a wide hallway, I saw a couple of guys strutting away from me. A much bigger man was gesturing to them, standing near the far wall. Our eyes met, and he kept eye contact and gestured them away. Man, that guy was large… nearly as tall as Cesare with a similarly bulked up physique. The main difference was the stranger’s clean-shaven face.
“What in the hell are you doing here?”
Good. At least he let me know what I was going to face in that building. There was no reason for me to play nice. The gloves had come off right from the start…
“People say ‘good morning’ where I come from,” I said, not fazed by his show of anger. “They also introduce themselves. I assume you know my name. That’s why I didn’t bother. And you are?”
“Rocco DeLuca.” His posture was stiff as he told me his name. “Yeah, I know who you are. You’re one of the assholes who failed to hold up that truck the other day.”