Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 72325 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 362(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72325 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 362(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Only, all of a sudden, I didn’t want him to speak. His lips were mesmerizing, full and flushed above his short beard. I felt an insane urge to trace them with my fingertips. His startling blue gaze flicked between my eyes and my mouth. I could feel his powerful thighs underneath me and his strong grip on my hips. Everything else faded away and it was like only he and I truly existed.
He stared at me, as if trying to make a decision. Then his head tilted down. I bit my lip as he neared, all thoughts leaving my head. He came closer and closer—and then at the last second, he changed course, kissing me lightly on the forehead.
“Thank you for your help tonight,” he said huskily.
I nodded, my gaze falling. Now my brain kicked in again, and all kinds of thoughts filled my head.
Chief among them was disappointment.
5
SLATER
What a fucking crazy night.
We drove back to the city slowly, Julian’s wreck of a car limping along. First chance we got, we’d ditch it. Julian was surly about that. Rock was surly in general. I couldn’t remember the last time when we spent hours together and talked so little.
Nobody was willing to speak. We all knew what a close call that had been.
I really wanted to blame shock for this weird silence, and yet, I couldn’t. We’d all come close to getting killed, more than once. In our line of work, we’d been shot at and stabbed, but this sort of gloom was a complete first. After a gunfight, we’d all mention this or that about our enemies and brush it off. Bullets and guns were part of the life. We got to suck this up, long before that goddamn van blew up right behind Julian’s car.
The next morning, I woke up feeling better. The night was behind us. We’d survived. Rocco was too thick-headed to be laid out by an injury like that. It was over.
At least until the text came from Don Roselli.
“Get ur sorry asses down to the pier. I wanna know what you fuckers were up to last night.”
Shit. That wasn’t good. And Rocco was going to go apeshit crazy. How could anyone have known that we were casing that bank? Well, except for the guy who’d blown up the van behind us. That thought stopped me in my tracks, but then I realized that Julian would probably be all over the implications of that. His massive brain was always eight steps ahead of mine. My brain was simpler. It liked tequila. And pretty barmaids. I’d seen Maggie sitting on Julian’s lap last night. Lucky bastard.
But none of us would be lucky today. Roselli was going to be all over us. He and his squeaky voice would be pissing us off for a while, in his attempt to hear about what had happened in North Haven. Like I had a clue why that asshole Sean Baxter had been there in the first place, let alone blow up the van behind us. Julian had been pretty silent on the ride home, but I’d heard him and Rock muttering that it had likely been more of a warning than a serious attempt on our lives. Yeah, right. Tell that to the giant shard of glass the pretty nurse had pulled out of Rock’s neck.
Today, I’d let them do the talking, but that was mostly so that I wouldn’t be tempted to wring Roselli’s scrawny neck. Killing your Don was frowned upon in our line of work, but god the guy was an ass. I’d been a fuck-up my whole life, but I looked like a responsible, upright citizen compared to Nick.
He’d inherited the family business from the real boss of the family, his father Emilio. The man who had taken in Rocco, Julian and me. He’d taken us—Rock especially—under his wing and had been almost like a father. He’d been a fair boss, and he rewarded our service handsomely, unlike his son. But then he died and left his asshole son in charge. Nick had to be the stingiest, and one of the stupidest Dons in history.
Mainly, though, his worst quality was his experience.
Or, rather, his inexperience.
Before Emilio’s death, Nick didn’t give a shit about the family business. All he did was squander his daddy’s money in Miami, Monte Carlo and every other place his kind loved to visit. He would party up with whores, cocaine, thirty-year-old scotch and post pictures of that shit on social media. Needless to say, anything illegal stayed out of those photos.
I stewed about it as I walked toward the pier. But it was hard to stay pissed off. The sun was shining, the weather was perfect, and a pretty girl at the coffee kiosk gave me a flirtatious look. I tipped an imaginary hat at her and went on my way with an extra spring in my step. Maybe, once we were thoroughly chewed out, I’d swing back this way to see her. Except then a face popped into my mind. That of the gorgeous bartender who’d saved our asses last night. Was she interested in Julian? She sure looked content to be on his lap last night.