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Chapter 10
Allegra
Four hours on a plane with Gian Rossiis the opening to a fever dream nightmare under most circumstances.
I keep thinking I’ll wake up, drenched in sweat, twitching and half dead.
Instead, the plane lands in the freaking desert, and Gian sweeps me from the tarmac into a waiting SUV like he owns the goddamn place.
“Welcome to my home,” he says, gazing out at Vegas. The sun’s getting low, but it’s still hot as hell and dry enough to make my mouth pucker. Or maybe that’s just how I feel when I’m around Gian.
“How long have you been out here?” I ask. We didn’t talk much on the plane, mostly just logistical stuff. I spent most of it staring at my phone and trying to sleep. Which was obviously impossible: I’m so keyed up and nervous that I was worried my knee jostling up and down might make the plane crash.
This is dumb. It’s obviously a mistake. I’m running away from my soon-to-be husband—again—and hoping that Papa doesn’t just put a freaking bullet in my head.
Yes, my father likes me, maybe even loves me, but that doesn’t mean he won’t kill me when this is done.
Except the more I think about it, the more I keep seeing the logic in this horrible decision. Everything I’ve been thinking up to this point is still completely true. If I marry Saul, my dreams are done. Forget working for Michael, forget becoming a guidance counselor. I’ll be mafia babies, charity galas, putting on a pretty face, and occasional vacations down to the Jersey Shore.
This is my only way out. It’s still stupid as hell.
“Since I left,” he answers after a long pause like he’s wistful about the good old days or something.
“You really packed up your stuff, ditched out on your last semester of college, and came to Vegas? And never left?”
“Pretty much. It wasn’t easy in those early weeks but our family had some contacts that I exploited. Took me a while to build my business.”
“What is your business, exactly?”
“I run a sportsbook.” He grins at me and shrugs. “Among other things.”
“It’s always the other things with you people.”
“Aren’t you used to that by now?”
“You’d think.” I glance at his driver and back to him, curious how much his staff knows about him, but he doesn’t react to my gesture. “But Papa keeps me out of certain aspects of the organization.”
“I won’t hide things from you,” he says simply, which surprises me.
“Really? You’ll bring me into business deals?”
“If you’re curious, sure, why not?”
“Well, for one, I’m a woman. Isn’t there some weird superstition about how it’s bad luck for a woman to be onboard a ship?”
“We’re not sailors,tesorina, we’re mafioso. Big difference.”
“Same idea though. Bring a woman into a business deal and her evil uterine magic will curse the whole enterprise.”
“That’s old world thinking. This is Las Vegas. We’re progressive out here.”
I snort, shaking my head, as the Strip comes into view. The mega hotels with their glimmering facades, the enormous playground of the wealthy and the desperate alike. “Funny, calling a place like this progressive. It was a mob town originally, right? Build a place in the desert far from law enforcement and you can do whatever you want.”
“That was the idea, sure, but it’s much different now.”
“I doubt that. Once the corruption’s there, you can’t get rid of it. Trust me, I’d know. I’m a mafia princess, remember? And anyway, Vegas was designed to suck money from anyone stupid enough to show up. There’s nothing progressive about that.”
“You have a pretty jaded view of my town. Have you been here before?”
