“And this one is?”
“Si.”
“You’re ridiculous. You’ll be bored in a week or when you realise she doesn’t tick every box on your lengthy checklist.”
“No. This is different.”
“How?”
“I didn’t need my list. I felt it. All major organs were in agreement.”
Raya looked over her shoulder with that ‘you are fucking insane’ expression she reserved especially for me. “So, who is this future wife of yours? Am I allowed to know her name?”
“I’ll tell you when I know.” I was pretty sure her name wasn’t Vivian. It didn’t suit her at all.
She stopped outside the family meeting room, spinning around to face me. I smiled, unfazed by the disbelieving laugh that burst from her mouth.
“You don’t even know her name? Do you know anything about her?”
“I know how prettily she moans for me.”
She whacked my shoulder. “Urgh. Gross. Too much information, Sani.”
“What’s too much information?”
I turned to find Olivia, my brother’s wife and the woman who practically raised Soraya and me. After I kissed her on both cheeks, she grasped my face in her hands.
“I’ve missed you! We need to make it compulsory for you to come home every weekend.”
“Oh, he couldn’t do that, Liv. When would he have the time to keep stalking his next victim and make her his wife?” Raya teased, wiggling her eyebrows at me with amusement.
“I’m not stalking her. I need to find her again to do that.”
“What happened to the gymnast?” Liv asked, causing Raya to chuckle.
“She wasn’t the one. I wasn’t going to waste either of our time. I let her go as soon as I knew, after the third date.”
“Sani,” Olivia huffed like the mother bear she was. “You and your hunt for the one. Just try to come home more, please. There are plenty of lovely girls in Verona.”
“But not the one I want.” I winked. “Plus, Rome would go up in flamesif I left, Liv.”
“Apparently, it already is,” my brother’s pissed tone cut through the foyer as he strolled down the last few stairs.“Fratello.”
He grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me into him for a quick, solid hug. The look on his face as he stepped back made my spine straighten. “My office. There’s a cigar calling your name.”
He reached for Olivia by the nape of her neck and gave her a bruising kiss, still full of passion and devotion even after the twenty-odd years they’d been married. That’s what I strove for. A queen I could worship. And it’s why I didn’t fuck about as soon as I knew a girl wasn’t ‘the one’.
Once we sat down, tumblers in hand and cigars lit, he puffed out a cloud of smoke and leaned forward to place his Toscano cigar in the ashtray.
“They found the Semptin deal. Took the lot and more,” I breathed, my shoulders bunching at the already growing tension in the room. Rome was my territory, which meant this was my mess to clean up.
He ran his tongue over his bottom lip and clenched his fists. “Who tipped them off?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll find out.”
“Alessio’s going to want the names of every one of your men working the docks.”
“I’ve already sent them to him. And everyone who knew about the shipment.”
