“Heard anything?” my father asked.
Leo shook his head. “If there’s a retaliation, we’ll be ready for it. Like we always are.”
The next day, I was in my office when he walked inside shortly before eleven.
I knew it was him coming around the corner before he appeared, just by his gait. The sound of his boots implied it was a big man with a long stride. I could feel his energy too, smoke that wafted down the hallway and burned my lungs when I took a breath.
He rounded the corner but didn’t actually take a step into my office.
He looked at me.
I looked at him.
There wasn’t a smile or affection in his gaze. He spoke to me like I was anyone in the world, nothing special. “I’ll be at the car whenever you’re ready to go.” He turned back into the hallway without waiting for me to reply.
When he was gone, my breaths were uneven and a little haywire. My hands were suddenly clammy and my fingertips numb. I wasn’t sure how I could sit in the car with him for half an hour without combusting.
I gathered my laptop and workbook in my bag before I headed downstairs to where he leaned against his Range Rover, wearing dark sunglasses on the bridge of his nose while texting on his phone.
I wondered who he was texting.
I opened the door to the back seat and placed my bag on the floor before I got into the passenger seat.
Without looking at me, he walked around to the driver’s side and fired off his text before he got behind the wheel.
I buckled my safety belt and stared straight ahead, painfully aware of how strange my breathing was. I felt like I had a gun to my head because the tension was paramount.
He started the engine with the press of a button and then buckled his safety belt. With one hand on the wheel, he left the property, resting his arm on the center console…and not on my thigh.
He pulled onto the road and drove in silence.
I kept my eyes on the road and wondered how we’d survive the most awkward drive of all time.
He reached for the radio and turned on music, the first time he’d ever done that.
But it didn’t help. Still awkward as fuck.
At least for me. I couldn’t tell how he felt.
It was a thirty-minute drive to Lombardi’s sauce factory, the sun bright on a cloudless day in Sicily. Anticipation was in the air as everyone waited for the summer season to officially start, when the sun didn’t go down until almost nine in the evening every night.
That short drive felt longer than a flight from Rome to New York. We drove through the city until he approached the open gates to the factory that still had Lombardi’s name plastered everywhere.
Wolfe drove his Range Rover to one of the buildings—I assumed the very one where Luigi had died. He parked the car outside, steam absent from the machinery because production seemed to have come to a halt with the handover.
He wordlessly hopped out and didn’t wait for me as he walked to the main door.
I got my bag from the back then headed inside.
Wolfe was already up the stairs to the gallery overhead, his t-shirt tight on his arms and across his shoulders. He was dressed in a gray shirt and black jeans, always looking good in the color because of his ink.
I took a breath before I followed him upstairs then stepped into an office that was cluttered with loosepaperwork everywhere, stacks of it on the desk, the filing cabinet wide open like someone had recently rummaged inside it. It was a complete shitshow.
Wolfe stayed by the door. “I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.” He walked out and shut the door behind him.
I set my bag on a nearby chair and sighed as I looked at the mess. The last thing I wanted to do was sift through disorganized clutter as I tried to make sense of his business and profit margins and their supplies and all that bullshit. But it was my job.
Though I was more deflated by the indifferent man downstairs.
