“Well, he did. And that explains why Alessandro assumed you were available.” Women like Francesca were never available. Men like me spotted them a mile away and moved in hard and fast. Only my dick got anywhere near that ass.
“I don’t understand why he wouldn’t have just come to me directly.”
“Does any daughter want to be set up by her father?” I asked with a chuckle.
“Well, probably not. But…”
I decided not to tell her what else her father had confided to me, that he wanted her to take over the business someday, that Leo wasn’t good enough. It was probably the greatest compliment she would ever receive, and I wanted her to hear it from him, not me. And I would make sure I was the man at her side when that day came.
We continued to eat and finished the dinner that she’d made. So I wouldn’t feel like a freeloader, I left envelopes of cash on her kitchen counter once a week, and thankfully, she didn’t try to refuse it. I wasn’t sure how much her father paid her for all the work she did, but she’d better have a fat bank account because of how essential she was.
“So…” She lifted her glass and gently swirled it before she took a drink. “How do you feel about that meeting with your old boss?”
He didn’t feel like an old boss, more like an estranged father. “Good.”
“Yeah?”
“I enjoyed telling him off. Felt like revenge.”
“And then you just left?”
“Yeah, pretty much.” I wasn’t sure how things would unfold with Icarus, though Cosa Nostra were big players in the game. But so was the Skull King. I wasn’t sure who I would put my money on if I were gambling my life. Maybe I was too heartless, but I really didn’t give a damn what Icarus did to the men I’d loved like family.
Or maybe I was still too pissed off to care. “Thank you for dinner. It was great, as always.” I’d never had a woman cook for me, not even my own mother. She used to put me in the hallway with some kind of game while she did her job behind closed doors. My childhood kinda sucked, but I knew she did the best she could under the circumstances.
“You’re sweet.”
“I’m only that way to you.” I grabbed the empty plates and carried them to the kitchen, where I rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher. I’d started to wash the warm pans on the stove when she walked over.
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I know.”
She grabbed my wrist and steadied me before she tapped the handle to the faucet and turned off the water. “I’ll do them later.”
I smirked and set the pan aside. “And what would you like to do instead?” I turned to look at her, my chin dropped because she was like a small branch to my tall trunk.
She wore one of my oversized t-shirts with her thigh-high socks underneath, and when she reached for the shirt and started to pull it over her head, I felt a flush of heat. It was so hot, like I’d just scored her for the very first time.
It caught some of her hair when she pulled it off, then her firm tits were exposed with the hard nipples pointed like diamonds. There was nothing but a thong underneath, along with her socks.
Cristo.
She grabbed me by the front of the shirt and tugged me into her, catching my lips with hers. “Fuck me, please,” she said through her breathy kiss. “God, you’re so hot I can’t stand it.”
6
FRANCESCA
“Leo, I need you to find more guys,” my father ordered. “At least thirty. And I want men who know what the fuck they’re doing.” My father sat at the head of the table on the terrace, a burning cigar sitting between his fingertips.
Elio sat on his right. He tapped his cigar against the ashtray, and some of the ash sprinkled to the bottom.
“Thirty?” Leo asked incredulously. “Where the fuck am I going to find thirty guys?”
“We could move over the men from the factory,” Elio said. “Just restructure staff.”
“But you wantgoodguys,” Leo said. “And we can never trust that those guys won’t stab us in the back the second they get the chance. They liked Luigi as their boss. They’re only cooperative because they know we’ll cut off their legs.” Leo sat with his arms propped on the armrests of the metal chair, wearing sunglasses even though we were seated in the shade. “I know we lost some good guys, but we don’t need to rush off and replace them with whoever the fuck we can find.”
