Page 16 of Unruly

“You look very much like your mother, Catherine.”

“Ah.” Catherine smiled. “So I have been told, although with just enough of my father to color me up.”

“Yes, Dante. The green eyes.” He waved a finger at her half up-do. “The dark hair. Definitely your father. Quite an … interesting man.”

He did not sound like he found her father interesting. Maybe irritating, though. Catherine made a note to ask her mother about that later.

Giuseppe let her hand go, and waved at a chair. “Please, sit.”

She did, and allowed him to push her chair in. A second later, and he was back in his own chair and waving a hand at a waiter.

“Wine, please, you know the one.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I thought we were eating,” Catherine said.

Giuseppe shrugged his broad shoulders beneath his Armani suit. “We will. I ordered for us already.”

Well, then …

“Would you prefer business before or after dinner?”

“I prefer my food good, my business clean, and my wine tasteful, Catherine. I do not, however, mix them all together.”

She peered over her shoulder, noting a dark-dressed man standing in the corner with his hands clasped at his middle. He was watching them with rapt attention. In her husband’s business, they would call him an enforcer. Catherine was not sure how Giuseppe might refer to the man, but it was clear he was looking after his boss.

“Our next shipment is due to you in a month, is it not?” he asked.

Catherine’s attention came back to the table. “It is, but there’s some things we’d like to clear up.”

“Like what?” His grin deepened as he sipped from a glass of water, and never once took his gaze from her. “Surely our business is still … good, Tesoro.”

Treasure.

Catherine ignored the sweet endearment, and continued on. “Business is always good. However, some of our associates—”

Giuseppe cocked a brow. “The Three Families I supply for you?”

“Yes, those.”

Catrina had long acted as the broker of sorts between the Three Families and Giuseppe. He supplied their cocaine, but Catrina was the one who made the deals and had the face to face meetings with the man as a go-between.

“What about them?”

“Prices are fluctuating. You—or your men, perhaps—have been noted to change prices, to let them fluctuate a little too much. The entire agreement between us and you as a supplier was that the cost of the … product would remain within a very small margin between the families to keep competition from causing issues.”

“Are you accusing me of ripping them off?”

Catherine glanced away, but she knew she couldn’t back down. She had the numbers to prove what she knew was fact. “My husband is Cross Donati—which I’m sure you know—and he’s being charged twenty percent more a kilo. My cousin controls another faction of the Three Families—John Marcello—and last month, his cost was tipping thirty percent. The only margin that remained where we agreed was my other cousin’s—Andino’s—family.”

Giuseppe stiffened in his seat, and his gaze narrowed. “I was not aware that the Marcellos are that integrated into the Three Families now.”

“It’s been this way for years. I didn’t realize the information wasn’t widely known.”

By the look on his face, Giuseppe had not appreciated her comment. What was Catherine supposed to do? Keep letting this man rip off her husband, and cousins?

“Our product was fine at cost,” Catherine added, “for my mother’s business, I mean. However, two months ago, and then last month, there were twenty combined kilos ruined in the transport. We were still required, and expected, to pay for that cocaine, Mr. Bianchi. And we did, of course, but if twenty kilos at every run continues to be ruined, why would we bother paying you for it? It’s not as if we can actually sell it.”