Page 46 of Effortless

And she did.

A bob, huh?

Her reply came instantly with, No bangs, and wavy.

Tom was heading into the warehouse where the Conti crew usually worked out of. Other than his friend, Lou, and Adriano, the warehouse should be empty of other foot soldiers. Some were working their usual places—dealing, stealing, or whatever else.

A couple of them had some kind of scheme planned for boosting a truck just outside of the city limits. They wouldn’t be back until later—when the whole crew would gather to handle the stolen goods—and Tom was grateful.

He was in no mood to deal with their defiance and ignorance today. Their nonsense had lessened since he came back from his break, and the time away had given him back some patience to handle it better should it come up again.

For now.

Tom supposed it helped that Adriano had stepped back from the crew a bit. Now, Tom was no longer the secondary Capo answering to Adriano, but rather, the head of the crew giving orders and making business for them. He wasn’t sure whose idea that had been, and all Adriano offered was that he had other things to handle for a while.

It was one thing for the men of the crew to disrespect a secondary Capo. A guy who had a title, but who also didn’t have a whole lot of say or control to begin with where the crew was concerned. Well, it was something else entirely now that Tom had the run of the place.

Given his propensity to walk a thin line where patience was concerned, Tom had a feeling the guys on the crew would likely be careful for a while. Test him out, maybe. See how far they could push before he snapped back.

Just how it was.

He lifted the bay door to the warehouse as he looked back down at his phone. His first inclination had been to ask Camilla for a picture of the new hairstyle, but he hesitated.

Fuck it, he told himself. She started this conversation, so he took that as a sign she must have wanted to chat.

Show me, his next text said.

Tom shoved the cell phone into his pocket as he crossed the warehouse floor. Lou worked at the other end moving boxes to the far wall out of the way for later. His friend forgot his task as he saw Tom coming in his direction.

“You’re not done yet?” Tom joked.

Lou leaned on a metal table. “Hey, if you wanted fast, you should have got one of the other pricks to do the job.”

“Do you want to be one step closer to getting arrested, or doing grunt work and staying out of trouble?”

“Point taken.”

Tom had also delegated this particular task to Lou for another reason. It allowed him five minutes alone with his friend without anyone else from the crew standing there to listen in like a bunch of cafones. He didn’t need Lou taking shit from the other guys because the two were friends.

In his pocket, his phone buzzed with an incoming text message. Likely Cam. Tom was already pulling the phone out when Lou spoke again.

“Shit, I haven’t seen very much of you since you got back from New York. How was that, by the way?”

“Interesting,” Tom said, his attention now distracted by the photo loading up on his phone. “Very interesting, man.”

To say the least.

“Business, or …?”

Tom glanced up to find his friend watching him curiously. Lou was not like Tom, really. His friend hadn’t been born into mafia royalty like he had. Lou was just another foot solider; a kid that had come from Nothing, Chicago, and found easy money on the streets. He got mixed up in some business with Adriano’s crew when he was fourteen or so, and the rest was history where his career in the mafia was concerned.

The two had met when Tom was a teenager following his uncle around. They had made fast friends, and here they were years later.

“New York is New York,” Tom said. “Anytime someone from Chicago goes there—unless it’s the boss—we all defer to whatever family we’re there to deal with, you know? We don’t have much pull or say there. So, no, not business.”

“Just personal, huh?”

Tom looked down at his phone, and a slow grin spread over his face. Personal. Damn right. Every bit of that trip had been personal in too many ways to count for Tom, and it seemed like it wasn’t entirely over yet.