Page 17 of Naz & Roz

SIX

Naz wasn’t exactly fucking surprised to find Luca leaning against the entrance door of his apartment complex.

Luca cocked a brow at the sight of him, and flicked the ash from his cigarette over the railing. “Took you long enough, didn’t it?”

Naz laughed under his breath. “Seriously?”

His friend kept staring at him … like he was waiting for something. “Yeah, Naz.”

It’d taken him a good hour and a half to get back to the city after saying goodbye to his parents—who both looked like they had questions about where he’d gone with Roz, but also chose not to ask. At least, not yet. His parents tended to mind their own business where he was concerned, and he liked that just fine. That way, when they did ask something, he found it easier to tell them.

But he certainly hadn’t been gone long enough that Luca should be acting like a cocksucker. Then again, Naz had kind of taken his best friend’s sister away from the party without much of a word.

“I walked her home, asshole,” Naz said, tugging the apartment keys from his pocket. Luca slipped in behind him as he unlocked the front door to the apartment complex. He preferred living in the city when it came to work. He was always running for his father or Zeke when it came to the Donati Cosa Nostra, and that business never stopped. It was almost always in the city, too.

Luca cleared his throat as the two of them stepped into the main entrance. Naz shot his friend another look, this time, one that silently said, Get it out, or shut the fuck up.

“Just so you know, Dad has cameras all over that property,” Luca muttered.

Ah, yeah.

“Forgot about that,” Naz murmured.

He shouldn’t have forgotten about it, though, to be fair. Men like Zeke—and even his own father—tended to keep a close eye on their properties because the very nature of their business meant the first thing an enemy attacked was wherever a man called home. Plus, made men were just paranoid in general. That couldn’t be helped.

“Well, damn,” Naz added under his breath. “Let’s hope he doesn’t watch very much, I guess.”

Luca’s fist slammed into the back of Naz’s shoulder with a sharp snap. Naz jerked forward from the hard punch with a choked laugh. Because shit yeah, while it was funny, it still fucking hurt, too.

“Fucker,” Naz said, a little breathless.

“You’re the fucker. Who shouldn’t be messing around with my sister!”

Really?

That’s what they were going to do?

Naz didn’t think so. “Shut up until we get into my place. I don’t feel like getting another noise violation fine because you wanna be a shithead, Luca.”

His friend followed behind him, and thankfully, mostly stayed quiet. Except for the occasional grumble under his breath, that was. Naz could practically feel Luca’s glare burning into his back, though.

Luckily for Luca, his friend didn’t have to wait very long before he was able to open his mouth, and go off again. Naz lived on the bottom floor—his father hated that for a number of reasons—and close to the end of the hallway.

The moment the apartment door closed behind them, Luca started bitching. Naz basically tuned his friend out as he shrugged off his leather jacket, and pulled the beanie from his head. He didn’t need to actually listen to Luca to know what the guy was saying, so, what was the fucking point in wasting time with that?

Naz pulled the pair of black-rimmed reading glasses out of the inner pocket of his jacket before hanging it up on a rack. He only really needed those damn glasses when he was going to read in bed, or he planned to stare at a computer screen for longer than a couple of hours at a time. Less strain on his eyes, or some goddamn bullshit. But who knew where he was going to be from today to the next—his situation was always changing—so he kept them on him just in case.

Luca was still barking off behind Naz as he headed deeper into his Brooklyn apartment. The place wasn’t much to look at, as far as that went. Hardwood floors with a few too many scuffs, and standard white paint on every wall and ceiling. Even the light fixtures weren’t anything interesting, really. Two decently sized bedrooms—which wasn’t all that easy to find in New York—the standard living room, kitchen, and bathroom.

It certainly wasn’t the Marcello mansion, from his mother’s side of the family. Or even the large Donati home from his father’s side of the family. The shitty little apartment wouldn’t hold a flame to his parents’ home which had been designed and decorated by the best of the very best interior designers in New York.

But it was his place. And it did the job considering how often Naz had to come and go from the apartment. He never actually got to enjoy his place for very long before he was up to do someone else’s business for Cosa Nostra, or he was taking a trip out of the country for a month on the next gun run for his father.

He did manage to get the extra bedroom set up into his home gym. He desperately needed that. And he was able to get some shit up on the walls to decorate. The art he liked, and things he’d collected over the years. A hand drawing of a brain stem. A conceptual painted piece of what someone believed DNA to look like. And things that had nothing to do with that kind of shit, too.

So yeah, the place wasn’t much … he could absolutely afford the penthouse suite in the middle of Manhattan if he wanted it, but this was perfectly fine.

For now.