Page 24 of Vow

Why play with her heart like this?

Why?

FIVE

Andino stepped out of his house, and eyed the quiet street. The sky was bright, and near cloudless. Despite the cold, it was a beautiful morning. The street looked peaceful, and Andino’s presence on his doorstep hadn’t changed that fact.

It wasn’t that he expected something to happen the moment he left his place, considering enforcers had been posted at his door, and all that good shit, but still. He hadn’t left the house since the shooting a few days earlier—doctor’s orders. Well, and Dante’s.

So, that first step felt … cautious.

Yes, that was as good of a word as any.

He didn’t for a second think the Calabrese brothers were stupid enough to attack him the very second he left his house for the first time, but it was hard to tell what those bastards were capable of sometimes. Hadn’t they already proven that they were more than willing to kick a man when he was already down if that meant getting what they wanted?

Andino was not that stupid.

Fool me once, and all that nonsense.

He was not going to allow them to get one over on him a second time. He’d eat the barrel of his own gun first, and that wasn’t even him being dramatic.

Snaps trailed close to Andino’s side, but kept his nose to the ground. Apparently, even the dog wasn’t going to leave anything to chance today.

So was his life.

“Come on, then,” Andino said, pulling open the passenger door to a rental Mercedes. His fucking Lexus was still in the shop getting patched up. It’d taken ten bullets, and he didn’t want the car back unless it was in perfect condition. Snaps gave the vehicle a look, clearly recognizing it wasn’t the car he preferred. “Get in—we’re leaving.”

The dog huffed in that way of his—solemn and irritated at the same time—but was quick to follow the order, and jump inside the car. Andino closed the passenger door behind his pup, and then rounded the front to slide in the driver’s side.

But not before giving the enforcer who was trailing him today a look. The guy had parked on the other side of the road, and given the cold March air, had stayed inside his running vehicle. Andino didn’t blame him.

It wasn’t long before Andino was on the road, and heading for the heart of the city. The faint sting in his arm kept him from getting too comfortable every time he had to move the steering wheel even a fraction of an inch.

Fuck.

That bullet graze was not going to let up.

His phone chimed with a call just as he pulled onto a familiar block in upper Manhattan, but he didn’t bother to pick it up even as the car’s speakers told him who the caller was. His father. He’d see Gio in less than ten minutes, anyway. Surely, he could wait.

Andino pulled the Mercedes into a back alleyway, and parked. Snaps wasn’t allowed inside restaurants, but certainly not businesses that didn’t belong to Andino. Sure, this place was his uncle’s, but that didn’t make a difference to the health code, and inspectors. It only took one person making a goddamn complaint.

That just meant Andino had to be … careful.

With Snaps close to his side, Andino approached the back exit door of the business, and knocked twice with two knuckles. Quickly, the door was opened to showcase Lucian’s enforcer who always kept watch at his post as long as his boss was working inside the private dining section of the business.

“Andino,” the enforcer greeted.

Soon, the man would be calling him boss.

Andino had … sort of … resigned himself to that fact. He wasn’t as fucking stuck in his feelings and emotions as he once had been about the whole thing. It might not have been what he would have chosen, but it was for the best.

And wasn’t that what counted?

Apparently so.

“Your father and Lucian are in the private section,” the man said.

Andino nodded, and stepped in the doorway. Snaps was quick to follow even when the enforcer gave the pup a look like he was going to say something. The man wisely chose to keep his mouth shut.