Page 21 of One Step After Another

7.

Luca

LUCA had long becomeaccustomed to chasing people down—his best friend included. Naz’s need to keep moving from one thing to another was only a by-product of his heavy hand in the family business. The mafia always liked to keep a man on his feet and running.

Sometimes, it meant Luca couldn’t get a meeting in with his friend at all. Other times, it just meant he had to fit one in whenever he could. Even if that time was during a family breakfast at a restaurant in Brooklyn when they weren’t supposed to be talking any kind of business at all. Not that it ever mattered to him.

It did, however, matter to the man who demanded the breakfast between the Donati family and Luca’s.

He figured ...

Rules were meant, and made, to be broken.

Right?

Even if breaking it meant risking the wrath of the family boss currently sitting at the head of the table and eyeing Luca from his spot as he slid into the chair beside Naz’s after entering the restaurant. Cross Donati was a lot of things. Luca had grown up calling the man his uncle even if he wasn’t related by blood. One of his father’s very best friends, he had learned to appreciate the softer, family side, of the mafia boss before anything else.

Then, life got in the way.

Business, too.

He was given an entirely different kind of perspective on the man Cross could be when the situation and time called for it as Luca grew older and started to dabble in the family business. And it was that lack of ignorance about Cross that kept Luca quiet as the man continued watching him instead of going back to his previous conversation with his wife, Catherine, at the end of the breakfast table.

He didn’t mind breaking a rule. He simply didn’t want to do it brazenly. Therein lied the difference. Or at least, it was a good enough one for Luca when it came to Cross. There were some men he knew better than to provoke.

Cross Donati was one of those.

“Good to see you showing your face this weekend,” came the familiar voice of his father from the other side of the table. “I figured you would still be chasing after someone’s—”

“Zeke.”

The quiet murmur crawled down the table from the boss’s seat to Luca’s father’s all the way at the end. It silenced everyone as it passed, his mother, sister, and best friend included. When Cross said no business at family functions—even if it was just a simple breakfast—then that was exactly what he meant. Regardless of who sat at the table.

Luca tipped his head to the side, smiling at his ma and then nodding to his father. “Hey to you, too, Dad.”

Zeke’s jaw tightened but that was the only sign of his irritation otherwise. “Busy week?”

Luca lifted his leather-covered shoulders, happy to be back in his staple black jacket and hoodie for the time being. Hopefully, he wouldn’t need to slap on another suit and tie for a while if he was lucky. But one never knew what the future held, either. “Busy life, Papa.”

“Right, right.”

“Are we eating or what?” asked Cross from down the way. “I’m starved.”

The confirmative noise from the other Puzzas and Donatis at the table sent the boss clapping his hands and calling for the servers. Another benefit of this restaurant—the Donatis owned it. Which meant whenever a recognizable face from the family came through the front door, the employees jumped through hoops to make sure everything was perfect.

Luca decided to put the flood of servers coming into the private dining section to his benefit while everyone else around him was distracted. The servers came in with a choice of breakfast foods on platters, stopped at every person with a choice in coffee, juice, or water, and did their job. Quiet chatter bounced from person to person.

He turned to his friend.

“Guess what I got?” he asked Naz.

Naz thanked the woman pouring his coffee and blocking the view of the boss down the way before asking Luca, “What? And make it quick, you know how my father gets when we discuss any kind of business at a dinner table with family present.”

“A reporter ...”

It had taken Luca an entire week after the hellish fundraiser dinner that went to complete shit to pull together a decent amount of information about what exactly went on ... but he did it. There could be only one reason why Penny had been there that night—to murder the son of the prominent politician who had been busy shaking hands downstairs while his son got a bullet between his eyes eight floors up.

The real question was why?