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And when I did, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t look twice. And then a third time, because she slid up beside me at the bar and took her coat off like a fucking stripper.
Of course, the first thing I noticed was her copper hair. So messy and so much of it. I couldn’t tell whether she’d just been fucked senseless on polyester sheets or been dragged through a bush backward. The second thing I noticed was the green dress that showed too much skin for a Thursday night. And the third? The security tag still fastened to the hem of it.
She was trouble and my gut knew it before she even opened her smart-ass mouth.
Usually, I find it easy to be a gentleman. I have a talent for laughing on cue, cracking a well-placed joke, then making a graceful exit when the small talk gets so dry it makes my eyeballs itch. At least one member of this family has to have manners, and I suppose that task falls on me.
But Penelope made me want to be anything but gentlemanly.
I’m wary of talking to women on this Coast, unless I’m on a one-and-only date with them. There’s nothing less attractive than looking at a lady and seeing your last name flash in lights behind their eyes.
But hers were big and blue and lacked any spark of recognition—at first, anyway. Somewhere between her proposition and me taking a phone call from my brother, she figured it out, and I'd be lying if I said the sadist in me didn’t rear its ugly head when I saw her trying to scurry up the stairs and out of my clutches.
The excitement had me throw my caution and self-control into the fire, so I shouldn’t have been so surprised when I got burned. She hadn’t cheated; she’d won my Breitling fair and square, and the way in which she did it only piqued my interest in who she was and what the fuck she was doing in Devil’s Cove with a suitcase and a stolen dress. I slipped my timepiece into her pocket along with a Sinners Anonymous card in the hope I’d find her secrets waiting for me in the voicemail box by the end of the weekend.
I never thought I’d see her again. So when I spotted that red hair billowing in the wind from the other side of the lake, talking to my little cousin, unease crept under my collar, sticky and hot. It only got worse when she had the fucking nerve to try swindle me again. Talking about luck, of all things.
And then the explosion happened.
My molars grind on instinct, but when I feel Angelo’s gaze growing sharper, I roll my shoulders back and pin him with my best look of indifference. “Would you like to see if my dick shakes, too, or shall we figure out what to do with our dumb-ass cousin?”
Without waiting for a response, I slap his shoulder and stroll into Cas’s office. It has little more than a desk on one side and a long boardroom table on the other, where Viscontis gather like a pack of wolves. Angelo and I take our seats at the head of it.
I pull a poker chip from my pocket. Roll it between my thumb and forefinger. Suddenly, I’m fine with the fact I was unable to drown my unease in liquor, because the adrenaline of sitting next to my brothers at the head of this table by far overpowers it.
This is where I belong and I’ve always known it. Not in Vegas, but in Devil’s Dip with my brothers. Despite all my success on the Strip, there’s always been a black void in the hollow of my chest, an empty ache with the need to be home. I’ve waited nine long years for Angelo to return to the Coast. The moment I got the call he was moving back, I was on the next jet out, much to the dismay of my investors and security detail.
An electric silence cloaks the room. Three heavy beats pass before Gabe breaks it by slamming his fist against the table.
“Never liked the cunt.”
The two younger Hollow brothers murmur in agreement, but not Cas. Instead, he leans over with his silk pocket square in hand and rubs the spot Gabe just punched. “This family is the reason I can’t have nice things,” he mutters.
“Nah. You can’t have nice things in case your scary Russian fiancée throws them at your head,” Benny quips. There’s a ripple of snickers around the table.
“Enough.”
Angelo’s voice is sharp yet simple, cutting through the room like a steak knife. He loosens his bow tie and rubs a palm over his jaw. His wedding band glints under the recessed lights.
“It’s my wedding night. I should be at home fucking my wife and looking up the weather for Fiji. Instead, I’m deep underground in Devil’s Hollow with you bastard reprobates. I want a plan drawn up in the next ten minutes so I can get Rory out of here. Gabe, what are you thinking?”
Gabe leans back in his chair, snapping his bow tie like a whip.
“Grenades or a rocket warhead.”
From the door, my latest recruit, Blake, calls upon Jesus under his breath. I hide my smirk behind my knuckles, before Gabe gets up and snaps his neck.
All of my men are ex-Delta Force or CIA, and they are bound to their instructions tighter than the laces in their combat boots. They are quiet, obedient, and stick to the shadows until I summon them to the light. Half the time, I forget they are there.
They are a far cry from Gabe’s soldati, who all look like they’ve survived the apocalypse. Griffin was both pissed and bewildered with my decision to leave my shiny, gated compound in Vegas and move back to the Coast, and now that the port has been blown up, I’m sure I’ll be hit by a gruff I-told-you-so the moment he catches me alone.
But he’ll never understand me like these men around this table do. Being a Visconti is like a blood-type, you can’t escape what you’re born with. Wouldn’t want to, either.
Angelo’s jaw ticks in thought. He hisses out a puff of hot air, before jerking his chin to Cas and the other Hollow brothers. “And you guys?”
I stop flicking my poker chip and cut a look at Cas in anticipation.
When Angelo put a bullet through Uncle Al’s head and started a civil war with Devil’s Cove, the Hollow clan decided to stay out of it, despite their territory being slap-bang in the middle of us. Think of Hollow as being the Demilitarized Zone, Cas had said at the time. We won’t choose between family.
