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“I just think that marrying a girl you’ve got through kidnapping is a really bad idea. Especially as there are easier ways to find a girl.”
“And what are these easier ways?” I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation with her.
Anni beamed her sweet smile at me. “Online dating apps.”
“Anni, I don’t think—”
“I knew you would feel too shy to set up a profile, so I’ve already done one for you.” She thrusted her cell phone at me. “Here, take a look. And before you start complaining about our Mafia world and the need for secrecy and blah, blah, blah, just read it and you’ll see that I’ve managed to make no mention of your badman ways.”
I looked at the screen and I saw the name ‘Mervin.’
“Er, who’s Mervin, and what’s he got to do with me?”
“That’s your alias. I just thought that you might want to avoid using your real name, but I made your alias something similar to your real name so that it wouldn’t feel weird being called it.”
“No, being called Mervin doesn’t sound weird at all,” I said drily.
“Click on your name and it’ll bring up your profile.” Anni was bubbling over with annoying enthusiasm. I was beginning to wonder how Lorenzo, who was a grumpy asshole at times, managed to put up with her on a daily basis.
Against my better judgment, I tapped on the screen, my eyes widening as I saw a photo of me looking back. A photo of me…with a dog. “What the fuck is this?”
“Male dating profiles get more hits if the man has his kid or pet in the photo with him. And it’s not just a myth—I wouldn’t just blindly believe something that I’ve read. I’ve studied various raw data and calculated that the statistical probability of a profile click is thirty-seven percent higher for a man if he has a child or animal in his profile picture.” Christ, why did my cousin have to marry a math nerd? Couldn’t he have just married a dumb blonde?
I looked back down at the photo. “Mr. Fluffy isn’t my pet,” I snapped.
“I know, but Danio told me that you have a dog in the house, and so I thought why not use the dog in your profile photo. Genius, right?”
“No,not genius. I don’t recall ever having my picture taken with that dumb animal, and the photo makes me look like I’ve got a stick up my ass.”
“Lorenzo always says that Danio is the tech guru in the family, so I got him to photoshop you and Mr. Fluffy into a photo together. Danio said he couldn’t find a recent photo with you smiling, and this was the photo he found where you looked the least murderous and stabby. It’s bad online dating etiquette to use an old photo, so we just went with the best recent one we could find.”
“And using a fake name, plus photoshopping a picture to make it look like I adore dogs, isn’t ‘bad online dating etiquette’, right?”
Anni narrowed her eyes at me. “You could at least give this a chance after all the trouble I’ve gone to. You haven’t even read the profile yet.”
I scrolled down the screen to read what she had written about me. It was all generic bullshit and didn’t sound like me at all. Under hobbies, she’d written: ‘Loves people, loves pets, and loves smiling.’
What theactualfuck?
At that moment, Lorenzo finally made an appearance. “Marco, I got delayed—”
He came to a halt when he saw me holding Anni’s phone.
His eyes lasered into his wife. “Anni, you didn’t show him the dating profile, did you?” he barked. “I told you to delete it.”
“I don’t take my orders from you, Lorenzo,” she said obstinately.
“Sorry about this, Marco.” He yanked Anni out of the chair and practically pushed her out of the door. “We’ve got a tennis match scheduled for after work—I’ll see you there and deal with you then,” he growled at her before shutting the door and turning back to me.
I silently pushed Anni’s phone back across the desk to him.
“I’ll get it deleted, Marco. She means well. I told her you’re a coldhearted bastard and she shouldn’t waste her time on you, but she can’t help caring. She’s just worried about things not working out between you and the girl and you being lonely.”
“Can we talk about something other than my fucking love life?” I fumed at him.
“Sure thing, boss.”
As we talked about business, I couldn’t help thinking about what Anni had said about kidnapping not being the best start to a marriage.
