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CHAPTER ONE
Nino
“What are you doing in my driveway?” Matteo barked, making me roll out from under his wife’s car.
“Changing the oil,” I said, wiping my hands on a rag.
“Why?”
“Because it’s been six months.”
“Why are you changing her oil at all, is the question.”
“Because it needed to be done.”
“Christ, Nino. Don’t you think you’re taking this ‘indebted to Josie for life’ thing a little far? It’s been years now.”
“Yeah. And my brother is still alive all these years later because of her.”
A while back, when Josie and Matteo had first started dating, some shit had gone down that meant men were coming after her. My brother Massimo had been one of her guards that night. If it weren’t for Josie, the fucker who’d shot him was going to put a final bullet in his head. But then she’d gone after the attacker with a fucking frying pan, getting herself kidnapped in the process, but saving Massimo’s life.
I owed her.
So I tried to pay it back in small ways when I could.
“You do realize I’m her husband, right? I’m supposed to be the one dealing with the oil. Taking out the trash…”
“Oh, yeah, brought the cans in too,” I said, waving over toward them.
“It’s six in the morning. Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?” he asked, shaking his head at me.
The sad thing was, not really.
My schedule had been pretty light as of late, aside from the occasional work shit.
“Not really,” I admitted.
“Jesus,” Matteo hissed. “Go get some breakfast or something. And no,” he said when I started to open my mouth, “Josie doesn’t need anything. I think someone else needs to save one of your brothers’ lives, so you can fixate on them for a change,” he said, but he was smiling.
With that, he went back inside.
I finished the oil, cleaned up my mess, then went ahead and followed his advice. I’d been up since five, getting a quick workout in, then doing the oil.
I could use some sustenance.
Seven in the morning, though, meant that there weren’t a whole hell of a lot of options in Navesink Bank, so I drove another town or so out, finding a little early morning brunch place that had opened up a couple of months before.
The Brunch Bar was a tiny gem of a place wedged between a dry cleaner and a small general store in a strip on the highway.
A terrible location, really, but the owner had clearly put a lot of work into it.
The robin’s egg blue sign was bright and the font clear from the road. A couple little colorful tables sat out front on the sidewalk near the double plate glass windows to each side of the door.
The windows had trailing plants hanging from a rod above them, and crystals hung here and there, casting little rainbows of light into the restaurant.
Even the damn chime on the door—a chirping sound instead of a bell—was charming.
The inside was small, only accommodating about six tables of four down the center, and two tables of two by each window.
