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He ignores me long enough to order a pint of the Predator and finish his text message. Luca slams the phone down on the table with impressive force and it draws the eyes of everyone else on the rooftop. Thankfully, he has a case on his phone or else I swear the glass backing would have shattered. “Becauseit helps me deal with people like you,” Luca says with a charming smile.
Luca, for reasons that escape the rest of the family, is heavily involved with the politics of Manhattan. A year ago he managed to worm his way onto the City Commission and he’s absolutely certain that he’ll be Mayor in two years. He likes to say that he’s going to run for President one day, but the rest of us know that won’t be possible. You don’t have to look too hard to find out a few of Luca Valenti’s dirty secrets.
“Anyway,” Luca taps his fingers on the table aggressively impatient. “Why are we here? What do you want?’
He’s a busy man, and I shouldn’t waste his time, but Luca sometimes rubs me the wrong way. “I was thinking of repainting the house and I wanted your opinion on the colors.”
Luca’s jaw drops. I swear I see my life flash before his eyes as he considers leaping across this table to choke me out.
“Relax,” I roll my eyes before he lets his baser instincts win, “it’s more serious than that.”
Mateo snorts when Luca lets out a sigh of frustration and petulantly throws himself back in the chair. “Forgive me for putting the cart before the horse, but you wouldn’t be calling us here about the Jackson kidnapping case, would you?” He shrugs his shoulders with I grin. “I know you’ve had problems with that officer.”
“I’vehad problems with the Chief of Police,” Luca corrects his older brother. “I half considered bringing it up to the Commission to have him removed. If he tickets my car for being two minutes over the three-hour parking limitone more time,” he threatens.
I raise my hand to silence him. Luca is the middle child of the five Valenti boys and he’s forever trying to make himself more important. I suspect sometimes that that’s why he went against the family’s reputation to become a political figure in town. The rest of the Valentis are criminals and he’s an upstanding City Commissioner with a bright future. Blah, blah, blah. Middle child shit. “He’s a pain in the ass, Luc, but I’m taking care of it.”
Mateo grabs another glass of beer from his flight and sips half of it in one gulp. “Oh, yeah? By kidnapping his daughter? What are you going to do with her, Nero? Dangle her as bait? Newsflash: the rest of us can do our research, too. She and daddypiece of shitaren’t even close.”
I don’t know why he didn’t call me earlier in the week if he assumed that I was behind Calliope’s kidnapping. We could have resolved this over the phone like men instead of duking it out over IPAs and chorizo crab dip. “Yeah, thanks, Sherlock, I figured that one out for myself.”
The server arrives with Luca’s pint and drops it off. We quickly rattle off our orders with minimal questions before she turns on her heels and leaves mumbling under her breath.
“She’s gotta nice ass.” Luca can’t tear his eyes off of her even when the bartender catches him looking. I snap my fingers at him to get his attention; instead, he bites my head off. “Yo, fucking do it again, Raniero. Snap at me like I’m a dog one more time. I fucking dare you.”
This is why the family doesn’t get together much anymore. Luca has anger management problems and a schedule so jam-packed that he barely had forty-eight minutes to squeeze us in for lunch. And when he does manage to see us, he reverts back to his place in the Valenti family and stirs the shit for fun.
I ignore him as best as I can. I know we just placed our orders, but if my burger doesn’t get here soon, a mixture of hunger and frustration will force me to haul off and hit my brother. “Yes, I kidnapped Calliope Jackson. After that incident where he tried to frame me,” I shake my head just remembering it, “and then threatened my family, I was forced to do what I had to do to protect our family.”
Mateo and Luca exchange a look between the two of them. Wisely, Mateo is the one that chooses to speak first. “You decided to protect our family by pissing off the single legal entity that can take us down?”
I would have run this decision past my brothers, all four of them, if I thought that they needed to know about it before it happened. Instead, I ran it past my Consigliere, Gianluca. He had some reservations and we talked those through like adults. He didn’t question me like he was undermining my decisions—unlike Mateo, whose tone puts me on the defensive. “He needs to be taught a lesson. The other day he called me a fucking Italian thug.”
It’s Luca’s turn to snort in derision as he checks his watch and takes a healthy gulp from his pint glass. “Someone calls you a bad name and you decide to commit a felony?”
“He’s going to be calling me son-in-law soon,” I return with a glare.
Their eyebrows raise at the same time, curiosity highlighting their features. “Come again?” Mateo asks.
I sit back in my chair and finally take a deep breath. My brothers might give me shit for the choices I make, but they’re always impressed with my reasoning. When our father left me to run the family’s empire, they were hesitant that I’d make a good leader. But I’ve shown them time and time again that the Valenti family isn’t just a name with a violent past. I brought us into the twenty-first century. “I kidnapped Calliope to marry her and knock her up. Once the Jackson name is tied to ours, the Chief won’t be so quick to tear us down.”
“You’re going to marry her?” Mateo’s nose crinkles in disgust. “She’s not very active on social media so maybe her pictures are a little old. But is she even attractive?”
Calliope is 5’2” with a lithe figure. Her tits are the size of teacups. Her hips are delicate and her ass is there, but in baggy enough clothes, you’d never notice it. She isn’t like the buxom beauties I’ve been out with before, but she is alluring in her own way. “Yes,” I glare at him. “There’s more to her than meets the eye.” Like her submission. And the way she looks at me with those bright, vulnerable green eyes.
“I’ve always wanted to get a girl pregnant.” Luca kicks his feet up on the table and looks off into the distance with a curved smile on his face. “Watch her belly swell with my seed. See her tits get fuller and her hips widen. Pregnant women are beautiful.”
I’ll admit that I agree with him. There’s nothing better than the glow of pregnancy on a woman’s face. “That’ll come after the wedding,” I tell him with a shrug. “And the wedding won’t happen until after she’s broken. I have to be able to trust her and right now I’m certain that if given the chance, she’d run away.”
Luca only laughs. It’s enough to draw attention back to us once more. This time it’s followed by frowns and glares from the other diners. “Break her by breaking her in, Nero. Fill her pussy good, knock her up, and then invite Chief fucking Jackson to your shotgun wedding. Iguaranteehe’ll be less of a prick when he finds out that you cream-pied his daughter.”
I hadn’t thought about getting her pregnant first. That idea has some merit. “You might be onto something, Luca.”
He gives me a wink before saying, “And you might beintosomething when you get back home, am I right?”
It’s a dirty joke and I can’t help but laugh. He’s not wrong. After that first night I forced her to blow me, I’ve been struggling through cold showers while telling myself to back off. Maybe I had the wrong idea.
10
