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ANTHONY
When I woke up the next morning, I had a text from Joseph Rossi.
My first thought was one of surprise. Our meeting yesterday hadn’t led to anything good, and I didn’t think either of us had walked away from it thinking that we’d be meeting again. I’d met with him to try to build an alliance but it had become clear almost immediately that he’d come for only one reason: to gather information. He’d wanted to know what my family was doing and why. What we had to do with the Carusos. What our beef was with the Rossis and the Brennans, and why the Massimos hadn’t come forward the way any other family would have, with a complaint and a demand for justice.
I hadn’t had answers for him, because I didn’t know anything more than what my uncle had told me. Even if I’d known those answers, I wouldn’t have told him.
I didn’t know Joseph Rossi, but I knew his reputation. A quick temper and an even quicker trigger finger, and from what I’d heard, his younger brother was only marginally more practical. They had predictably quick Italian tempers and hadn’t become any more dependable by adding the Irish to their list of allies. They were dangerous and we couldn’t trust them, and I’d been watching the dock out of the corner of my eye during the whole meeting, well aware that Joseph would have brought shooters with him.
The truth was, the entire meeting had felt like a mistake. My uncle had been sure I could bring the Rossis over to our side via Joseph being a similar age tp me and having had the same friends at school. But Ercole hadn’t taken into account the tightness of the Rossi family. They knew the Massimos were after them. Joseph had said so at the start.
And they weren’t a family that forgave easily.
So I was surprised to find a text from him asking to meet again in two days. He said he’d been thinking about my offer of an alliance and that he had some questions.
That seemed wrong to me. He hadn’t had any questions yesterday. What had he done, gone home and sat around in his study thinking about it? Come up with a list of possibilities?
I didn’t believe it. Joseph was smart enough to have come up with any questions during the conversation. This was something else.
I replied, asking for details, and heard that Joseph was going to come out for the next meeting with his brother, Michael, who ran the numbers for the family.
I pressed my lips together. So they were going to send two Rossis and I was just supposed to show up alone, trusting that they weren’t going to cause any trouble? No. This felt like a setup. I flipped over to another text thread and sent a message to my cousin Luca, asking him to come with me. As Ercole’s oldest, he was the next in line for the throne, so to speak, and should have a say in how this went. True, I didn’t trust him any more than I trusted my uncle. Luca had been pushing this war with the Rossis since day one, though it had become obvious to me that he was pushing it for different reasons than my uncle’s. I’d caught Luca in discussions with soldiers from the family, and Luca had cut those discussions short the moment he saw me. I’d seen him talking to some of the more important family members.
I’d seen him challenging his father more and more often during meetings.
Luca was up to something, and I didn’t like not knowing what it was. But he was still my best ally in the family, and the best with a gun. If I was going into another meeting with the Rossis, I wanted backup. And Luca was my best option.
I hated that I didn’t know anything about anything, here. No one had told me what was going on or why this war was happening, and it was driving me crazy. These sort of meetings, these shady, vague statements, were why I didn’t want to be involved in family business. I wanted out of this life. I wanted to take my mother and sister far from this place. Get them away from Ercole and his machinations.
Away from the constant threat of death.
If I came out of this alive, I told myself, that was exactly what I would do. I’d tell Ercole that I wanted out and move to the West Coast with my mom and sister. I’d give them a better life than what they had here, and I’d never talk to another Massimo again.
I ground my teeth, put my phone away, and got out of bed. I had a show to perform this afternoon and I needed to get my mind on the music rather than my family’s politics. I wanted to get to the bar early to help set up. Make sure we had the stage aligned the way I liked it.
My brain hitched on the thought of the bar, and I remembered the last time I’d been there. When Brooks had shown up. She’d said she was going to come when I played again and my fingers twitched, wanting to reach for my phone and text her.
I put the thought away. I still didn’t know what she’d been doing at the bar that first night, but Joseph’s sudden appearance in my life made me think that Brooks hadn’t been there by accident. She was a Rossi, or at least connected to them, and I didn’t think she’d ever done anything without an ulterior motive.
My inclination was to reach for her. Pull her to me and inhale her scent the way I’d once been allowed to do. Let my hands travel down her back and over that amazing ass while I pressed my mouth to hers. Listen to her gasp when I trailed my fingers between her legs.
My body remembered what hers felt like, and yearned to have her again, and seeing her smile and flirt with me had brought all of that raging to the forefront of my mind.
I wanted to believe she was my friend.
But she was a Rossi, and as far as Brooks was concerned, blood ran thicker than lust.
And I needed to remember that no matter how much I wanted her to be my ally, she might well be my enemy in the war that was coming.
8
BROOKS
“Who’s texting you right now?” Penny asked sharply, glancing at my phone.
I looked down and thumbed it open, wondering the same thing. I had the phone locked down to anyone but the most important contacts, courtesy of a long-promised afternoon off with Penny Lane, one of my best friends. I didn’t like taking my phone offline right now—not when the Rossis and Brennans were facing what they were facing—but Penny had just come out of a situation where her life had literally been on the line, and I’d promised her that I’d take an afternoon off with her for ‘girly stuff.’
Evidently that meant getting our nails done and drinking fancy coffee drinks.
