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“You’re right. But, fuck, what if it is Reilly?”
“Then that’s a whole other ball of shit that’s going to suck. But Holly has all of us to lean on, for whatever she needs.”
“Thanks,” I tell him while clapping a hand over his shoulder.
“Anytime. Now where is this drink I was promised,” he asks me, eyeing the whiskey in my hand.
I down the remainder of my glass and wave at the bartender. Moments later, he places two more whiskeys in front of us. I’m just about to lift the glass to my lips when I hear the unmistakable voice of one of my grandchildren.
“Fucking hell, you sure do know how to breed 'em, T,” Neo says as our shared gazes land on my granddaughter.
Fucking Aurora. This girl is going to be what finally gives me a heart attack.
“She’s fucking eighteen. How the fuck does she keep getting into these places?” I groan, as I watch her standing there with her hands on her hips and her attitude on full display. She’s yelling at someone. I can’t see who it is because her body is blocking whoever is sitting in the booth in front of her.
“She looks like her mother and has the last name Valentino—that’s how,” Neo tells me.
Pushing to my feet, I quickly throw back my drink and slam the empty glass on the bar top. “I’m going to have to take her home,” I say.
“Wait! Let me get the popcorn first. I want to watch the look on her face when she realizes you’re here.” He laughs.
As I’m making my way over to my granddaughter, whoever she was talking to decides to stand up, forcing Aurora to take a few steps back. Some fucking cocksucker, who also appears to be too young to be in a bar, towers over her. His hand comes out, but before he can make contact with her face, which is exactly what he was aiming to do, I grab his wrist. Bending it back until I hear the snap of the fucking bone breaking. The fucking asshole screams as he drops to the ground while clutching his arm to his chest.
“Aurora. Car. Now,” I tell her, holding my palm out for her to go in front of me.
“What the fuck, man? You broke my fucking wrist,” the guy on the floor cries out.
I crouch down so I’m face to face with him. “That won’t be the only fucking thing I break if I ever see you near my granddaughter again,” I tell him. Then, rising back to my full height, I straighten my jacket and follow Aurora out of the bar. Neo lifts his glass at me as we pass.
He was the fucking smart one between the two of us. He and his wife only have Izzy to worry about. One child who only produced two grandchildren. Not the fucking circus I’ve somehow managed to find myself at the center of.
I climb into the waiting SUV after Aurora has already slid into her seat. I don’t say anything. I know if I wait her out, she’ll talk. It only takes five minutes.
“Can we not tell my parents about this?” she huffs.
“What were you doing in that bar, Aurora?” I ask her.
“I was handling something. I didn’t need you to step in, by the way.”
“That fucker was about to hit you,” I tell her.
“I know. I wanted him to,” she says.
“You what? Why the fuck would you want a guy to hit you?”
“Because then I would have been justified in stabbing him. Self-defense. If they hit first, I’m just a helpless little girl who was scared and defended herself with the first thing I could find. And I really wanted to fucking stab the asshole.”
“Why? What’d he do that made you want to stab him?” I ask her. I actually can’t fault her logic. I don’t fucking agree with it, and if the fucker did manage to hit her, he wouldn’t just have a broken wrist. He’d have a broken neck and a shallow fucking grave.
“He hurt someone I know, cheated on her,” Aurora says.
“Who?”
“I can’t say. I’ve been sworn to secrecy. And you wouldn’t want me to break my word, now would you, Nonno? A Valentino is only as good as their word,” she reminds me.
Fuck, this girl is good.
“Fine. Don’t tell me.” I’ll find out anyway. I send a message to Neo.
