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Oh, shit.
His words stopped me, and I struggled not to sneak a peek at the security cameras. My grip on my phone loosened, and I dropped it, trying and failing to catch it.
It fell to the floor with a soft thud, and when I bent to pick it up, the door swung open.
My hands were still on the floor and my ass in the air when Bastian stepped out. His eyes locked on mine with eerie precision, and I succumbed to the fury in them.
They were lethal.
Vibrant.
Irate.
If death had a face, it would be Bastian’s.
And he was glaring right at me.
BASTIANO ROMANO
In the restaurant business, people say if you’ve earned a James Beard award, you’ve made it big.
That it’s something to be proud of.
Something to put on your trophy shelf, add to your LinkedIn profile, or whatever your typical doleful sap did.
But I had not one, not two, but three James Beard awards for top restauranteur. Three fucking James Beard awards, and I was taking care of some pitiful schmuck from the armpits of the Lower East Side.
This sure as hell didn’t feel like making it big.
Tommy Bianchi thought he could get away with skimming money from my family and knocking up my second cousin.
We were pissed about the money, sure, but that wasn’t enough to warrant a visit from me, Uncle Vince, or Gio—let alone the three of us together.
Any other day, and it would be a lowly Romano soldier raining punches down on his head.
But Tommy Bianchi had made the mistake of tossing the money he had skimmed from us at my cousin and telling her to find the nearest clinic when she’d told him, with tears in her fucking eyes, that she was pregnant.
Gio, of course, was affronted, never mind the fact that he had just recently tried to pawn that same cousin off on me. Uncle Vince, on the other hand, was absolutely livid, and that made him lethal.
You couldn’t tell it just by looking at him.
But I knew him well enough to know that the hand he rested in the pant pocket of his tailored Tom Ford suit was clenched and the casualness of his tone concealed thickly veiled rage.
Uncle Vince leaned against the edge of my desk and crossed his legs at his ankles.
“Marta.” He tilted his head to the side. “I remember her. Sweet girl. Too bad.”
I fought the urge to sigh.
We were toying with Bianchi. It was supposed to be fun. It was supposed to satisfy the vengeance my cousin rightfully deserved.
But I was bored.
Bored of it all.
This life.
This job.
