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And just like that, I remember my pregnancy photos are in that album. His stormy eyes fly to my face, and for one heart-stopping moment, I wonder if he's seen something that tells him the truth about Evie.
Damn my mother and her love for scrapbooking and photo albums
But Domenic just flips the album around, and points at a picture of me captioned "three months pregnant." I'm standing in my old kitchen with a thick cast on my leg and a crutch under one arm.
"What happened?"
I scratch my arm. "Oh…the leg? Yeah, that was…."
From Roulette. Snapping my femur in half the morning after you banned me from your casino. Leaving me to crawl out of there in agony.
Recovering from a broken leg while pregnant had been miserable. I'd needed to be on my feet for jobs to cover our loss of income from working with the Wild Seven, so I had to use stupid crutches for what felt like forever. It hurt and itched, and the doctor said it took even longer to heal than more clean breaks he'd seen like that.
"I fell from a balcony," I supply, the same excuse I once told my mom. "It wasn't a super tall balcony, so there were no other injuries, but it still hurt like a bitch. Happened not too long before I got pregnant.Superunlucky timing, huh?"
Another lie. This time I can tell Domenic doesn't seem to buy my words completely as he glowers down at the photo album in his hands.
"A balcony," he repeats quietly. Unhappily.
"Yep." I grab the photo album from him and grab the rest of the stuff on the counter, throwing the breeziest smile I can manage over my shoulder as I walk back to the suite. "Anyway, like I said, I'll be at work tomorrow. Thanks again for everything, Boss."
I know he's insistent about me calling him by his first name, and the exasperated scowl he gives me has me snickering as I escape my sexy mafioso's presence once again.
Chapter 18
Domenic
"It's important to the board that I be at the meeting. I'm established—years of experience. That's something they can't argue with, Nic. Surely you see that."
Another long day of running the casino has left me with little in the way of patience when dealing with my father. He called just as I was getting into my black Mercedes, and I forgot to check the caller ID. I had been too distracted with wanting to go home earlier than I typically do to see Loren since she avoided me at work again today. After how much we've come closer recently, it's irked me that she's still so standoffish about her past.
So here I am, stuck on the phone with my father while waiting in Vegas traffic.
I say nothing in reply to him because what is there to say? I know he doesn't like my less old-fashioned, less bloodied methods of running the family.
The Caputo family itself has a problem with me now, too. They might not say anything directly, but they obviously take my father's whispers about me being "soft" to heart. It would be easy to get my hands dirty and show them through some broken bones and tests of loyalty that I have exactlyzerotolerance for bullshit lately, but then what? I'd be just like my father.
The casino has done immensely well in the eyes of the public, but the hackers who have plagued Vegas still affect the Golden Flame, despite Loren's best efforts. Maybe it's the dark web hacker she mentioned doing most of the damage. Whatever the case, I'm not doing things the way my father did, so he sees me as inadequate.
Perhaps I am inadequate. After all, the board of directors—mostly Caputos with some corrupt businessmen from other industries—did, in fact, ask my father to attend the upcoming meeting. His involvement in running our family's top business pursuit is a shadow on me, the very thing that made me hesitate so long about stepping in as the new don when he began to pressure me into it.
"Nic?"
"I'm here."
He huffs on the other end. "Should I take your silence as a disagreement? It's best I'm there. We both know it. The Golden Flame is hemorrhaging money, and they want a familiar presence."
I resist the urge to roll my eyes as I finally pull through the gates of my property and park in the driveway. He's exaggerating more than a touch. If I presented him with a side-by-side comparison of the profits from the casino when he ran things compared to how I do it today, maybe he would be forced to admit it's scaled in its returns just fine. More than predicted, in fact.
He lived in the heyday of mafia activity. Things are different for organized crime today, something he ignored for the most part. While my father ran the Golden Flame, it was seedier. The crowd spent a hell of a lot, but they weren't affluent people. They knew about the Caputo family's connection to drugs, racketeering, and everything else we've done in the past.
I began making changes well before I became don. I made things more official, more high-end. Worked my ass off making connections with people in higher circles than ours. Now on average, the people who walk through the doors of the Golden Flame have deeper pockets. They come for an experience. Celebrities and politicians aren't afraid of being seen here, despite the rumors about my family, which has deep roots in organized crime, being involved.
I've made the casino morelegitimate.
And when it comes to everything else the Caputo family does—all the pursuits, the blackmail, the extortion, or whatever the hell needs to be done to keep things running smoothly…sure. I let us do things the old-fashioned way. I was raised to not have a problem with that shit.
So I'm not fuckingsoft. I'm just trying to use business smarts while my father undermines me.
