“When’s the last fucking time Santo didn’t beat us?” Orlando asks, scratching his beard. He leans back in his seat and scowls.
“I think Mario was still in fuckin’ diapers,” Romeo says. Even Mario laughs at that. “Y’all should’ve known better than to agree to a farewell card game with a motherfucker who’s got nothin’ to lose.”
I shrug.
“You agreed, Rome?”
“I knew you’d win,” he says with a flash of white teeth as he grins at me. “Thought I’d give you a parting gift, just make you fuckin’ earn it first.”
“Aw, thanks,” I say, as the door to the back room swings open.
“Oh my God.” I don’t look up from gathering my earnings at the sound of her voice. I’ve learned to use my poker face more often than at the card table. “Tavi, Elise is gonna kill you.”
“She’ll do no such thing,” Tavi says, shaking his head. “She doesn’t mind when I play cards. And I fuckin’ own this place.” He leans back in his chair to match Orlando and gives her a look that dares her to push back.
Every Rossi man is the head of his respective house, and every Rossi woman, whether married into or born in the family, knows this. Still, it’s a dick move.
“Not for the goddamn cards,” she hisses. “For smoking in her stockroom.”
Tavi eyes the joint in his hand as if he’d forgotten it was there, then passes it around. “Elise loves to smoke, though, Rosa.”
“Not since you knocked her up, and she does not want her fucking handbags imported this very day to smell like an ashtray or a joint!”
“Wow,” I mutter, as Mario shuffles then stacks the cards and starts dealing them out again. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”
Rosa turns to me, aghast. Her jaw falls open. “If I had to censor your conversations with a beeper, Santo, every other word out of your mouth would be a bleeping bleep bleepity bleep.”
I shrug. “I’m not a lady.”
“Ooohhhhh,” the guys say in unison, because they know I just threw the gauntlet down.
Rosa’s gaze grows frigid. Fuck it, I love when she gives me that look. Still, I don’t react, even when she snaps at me. “A man named The Saint who swears more than a bookie thinks he has the right to tell me what to do?”
Romeo’s phone rings before I open my mouth and regret the next damn thing I say.
“Shit,” he mutters. Everyone’s eyes go straight to him.
“What is it?” Tavi asks, always cool and collected when shit goes down.
“Got a cryptic message here. Gotta run footage in the warehouse, guys.” He blows out a breath and jerks his chin to Mario. “Show us the new surveillance equipment, will you, while Santo tallies his goddamn earnings?”
He knows I’m no damn use looking over surveillance this time. I’m back in Tuscany tomorrow with my fucking grapes.
Chairs scrape as they’re pushed back from the table. Mario grabs the cards, and the doors swing closed behind them as they walk away from the stockroom and off to the connected warehouse.
We’re alone. I wanted this. I hoped for this.
What she doesn’t know is that I laid surveillance in this room before they opened the business, and I know every angle the camera captures.
And every angle it doesn’t.
My mouth goes dry, but I keep my face impassive as I pocket my winnings.
“Think you can still boss me around, do you?” she asks tersely, her arms crossed on her chest. I bet she thinks she sounds cold. Aloof. But I hear the thread of want in her voice, and my dick hears it, too.
I pierce her with a look and have half a mind to throw caution to the wind, just like I did that day on the cliffs by The Castle. The day I not only didn’t bring the scrolls to Narciso but dropped them. We watched them flutter like birds with broken wings, before they were swallowed whole into the sea. I didn’t care. I’d sacrifice myself for Rosa any goddamn time I could.
Still, I spent three days out of school after that beating, though.
And now I’ve got the entire fucking Rossi brotherhood here. They would tie me up and take turns beatin’ the shit out of me before they cut out my heart and disposed of my body.
If they were feeling generous. I’m already on goddamn probation.
“Ah, Rosa,” I say quietly. The only sound in the stockroom is the ticking of a clock on the wall. “I don’t think I can still boss you around.” A true enough sentence, even if we’re overheard.
What I’d fucking give to really boss her around. Tie her up and punish her and see how wet it made her before I made her come for me. I’d revel in every moan and spasm I’d draw from her. Revel in the way she’d fight me. Relish that sweet moment of submission.