I remember the day Narciso brought me here and told me I wasn’t to call him Narciso but Papa. That he’d be my father and take care of me the way a father should.
I wanted to believe that.
And in many ways, he did. What man hasn’t borne the scars of his father’s poor decisions at some point in his life? I guess that makes all of us, then, every brother I know.
The lingering scent of tobacco still hangs in the air, deeply embedded in the woodwork here. Whether it’s Romeo’s or Narciso’s or any of the other guys’, it doesn’t really matter. It’s a part of the rich history of The Family.
“This place should’ve been ours,” Ricco says, sitting behind the desk in a swivel chair that Tavi normally takes. But he’s grinning when he says this.
“Trade you The Castle for the villa,” Tavi says with a twinkle in his eye.
Instead of The Castle, the Montavios inherited a whole villa in Italy just north of Tuscany and several vineyards.
Ricco taps his chin and looks at his brother. “What’d ya think, Timeo? Sergio?”
Sergio pretends to think things over as he nabs a chair and spins it around before he straddles it. “Maybe if they toss in that pretty redhead we met at the Christmas party.”
Mario rolls his eyes. “Sassy’s Marialena’s friend. If you bang that chick—”
Ricco snorts. “This from the guy that looked up fuckin’ ancestry to make sure he didn’t bang his fuckin’ cousin when he visited us last year. Stop thinking with your dick, bro.”
“As if that’ll ever happen,” Tavi says with a snort.
“You laugh,” Mario says, momentarily sober. “But shit was tight, dude. Girl was hittin’ on me, found out she was like a third cousin twice removed.” Sweat breaks out on his forehead. “Goddamn fuckin’ landmine.”
“Imagine, your biggest issue is making sure you don’t fuck a blood relative,” Orlando mutters, giving Mario a good-natured cuff upside the head.
Mario grins back. “I cover my ass, brother.”
Tavi finally clears his throat to get down to business. Ricco quietly gets up from the chair behind the desk and gestures for Tavi to take it. He might give us shit, but he respects the hierarchy here, and we all know Tavi rules everything with Romeo behind bars. Tavi takes his seat and faces us.
“Flynt says Romeo’s under arrest for involuntary manslaughter. Says the accusation’s that Romeo drove under the influence and killed two officers in a hit and run.”
Low whistles and curses fill the small room.
“Flynt also says they don’t have any fuckin’ evidence and he’ll get the case tossed easily, but we should watch our backs in the meantime. We have time-stamped recordings of where Romeo was and when. We’ve installed new security cameras in the past few months, covering every vehicle and inch of this place.”
Cold dread pools in my stomach and I drag in a discreet breath.
I didn’t know they’d changed up security.
Has anything I’ve said or done to Rosa… has anyone seen…
“Let me scroll it, brother, will you?”
Tavi nods. “Mario already did but couldn’t hurt to have a second set of eyes. Let’s get it ready to give as evidence. We have a strong alibi for Romeo.”
“Then what fuckin’ grounds they using to arrest?” Ricco asks.
“The hit and run happened with his car.”
“Jesus.”
“Mario and I will look back through everything. Find out where that car was and why it happened, who framed him.” My skin feels both icy and hot at the same time. I school my features with difficulty as I face them all. I clear my throat. “You guys know I’ve spent the last few months in Tuscany.” Everyone looks at me with interest, likely interested in what I have to say. “And I decided when I returned to America that it was time to tell the truth.”
I stand up straighter and hold Tavi’s gaze above all. I can feel Orlando and Mario’s eyes on me, but I watch Tavi. Tavi was the one I saved. He’s the one that understands what happened that night. “I knew Leo was a traitor, but I couldn’t make an accusation against a made man of The Family without evidence. So I went to Tuscany to track him. To follow.”
“How’d you know he was a traitor?” Tavi asks.
“Because I slept with his mistress’s sister.”
Tavi doesn’t flinch. He knows there was a time when I slept with anything that walks. It did shit to exorcise my demons and only made Rosa angry.
Sometimes a guy gets it into his head that fucking anything with legs will eviscerate the memory of… her… from his mind. But it doesn’t work. It’s like turning on windshield wipers when your windshield’s covered in mud.
All it does is smear things and fuck it all up.
“And the girl liked to talk in bed.” I shrug. She was a pretty little Italian with big eyes and a wide mouth that liked to smile. She had no hard limits in the bedroom, and I used that to my advantage.