Paulina rolled her eyes and slumped back on the counter.
“I guess I could enjoy the break for a while, as long as you promise it won’t go on for too long, whatever it is, and that you’ll be careful.”
It was my turn to scoff. “Please, it’ll be child’s play. You know I’m not the type to lose.”
Paulina rolled her eyes and grumbled under her breath, but loud enough so we all heard her. “Except that one time at cards.”
Sam lost it again.
“No, I didn’t lose that time, Sam cheated! We did another round.”
“Okay. Yeah, sure, Mrs. I’m Not a Sore Loser.”
The mood had lightened up, and I was glad.
I’d make sure Paulina got her gigs and more back when everything was over.
We were telling more jokes when the doorbell rang.
“Are you expecting anyone?” Sam asked Paulina, who groaned dramatically because she really didn’t want to get up and get the door.
“No. Who would even want to come see me? It’s Friday, don’t they have a social life?”
I gave her a look. “I came to see you.”
“Yeah, but you called first.’ She pushed herself off the stool and went to get the door, checking the monitor first to see who was at the door.
“Shit, it’s the police, what do they want now?”
I’d left some men outside to guard the door. If the police were here, they’d have called me first to let me know.
It took only a millisecond, but before I could shout for her to stop, Pauline opened the door, and Maxim’s men rushed in, heavily armed.
Chapter 21 - Alessandro
I was eighteen when my father started giving me tasks from the family business to help with. He’d send me to places to collect, repress or shoot someone in the face. Romero Sorvino had been a brutal father, but there had been lessons to learn.
One of the people he’d been conducting business with thought they could get a one-up on him, make him bend to their whims, so they’d targeted Dom’s boarding school and kidnapped him.
It’d been the first time I’d really understood what it had meant to be a part of a mafia family.
They tortured him, just sixteen or probably less at the time, and had sent the tapes to our father, and whenever he had to watch it, he’d call Frankie and me to sit and watch with him.
That was the first “real” job he gave me. Saving Dom.
Frankie, me, and some of our men found where they were keeping Dom. I'd lost it when I saw him cowering in the corner of a cage like a dirty rat.
It hadn’t even been the kind of anger that made you scream like a wild animal. It had been the kind of anger that made your senses sharper and calmer.
That day I understood what my future would be like, having to protect my family when I became the Don.
That anger paled in comparison to what I was feeling now.
My armory was open, and I was carefully strapping myself with the weapons I needed for my hunt. Humming to the tune of an old kindergarten rhyme.
Gun, knives, hand grenades.
I hadn’t done field violence in a while, that was officially Dom’s territory, but tonight, I couldn’t have cared less.