My phone blares with a text and she jumps. I curse under my breath and read the message on the screen. “Our order is ready.”
She nods jerkily, her gaze dropping to my mouth and lingering before she looks away.
Yeah, she’s into this as much as I am.
Anticipation throbs through my blood as I start the car and drive to the pick-up spot to pick up our meal.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later,I turn into a quiet street in La Jolla.
From the corner of my eye I spot the two SUVs holding my bodyguards idling on the street but don’t acknowledge them when I park in front of the gates.
I activate the security gate and roll the truck down the short driveway to the front door.
The corner property is set on three floors and is up on an incline with steps leading down to the beach.
At a quick glance, it has more glass than I’d normally prefer, but the security seems top notch and my men are close enough to offer another layer of security if I need it.
So I relax once the front door is shut behind us and watch Aria’s eyes goggle as she looks around.
The living room is immense, with three separate seating areas, all angled to make the most of the ocean views.
There’s not much of it to see at this time of night but I’m betting it would be spectacular in the daytime.
I place our food on the smoky glass dining table and go in search of cutlery and plates as she tours the other downstairs rooms.
I’m opening the wide patio doors when she returns.
“Wow, this place is incredible,” she gushes. “Do you own it?”
“No, it’s a rental,” I reply, but I immediately make a note to check if it’s for sale. “I’m using it while in town to take care of some business.”
“What kind of business? And don’t say import and export. That’s what all the crooks and gangsters say,” she says with that insanely erotic giggle again.
My stomach churns.
She doesn’t know how right she is.
My job description says businessman, but everyone back on the east coast knows exactly who Matteo Frenelli is—the kingpin of the Frenelli family until very recently.
My family name strikes fear into the great and small.
Hell, the very meaning of our name is steeped in terror. Every male of my bloodline has known the ravages of a turf war and what it’s like to grow up in the mafia.
I inherited the position at the tender age of twenty-two after my father was gunned down in a deal gone wrong. And despite ceding the day-to-day running of family business to Giovanni a year ago, I’m still the firstborn and therefore head of thefamigghia, which means I still bear the greater share of the burden and responsibility of leadership.
I’ve been fine stepping into the background and not soiling my hands in the intricacies of a billion-dollar enterprise. Until Gio landed a pile of horseshit on our doorstep by fucking up at his first major deal.
He’d gotten cocky and hadn’t bothered to check if he had an unwanted audience before running his mouth off.
It was only because my second-in-command had been in the game for decades and knew to double check that we’d learned of Aria’s presence in the alleyway behind the warehouse Giovanni was using to conduct the deal.
She’d overheard and seen some things she shouldn’t have—mainly Gio shoving a gun into a crooked politician’s mouth, right after carving into the asshole with a knife—and learned of the identities of a few key parties that would’ve been best kept secret.
A rookie mistake on my brother’s part. Compounded by Aria giving him and our men the slip in the weeks since, a fact that has everyone involved in the deal getting twitchy.
Even then I wouldn’t have gotten involved if I hadn’t been on the west coast closing my latest real estate deal when the details of her identity and the possible location had been circulated.