Pops froze. His mouth jarred open. I was certain this was the first time I’d ever shocked him into silence.
The quiet didn’t last long.
“You will not date him.” His voice was quiet as the grave.
I kicked the covers off and swung my legs over the edge. I walked toward him slowly as if he were a skittish animal instead of my father.
When I was within touching distance, I stood my ground. Not hostilely, but showing strength. I shook my head. “It’s not your call, Dad.”
“Like hell it’s not! Your mom would be rolling over in her—”
“Don’t you dare bring her into this!” I yelled. Okay, so there went my temper. I hadn’t wanted to have a shouting match with him, but he’d gone for the jugular with his comment.
“Dammit it, Kelly. What about that Cooney lad? Greg is a nice Irish boy.” I didn’t miss the way Pops stressed his words.
I suppressed a shudder when I thought about Greg. Even though our interaction had been brief, there was something about him that turned my stomach. I recoiled thinking about him touching me and how repulsed I’d felt. Besides his desperation, I just didn’t feel comfortable around him.
“It’s more than just Irish and Italian now. That’s the old way of thinking. Vince and I…” I bit my lip. “I really like him, I always have.”
That was as close to the truth as I could get. While I knew Vince and I had cooked up this fake relationship, I wasn’t so sure it was fake anymore. At least, not on my part. What I felt for him was getting all too real.
The danger was down that path, but I couldn’t help it. I was going straight into heartbreak with the CEO of Chicago with my eyes wide open.
Pops ground his teeth together. Reaching into the pocket of his unbuttoned shirt, he yanked out his stogie. He didn’t chew on it, yet. Instead, he pointed the stub at me with a warning.
“I’m telling your brothers.”
Shit.
He turned and stomped down the stairs, muttering about those damn dagos. I loved him, but he was such a racist old coot.
His voice rose through the house, loud in his anger. He was already on the phone with Tommy.
I needed to warn Vince that a storm was coming.
Dodici
Sam and George’s was an old Greek diner on the north side of the city. It was one of the few family places left that had catered to the old blue collar workers of the town at a time before all of Chicago’s factory work had been outsourced either abroad, or to more rural cities where labor was cheaper. It opened at five a.m. every day, so the workers could grab a hearty egg and sausage breakfast before starting their day of hard labor.
Their patio was second to none in the city on a gorgeous Sunday in late May like today.
I knew the owner, Georgino, personally. He was a family man who had managed to stay out of the feuds in the city for an entire generation. I couldn’t do brunch on the south side of the city anymore due to people walking by who’d stop and either tell me how much they loved or hated me. If I was eating on a Sunday, I would be doing it on the top floor of my luxury condominium.
Instead, today after church I’d donned my white pants, blue polo, and Ray-Ban sunglasses to head to the patio where I could be around people. I’d ordered The Godfather skillet: Italian sausage, mozzarella cheese, onion, and avocado topped with a couple of eggs.
There was just one thing missing to make this a perfect day. I wanted Kelly by my side to enjoy this with me.
“Boss, with all due respect,” Sal paused. I could tell he was about to choose his words carefully as his eyes darted from side to side.
I flashed him a stone cold look across our patio table as I forked another piece of my omelet into my mouth. Whenever Sal said those five words, I knew a piece of his best advice were about to follow. He wasn’t a man who over-talked, so when he did, I listened. But it didn’t mean I would like the advice he was about to give. In fact, I usually didn’t.
“I guess I can understand your plan about the, uh, operation to bring together the Capulets and the Montagues via a relationship with Kelly.” He cleared his throat. “But this is for public appearances only. We’ve got to be disciplined about this sort of thing. Showing her off in a speakeasy place like we did last night, for example, there is no reason for that.”
I followed the egg with a swig of coffee and shrugged. “We have to play a convincing couple.”
The sides of Sal’s lips turned up in a small, taut smile, which was the biggest it ever got. “Now, Mr. LaRosa. I may not be much to look at now, but I used to be quite the lady killer in my heyday.” He let out a short laugh.
Funny he says that. At forty-five Sal looked better than most guys do in their entire life.
“I can tell when things are an act and when they are not. And this with Kelly MacNamara is no act. You got a thing for the broad.”
“So what?” I fired back. “Why should you be worried about her? She’s a girl, she can do what she wants. She agreed to this situation as much as I did. I mean shit, it was even her idea.”
Sal took the final bite of his skillet, moved his plate out of the way and leaned in toward me with his hand folded. “It’s not the girl I’m worried about, Vince. It’s you.”
An uncomfortable chill came across my body when he’d said those things. Sal rarely used my first name. Even when I was a boy, he’d always used Mr. LaRosa. Was I putting myself at risk for how I was cavorting along?
“Fuck, Sal. I know I’ve got to be careful. And I will be, trust me.”
He shook his head, took a deep breath. “She is a fiery one, isn’t she?”
I took my sunglasses off so Sal could see the seriousness in my eyes. “She breathes life into me, Sal. Every time I see her, I feel like great things are possible. I know, it’s corny as shit, and you can go ahead and laugh at me. But I feel like if a girl like her—a fucking Irish unicorn—exists, well, there’s hope in the world.” I paused and swallowed air. Yes, Kelly made me think that maybe there was hope not only for the city, but for me personally. Even though I’d seen shit, done shit, that would give most men nightmares for life. “We can guide ourselves out of this archaic fucking family feud that shouldn’t even be happening,” I said, finishing my thought.
Sal pursed his lips together and held his tongue. I had a feeling he had more to say, but at that moment Georgino appeared at our table. Ironic since I was Italian, but the guy was sixty something years old and spoke like the Godfather. For his age, his hair was thick with gray and black peppered in. He combed it to the side and cleaned up real nice. As close as we were, he never talked about his personal life with me. However, it wouldn’t surprise me if the guy was still getting ass at his age.
“Sal, Mr. LaRosa,” he said and shook both of our hands with a tight, two-handed handshake. The guy was the definition of an old-school man, and fuck me if it wasn’t charming as hell.
“How’s business?” I smiled.
“Once the patio is open, the people come out. I get all the hungover college kids now here spending their money.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
“How was everything for you two?”
“Fucking delicious, as usual.”
“You’re too kind, you’re too kind.”
He smiled with his hands on his hips for a moment as he looked down on me. A few years back, when we were in a mini-recession, Sam and George’s was on the brink of closing. I helped Georgino out with a sizeable, no-interest loan to keep him on his feet, and after a year the place recovered. By the look of it, business was now better than ever.
He ran his palm down his tie in an uncharacteristic nervous tick.
I tilted my head at him. “You look like you’re about to start tap dancing, George. Spit it out.”
“I didn’t want to interrupt your breakfast. I was going to come down to the Loop to talk to you tomorrow morning at the office.”
I nodded, and almost let out a laugh. I’d been spending so much
time concentrating on my dirty business and on stopping the war lately, I almost forgot I was the CEO of a Forbes 500 company and had a top-floor office downtown bigger than most men’s backyards. “It’s fine. I saved you a trip. Sit down, let me know what’s bothering you.”
It was funny, this wasn’t unusual in the slightest. In some ways, I was the truth behind Georgino’s outward appearance. At some point, everyone came to me for help. Rarely was it a social visit. But that went with the power. At first, the older generation hated coming to a “young pup” for help. Once they saw I could get shit done, age became nothing more than a number.
George shifted and took the third seat at the table. He leaned forward, folding his wrinkled hands together where the plates would have been at the setting. “It’s my eldest son.”
I ran through my mental contacts until I furnished a name. “George Junior, right?” He had to be a bit older than I was, maybe in his early thirties. Last I heard he’d been planning on taking over for his old man in a few years when Georgino decided to retire.
Georgino nodded. “Yeah, he goes by Junior, though. Doesn’t like to be seen as a copy, at least that’s what he says. Though he’s a chip off the old block. Looks just like me when I was that age.”
A deaf man could hear the pride in George’s voice as he spoke. But then his grizzled brow furrowed and he looked down at his hands. “He got pinched by the coppers last week.”
That was a twist I didn’t see coming. Georgino stayed out of the problems, and by extension, so did his wife and kids. There were three total: two girls and Junior. “What happened to business school?”
“He finished. Got his degree. Things were good. He even had a steady girlfriend. Sam was thinking about grandbabies.”
“So what happened?”
“He got caught up with Alexi Sokolov.”
Sonuvabitch. “The Russian bookmaker?”
“The same one. Junior, well, he got in deep at the Golden Princess.”
Casinos weren’t legal within the Chicago city limits, but riverboat gambling was. The Outfit owned the Blue Chip, and the Russians, those fuckers had the Golden Princess. While the Russian Mafia hadn’t really found a foothold in Chicago, they still popped up from time to time. They were as tenacious, and as hard to get rid of as cockroaches.
“How much did he owe?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me. He came home a few times all beat up.” George’s voice quivered. “He told me he’d handle it. That he didn’t want my money.”
“That wouldn’t have helped him,” I murmured. Once a gambling addiction took root, it took drastic measures to get out.
“When he couldn’t pay him off, Alexi had him doing some stuff to work his debt off. I think he started as a drug mule and then took a turn.”
I sat back in my chair with a tired sigh. I knew how this story ended. I already had the Irish fucking around in my business, and now the Russians were trying to nose in on my turf? Nah, that wasn’t going to happen. I’d have to send Sokolov a message. “Guns?”
George flinched and looked away. I didn’t need him to tell me what I already knew.
“The police caught him gun running.”
“It wasn’t across state lines, thankfully. It’s not federal. He’s in the local lockup.”
“What do you want me to do for you, George?”
Georgeino’s hands shook, and he clasped them together tighter. His eyes misted over. “He’s my only son, Mr. LaRosa.”
I nodded. I got it. The only son to carry on the family name. If Junior went down, he’d spend the rest of his adult life behind bars. That meant no carrying on the family name. No babies for Sam.
I looked at Sal. “Call Dominick Gallo. There’s something he can probably do. Isn’t there a new ADA downtown? Ryan something? Yeah. We haven’t reached out to him yet.”
It might cost a pretty penny to grease the new assistant district attorney’s palms, but it would help get George Junior back with his family.
And if that didn’t do the trick, well, there was always a way to make evidence disappear. If there was no evidence, there was no case.
“You’re in a good mood today, Boss,” Sal said evenly.
I threw a hundred on the table for the meal and another hundred for our server’s tip. I was on a fucking cloud right now, he was right. And I had one gorgeous bunny to thank for that.
Tri Deug
“Kel, there’s another motherfucking delivery for you.” Tommy’s voice pierced the quiet of my office.
I dropped my head onto the desk in front of me. Pops had made good on his threat and told my brothers all about me and Vincent. All of them had come storming down as soon as the Tavern opened. Of course, Tommy, being the eldest, was the most vocal about what I should be doing. His bad mood was grating on my nerves. I wished there was a window back here because I would have escaped to my freedom hours ago.
I didn’t know what Vince was up to, but all day random deliveries had been showing up. It began with flowers, another bouquet of blue irises. Pops took one look at them, and the card, and knew I’d lied about the flowers after Kyle’s funeral. He’d been apoplectic with anger, storming out of the pub and searing the ears of everyone he passed.
Then were the chocolates. Not the cheap kind either. As if I expected anything less from the CEO of Chicago but the imported kind. I didn’t recognize the brand, obviously, they were Italian and the packaging was written in it, but they looked expensive and delicious.
Now there was a third delivery. I was on the fence about whether I wanted to murder Vince or kiss him. I’d sent him a text after the confrontation with Pops, so we were out in public now. But he was flaunting his status, wealth, and our intimacy.
This almost felt like a real relationship. I needed to talk to Vince and see where his head was at.
Shoving away from the desk, I walked out to the bar. Tommy was pacing through the chairs, looking at a small white box wrapped with a green ribbon sitting on top of it. I blushed when I saw it. Was it an accident that the ribbon was the same color as my bra and panties last night?
Knowing Vince? No, no, it wasn’t. God, I hoped he hadn’t bought me anything embarrassing.
I approached the package.
Tommy pointed at it. “What’s this?”
I rolled my eyes up at him. “Do I look like I have X-ray vision, Tommy? Really?”
He grumbled under his breath. “It’s from LaRosa, ain’t it?”
I shrugged. “Probably. He is my boyfriend.”
“Don’t you fucking say that. What’s he have on you that you’re dating him? Just tell me, and me and the boys will go fuck his day up.”
I sighed and shook my head. That was exactly what I didn’t want to happen. “Stuff it, Tommy. I like him.”
Tommy kicked a stool, earning a nasty look from where Steve sat hovered over his whiskey. Ignoring everyone, including the regulars who were looking at me as if I’d turned traitor overnight, I tugged on the ribbon and opened the box. A cloud of tissue paper hid the present from view. Moving it aside, I gaped at what was beneath. A book. But it wasn’t just any book.
“Oh, my God,” I breathed. I lifted it gingerly, afraid it would disintegrate in my hands, and opened the front cover.
It couldn’t be. But it was. A first edition of Romeo and Juliet. I sat down hard, caught between tears and giddiness. My heart threatened to choke me.
“It’s just a damn book,” Tommy huffed as he looked inside.
“Yeah,” I said. But it wasn’t. It was so much more. It was our past and present. A nod that he remembered how much I’d loved Shakespeare during high school. While Romeo and Juliet wasn’t my favorite. I mean come on, there was a whole lot wrong with that story. Never mind that Juliet was a tween, Romeo had the emotional maturity of a gnat, poor Rosalind, and the whole suicide thing was just plain stupid. The family tension between the Montagues and Capulets was a perfect mirror for what was happening between Vince and me.
R
unning my finger over the embossed title, I tucked it back into the tissue paper.
“Will you watch the bar?”
Tommy eyeballed me suspiciously. “Why?”
“Christ, Tommy, just watch the bar!”
I barely contained my joy as I walked back to the office and grabbed my purse and car keys. I needed to talk to Vince and thank him for the wonderful gift. And not just on the phone.
I wasn’t sure how well Vince would receive me just showing up at his apartment. It was Sunday, after all. I sent him a text to meet me at Pritzer Park. It was close enough to be a halfway point between the high-rise and the pub.
It was a gorgeous day, and I sunned myself on one of the brightly colored benches scattered across the acreage.
“Aren’t you afraid of getting more freckles, Bunny?” I hadn’t seen Vince arrive, but once I turned, there he was. Smiling down at me with his two bodyguards on his ass like Dobermans.
“I thought you liked my freckles,” I shot back at him.
Vince joined me on the bench. He slid against me, his arm bracing my back and his thigh pressed to mine. I’d gone from being hot from the sun to flushed just by his presence.
“I do. I can’t wait until I kiss every one of them,” he murmured against my ear, low enough so that Sal and his twin wouldn’t hear. I was already scandalized enough over him being just a piece of glass away from hearing my first orgasm.
Sal had to have known what I was thinking. I skipped a look at him and he had a faint smile on his face. I buried my face into Vince’s shoulder. When he laughed, I bit him.
His fingers tucked beneath my chin. “I didn’t expect to see you today.”
“I didn’t expect all of the amazing gifts.” I leaned forward and placed a soft kiss to his mouth. “Thank you. How did you even find a first edition?”
“Uh-uh, I can’t reveal all of my secrets.”
I shook my head. My ponytail bounced against my nape. “I don’t know whether I should be impressed, or scared at how deep your pockets go.”
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