“What are you staring at?”
I jerked back. “Nothing.”
Fred furrowed his brows. “Then, get back to work.”
“But you said I could leave.”
“If you took care of VIP. But you didn’t.” His jaw clenched. “You pawned it off to Paula, so finish your shift.”
Great.
By the end of the night, the callouses on my feet had callouses, and I just needed to get home. Now. I left out of the back alleyway, hobbling to my shitty, run-down ’89 Civic in my too-high heels that were worth more than my car.
“What are you doing here?”
I froze. It had deepened and matured, but I would recognize that voice anywhere. “I work here.”
“Why?”
I turned around slowly, more uncertain than I’d ever been in my life. “Good tips.”
Not that it was any of his business.
My stupid, silly heart pounded as soon as my eyes met his. Four years of high school hate didn’t erase nine years of love, but damn, I wished it did.
He was leaning against the brick wall, arms crossed, looking more suave and dangerous than any man lurking in the alleyway of a strip club had the right to be. “Bullshit. What’s the point of a degree if you’re waiting tables at a strip club?”
I crossed my arms, unsure why I was entertaining this conversation. Why I didn’t just say, “Fuck you,” and leave before my fractured heart could shatter irrevocably. It always seemed to be on DEFCON1 around this man.
I raised my chin. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I don’t have a degree.”
“But you went to Duke.” His brows furrowed, and he looked almost upset.
I didn’t entertain the notion that Ranie might have cared about what had happened to me since he’d dropped me from his life. Reckless, relentless hope had made me a fool before, tricking me time and time again throughout high school, and adult Carina knew not to trust Ranieri Andretti. If only my heart could jump on board.
“And promptly dropped out—Wait.” I took a step back as if distance could screw my head on straight. “How did you know I got into Duke?”
He straightened off the wall and took a few purposeful steps toward me. My legs wobbled, torn between my brain demanding them to flee and my heart begging them to stay. Another chance! Another chance! it begged in its stupid, thump-thump voice. Only Ranie could still control my heart after all he had put me through.
He reached for my hair, where a wavy dirty blonde lock had fallen from my blue wig. Brain finally won, and I took a few steps back.
He lowered his hand. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to turn out.”
“What?”
Ranie reached for my face again, but I flinched and took another step back. Mint-green eyes studied me before he turned, headed to the alleyway door, and called out behind him, “I’ll fix this.”
Fix what?
That wasn’t how I’d expected our first meeting in seven years to go.
* * *
As smoking is to the lungs,
so is resentment to the soul;
even one puff is bad for you.
Elizabeth Gilbert
* * *
Time heals all wounds.
Whoever invented that bullshit probably smoked a few bowls on his off days from gorging ‘shrooms. Time could be a vindictive little bitch. Wounds did a lot of things, but they sure as hell didn’t heal.
Wounds festered. Fact.
No matter how hard you tried to hide them, they left scars. Ugly, raised scars. Fact.
They left you vulnerable for more injuries and piled on like pounds on college freshmen. Fact.
Tear your meniscus a few times and tell me again how healed you feel in a few years when your knees are creaking with each step you take, and a single blow might leave you crippled.
Carina Amelia Gallo was the worst wound of all. The kind that reminded you it was still there once you’d finally tricked yourself into believing it had healed. I blamed my heart. Heart was the stupid one, always peeping his head up every now and then, making me wonder if I could finally find Carina and make things right.
People thought thinking with your dick was terrible, but thinking with your heart was worse. At least an erection could be softened. But no, not my heart. My heart was a hardcore son of a bitch, so goddamned relentless it made me wonder where that tenacity had been when I was studying for my GMATs.
Thanks for nothing, Heart.
I’d been prepared to make a low-ball offer on The Down & Dirty and strong-arm Fred Rollins into caving. I’d done it before without remorse. The Bixby Fine Dining. Atticus Hotel. Constantine Shopping Complex. All purchased below market value, along with 99.99% of my other perfect-for-dirty-money-laundering cash businesses.
Luigi eyed the dossier in my hand from his seat across my desk. “Is the package going to be a problem?”
The package.
Ha.
Understatement of the year.
Carina was the whole package, and another, and another, and another. Wide, innocent forget-me-not-blue eyes. Pert nose. Full, come-hither pink lips. Miami-girl ass, narrow waist, and perky B-cups I wouldn’t mind having framed on my desk. And beneath that kinky blue wig, beach-tousled, long blonde waves made for pulling in bed.
None of those things had been included in the dossier one of my men had compiled on Carina’s activity over the last seven years. Someone would leave with a broken hand if they were.
I closed the file and shoved it somewhere in my drawer, where I’d retrieve it the second Luigi and his prying eyes left me the fuck alone. “No. No problem.” I snatched my signing pen and pulled out the contract my ruthless lawyers had written up. “Bring Frank in.”
“Fred.”
“Whatever.”
It wouldn't matter in a few minutes if his name were Fred, Frank, or Fuck. He was getting twenty million of my hard-earned dollars for a business I would usually only pay ten for, and I was getting prime Miami Beach real estate to launder Andretti money through and Carina Amelia Gallo under my thumb.
I would have paid anything for the latter.
* * *
* * *
“Dad, you’ve got to start taking better care of yourself.” I placed a bowl of spaghetti in front of him, along with a fork.
I usually stocked his kitchen with frozen food and stopped by as often as I could to cook real food for him. This was my only outlet to exercise my wannabe chef muscles, and Dad was stubborn.
The pointer and middle fingers on his right hand still bent awkwardly from Luigi’s dirty work, but Dad refused to learn to use his left hand. Which meant that things, like cutting fresh vegetables and stirring food, hurt like Hell, and moonlighting as his unpaid personal chef and microwavable food were my best bets at getting calories into his body.
He didn’t touch the spaghetti. “What’s got you in a mood?”
“Nothing. What are you talking about?”
“You’ve been buzzing around the kitchen like you’ve replaced your blood with energy drinks.”
I sighed. “I saw Ranie at work yesterday.”
He stilled, and myriad emotions—all indecipherable—passed through his face. “Oh? How was it?”
I was the worst. Dad didn’t need a reminder of what had happened to his hand. He didn’t need to hear about Ranie. I could vent elsewhere. That was what Brody was for.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I know you probably don’t want to talk about the Andretti family after… well…”
“It’s fine, sweetheart. Tell me about Ranie. How was he?”
“He looked… the same? But different. Older. More mature. But still Ranie.”
“Did he recognize you?” Dad knew all about my job. Talk about awkward.
What did I say to that?
Oh, hey, Dad. The son of the man who ordered Luigi to fuck up your fingers waited for me after work. You know, at my job at the local strip club. And he somehow knew that I’d gotten into
Duke. Said he’d fix God knows what, too.
Better to not say anything at all.
“Look, Dad.” I wiped down the last of the wet dishes. “Let’s talk about this some other time. Brody’s expecting me in ten minutes. I just stopped by to make sure you’re eating.” I kissed him at his temple, grabbed my keys from the key hook, and hightailed it out of there before he could ask me any uncomfortable questions.
I’d thought a lot about Ranie over the years. He’d been my best friend. My everything. And no matter what happened, I would always love the boy I once knew. But each time I forgot what had happened, all I had to do was glance at Dad’s hand, and the guilt would suffocate me.
Ranieri Andretti was my enemy.
I would never forget again.
* * *
* * *
I needed my paycheck. Rent was due in a few days, and without my check, I would be looking at an eviction. It was daytime, so The Down & Dirty was pretty empty, save for the staff, but I still couldn’t locate Fred.
I approached Paula. “Have you seen Fred?”
“You haven’t heard?” Excitement lit up her face.
“What?”
“Fred sold the club. Get this…” Oh, no. “Hottie McHottie bought it.”
Just great.
I wanted to be surprised, but I wasn’t. I’d known it was inevitable as soon as Fred insinuated Ranie was a potential buyer.
“Do you know where he is? I need my check.”
She nodded to the office, and when I left, she called out, “Remember! I called dibs!”
I swallowed my pride and knocked on the office door.
“Come in.” If he bottled up that silky, rich voice of his, he could sell it for far more than a million bottles of finely-aged Lagavulin. He had that old-money, feather-soft Southern inflection rarely heard in these parts of Florida, and if I could communicate with the dead, I’d thank Ranie’s dad for dropping the Italian accent his great-grandfather had and adapting the South’s. Or maybe I’d curse him for it, because it made me weak at the knees, and my knees were far too close to my heart for comfort.
I swung the door open, and no matter how many times I’d seen childhood Ranie, nothing could ever prepare me for adult Ranie.
I took a step forward, past the doorway as far as I dared. Which was half a step. “I need my paycheck.”
He grabbed a checkbook, and I waited awkwardly as he filled it out. He held the check out to me, and I snatched it without looking, careful to make sure our fingers didn’t touch before I left as quickly as I could.
When I finally hit the sidewalk, still not far enough from him, I looked at the check and frowned. “What the fuck?” I stomped back to the office, opened the door without knocking, and waved the check in the air. “What the Hell is this?”
“Your paycheck…”
“There’s an extra zero behind the two-hundred.”
He held out his hand. I handed him the check and tapped my foot impatiently as he fixed it. When he returned it to me, I nearly threw the check back at him.
“Twenty thousand dollars?! Are you serious? Two hundred. That’s my paycheck. Not two-thousand and certainly not twenty thousand.”
He shrugged. “What’s the problem?”
I threw the check at him. “I don’t need your pity money. Just give me what I worked for, so I can leave.”
Ranie stood, rounded the table, and approached me. I took a step back and another until I was pressed against the door. He reached for my hand, easily unfurling the fists they’d been balled into.
Touching him again felt like careening down a highway with sirens sounding in the distance. It’d been eleven years. I hadn't felt him since that day in Dad's shop when he'd wrapped his arm around my waist and stopped me from helping my dad.
I tried to push away from him. Tried to push out that heady scent of his—blackcurrant, Italian bergamot, French apples, royal pineapple, roses, dry birch, Moroccan jasmine, patchouli, musk, oakmoss, ambergris, and a dab of vanilla.
Even all these years later, he still used the same aftershave, and I could still list each ingredient better than chemists could cite the periodic table. I still had the half-empty bottle I had nabbed from his bathroom during that summer before high school, and I’d never been able to resist a sniff, but it smelled better on him than in the bottle.
Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.
He placed something in my hand and curled my fingers around it. The check. Holy crap. I basically had twenty thousand dollars in my hand. But no matter how much I needed it, I could never cash it.
Damn it. Pride was such a fickle thing. I felt it wilting, wounded as I remembered Dad. I could go hungry without blinking an eye, but allowing Dad to suffer wasn’t fathomable. Truth was, we both needed this money.
I tightened my grip on the check, pivoted, and left without saying a word. Not that I was keeping track, but it felt like another loss. Not much had changed in the last seven years. I was still the conquered, and Ranie was once again the conqueror.
But not next time.
There were no high school bullies in sight, and I was a grown-ass, street-hardened woman, more than capable of taking care of myself. Ranie would figure that out. Ranie would learn a lot of things, none of which included me kneeling before him. If he wanted to come back into my life after all these years and throw pity money at me like I was his personal charity case, he had another thing coming for him.
Ranie: 1. Carina: 0.
But I’d even the score.
… and then I’d win.
* * *
* * *
“Where are you going?” Luigi called after me.
I halted on the terrace out of respect but didn’t turn to face him. Instead, I took in the view of the garden and the maze Carina and I used to play in as kids, back when Dad hadn’t been bothered to decimate my friendship with her.
I cursed him and his volontà del re. It was Italian for King’s Will—the mafia boss’ dying wish to his predecessor. And until I fulfilled my dad’s volontà del re, I couldn’t appoint my own consiglieri and was stuck with his, Luigi. Problem was, I didn’t know what his volontà del re was, and Luigi wouldn’t tell me.
“I’m going to confront him.”
My hand gripped the railing tighter. Miami Beach was a town of millionaires and billionaires, but I had the best real estate, one of the highest incomes, and the most power. I controlled everything that happened in this city. Or so I’d thought.
Luigi’s footsteps sounded faintly behind me. “Nothing good will come from confronting Piero Gallo.”
It always came back to Carina’s dad. I respected the man. Always had. Which was the only reason he was still alive after consistently being in the middle of all my problems.
“This started with him. It ends with him.”
Luigi approached me until we stood side-by-side, overlooking the hedge maze. “Ends?”
“Not by death.” Carina would never forgive me. “But this needs to end somehow.”
“Not by speaking with Mr. Gallo.”
I cocked my head and finally turned to face him, scrutinizing him in a way that usually made lesser men flinch. “Is he somehow involved in the volontà del re?”
“No. This is merely advice from your consiglieri. I suggest you take it.”
His lips curved, and I watched as his aged features wrinkled while he smirked. He looked good for sixty, but it didn’t fool me. He should have retired by now, and I almost felt bad about taking my sweet ass time fulfilling the King’s Will. Almost.
He spoke again, “There was a time when a boss would listen to his consiglieri.”
“There was a time when bosses got to choose their consiglieri.”
“Fulfill the volontà del re, and you can.”
I pivoted, done with this conversation. People were usually disposable. In the end, they’d either disappoint you, or betray you, or both. Niccolaio had taught me that when he had killed our uncle and joined the Romano fami
ly. Life merely confirmed his lesson over and over and over again.
I loved Luigi like a father. But his opinions weren’t nearly as important as my own. This wasn’t a menial life, full of mundane experiences. This was the Andretti family. The Andretti empire. And in this world, I could only trust one person—myself.
And that meant I made my own decisions.
I would confront Piero Gallo, and I would get what I wanted.
His daughter.
* * *
Time doesn’t heal all
wounds, only distance can
lessen the sting of them.
Shannon L. Alder
* * *
Gallo arrived at The Down & Dirty precisely on time, on the dot. Still the punctual girl I had known all those years ago. I wondered what else was the same. Was she still funny? Smart? Feisty? Responsible? Dependable? The type of girl who cared more for others than she did for herself?
She didn't give me time to contemplate as she made her way straight to me, determination evident in her Caribbean-sea-blue eyes. The purpose in those wide-eyed marbles had my cock twitching, the blue wig had me reconsidering my kinks, and her naked face was the cherry on top of the hottest woman I’d ever seen in my life—past, present, and future.
“Look,” she placed her hands on her hips, “You’re my boss, but let’s not make this weird.”
I smirked. “Like you’re doing right now?”
She ignored me. “We talk when the job requires it, and when it doesn’t, we ignore each other. Got it?”
Nope. Don’t got it.
If she wanted to ignore me, she had another thing coming for her.
Me.
I tilted my head and appreciated that hard ass façade she was trying so hard to convince me of. “Do you really think th—”
Ranieri Andretti: A Second-Chance, Enemies-to-Lovers Mafia Romance Novella (The Five Syndicates Book 3) Page 3
