that said she was little more than a fly buzzing around her ear.
"I must have missed the memo on Calabresi cretinos being invited out to dine with us now." Her eyes moved to Nicoli. "No matter how much of our blood is on their hands."
Nicoli stared coolly back at her, his eyes assessing. I hadn't missed the way he'd inched closer to me with that protective gleam in his eye like a bear protecting its cub.
"You look starved, Aunt, you must eat. Or did Dr Frederico just take too much off your hips the last time you visited him?" Rocco tossed a bread roll at her and it bounced off of her hiked up boobs, hitting the floor by her feet.
"Figlio di puttana," Clarissa hissed. "You’re not too old for me to clap you round the ear, Rocco Romero.”
"You never could catch me as I remember," Rocco laughed while his brothers smirked.
Clarissa rolled her eyes then her gaze fell on me and a frown tried to inch its way into her smooth brow. She took in my scars with some dawning comprehension on her face and she immediately looked to Frankie. “Please tell me this isn’t the girl you found on the mountain.”
“But if I told you that, it would be a lie,” Frankie said coolly and the temperature plummeted ten degrees.
I noted that she wasn't even asking me directly, her gaze shifting between her nephews like me and Sloan were invisible.
“It’s not good business for her to be here,” Clarissa clipped and my heart thudded angrily in my chest.
“But it was good business when you took the money from an anonymous buyer to have me kidnapped and tortured?” I asked heatedly before the Romeros could answer, lifting my chin, surprised and delighted that my voice was staying firmly with me tonight.
“It wasn’t personal, ragazza.” Her eyes moved to my scars again, narrowing. My skin crawled under her inspection and as her upper lip peeled back I knew she was disgusted with me like I expected most people to be. But her relatives had never looked at me that way and now that she was, I found I didn't care for her scrutiny. Who was she to judge me?
"Her name is Winter, not girl," Nicoli growled, a note of warning in his tone. “You’re lucky I haven’t slit your throat for your part in what happened to her. You can thank your nephews for that.”
I took his hand, partly to show solidarity and partly because I really thought he might use the nearest knife to fulfil his threat. And as much as I disliked this woman, she wasn’t worth my mountain man going to prison for.
Clarissa scowled at him. "You really ought to watch your tone with me, Calabresi boy."
"I am not a Calabresi. Never was. Never will be," Nicoli snarled.
"If you raise a dog to kill its own kind in fights, it will never stop hungering for their blood. Even when it is cared for and taken from that life, it will never change. The kindest thing to do is put it down." Clarissa sneered and in a heartbeat, Rocco, Frankie and Enzo were on their feet, shoulders squared and eyes fierce. Enzo even still had the bread knife in his grip.
"We are getting to know our brother, he is one of us now," Rocco said firmly while the others nodded.
"Papa will accept him for who he is when he has the DNA results, and you will have to as well," Frankie said evenly, a smile on his face but his eyes were void of light.
"I suggest you welcome your nephew back into the fold, Aunt C," Enzo said, grazing the bread knife over the ink of his forearm. "Wouldn't wanna piss off our old man, would you?"
"He's is on my side in this," she said firmly.
"You know full well that if Papa was against this whole idea he’d have tried to kill Nicoli already. He’s living in hope, waiting for proof and once the DNA results are back everything will change," Rocco growled. "Now, we’re not going to discuss these private matters in public any further. Go back to your night, Aunt."
Clarissa ran her tongue over her teeth, looking between all of us then shrugging with a light laugh. "Of course. No harm meant. Enjoy your night miei cari ragazzi." Her eyes swept over me and Nicoli one last time, telling me she was nowhere close to accepting us into anything and she strutted off to meet a