“I’m the soon-to-be sister-in-law,” the one with dazzling almond eyes said. “I’m Jasmine, Cris’s fiancé.”
After shaking her hand, the third one with lustrous, curly brown hair introduced herself. “Roxy. Ace’s girlfriend.”
I bit my lip, feeling pretty stupid. “Who are Cris and Ace?”
They shot each other confused looks. “Nico hasn’t told you anything, has he?” Gia asked speculatively.
“About…?”
She groaned. “That jerk-hole.”
Roxy blew out a breath, stepping forward to wind her arm through mine. “Oh, honey. Let’s sit down. This is going to take a few minutes.”
An hour later, my head was a swirling vortex of facts about Nico, the Rossettis, and their most recent involvements with the New York Firm. Batya mentioned Nico had connections with the five families, but I didn’t realize they were to this extent.
“Wow,” I murmured when they finished laying out the events of the last several months. “I can’t believe all of that has happened.”
I took a sip of the wine we’d popped for this little pow-wow. Gia insisted that Nico wouldn’t mind us raiding his stash, saying “he has enough booze to keep him hammered through five zombie apocalypses.”
And when she put it that way…
Jasmine scrunched up her nose. “Try planning a wedding in the middle of this hurricane. It’s been a nightmare. I actually considered getting all the guys fitted for Kevlar vests to wear under their tuxes.”
My hand went to my throat. “Is it really that bad?”
Jasmine’s eyes widened, her hand squeezing my arm. “Oh, my God, no. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out. Raphael Esposito and the Gabbianos are in jail, so most of the danger has passed. It’s just…we have to be on our guards for a while, you know?”
“But you’re used to that, though, right?” Gia asked. “As Sergei Kozlov’s daughter, you’re not exactly new to this game.”
They definitely weren’t treating the new girl with kid gloves. I appreciated that. “No, I’m certainly not.”
“How are you doing with all this?” Roxy asked gently. “It’s got to be a huge adjustment.”
That was like saying Chernobyl had been a small campfire.
“As well as I can, I suppose. I haven’t had loads of time to really stop and think about it.”
“If it makes you feel any better,” Jasmine interjected, running her finger around the rim of her wine glass, “Cris said Nico is just as freaked out as you are.”
Did that make me feel better? A little, I guess. That meant we were both wandering through this unprecedented experience blindly. Maybe we were more on the same page than I thought.
“When did Nico talk to Cris?”
“Last night,” Jasmine answered. “He came by our place.” She laughed. “I swear, the man barely notices when he gets shot, yet he acts like he’s dying of a terminal illness after saying ‘I do.’”
My mind glommed onto the first part of her statement. “Nico was shot?”
Roxy winces. “Yeah, a couple of months ago. It was just a graze on his neck. Didn’t even need stitches.”
She said she was in medical school, studying to become a doctor, so I guess she would know.
On his neck, though.
What if it had been just a little higher? Something icky coiled inside me at the thought of Nico in pain, or worse. Again, I had no idea why I cared. Like Gia said, he was a jerk-hole.
“He helped save mine and Cris’s lives before that,” Jasmine added.
My heartbeat picked up its pace. “How?”
“After Cris shot Stefano Esposito and got me out of that warehouse, we had to run down six flights of fire escapes. When the explosion went off, Cris and I were thrown from the second story stairwell. Cris was knocked unconscious, and I was pretty out of it. Nico carried both of us to safety. The fire escapes above our heads collapsed seconds after he got us out of the way.”
Nico had put himself in danger to save them? He hadn’t known whether or not those stairwells would collapse on top of him as he’d carried them away.
Over and over he’d professed that he wasn’t a hero.
But I was starting to think that Nico was a big, fat liar.
“All right,” Gia said, pushing to her feet. “Enough of this maudlin chit-chat. We’re taking you out, Russian.”
When I opened my mouth to protest, her hand sliced through the air, cutting me off.
“No arguments. We’re your sisters now, and this is our sacred duty. Consider this your engagement party, bachelorette party, and wedding reception all rolled into one.”