join us?”
He pulls a face. “There are only two women in the world who scare me, Bella. My grandmother and Imogen. She looks at me like I’m her next meal.”
“So, I’ll take that as a no?”
He kisses me. “I’ll see you next Saturday.”
After showering, I meet my slightly crazy, but completely lovable girlfriend at a hot new bar on the Lower East Side called Inkwood.
“How was your Krav Maga class?” she asks over the top of her margarita.
“Good.”
“And Ari?”
I grin at her. “You know he’s gay, right?”
She shrugs and takes a sip of her drink. “And The Rock is also untouchable because he is married and lives in Hollywood, and would never glance sideways at a girl like me, but that doesn’t stop a girl from fantasizing. A girl needs her dreams.”
“What about that sexy young attorney you were seeing?”
“He’s okay,” she says, noncommittally. “I dunno, I think I’m bored.”
I resist rolling my eyes. This isn’t the first conversation we’ve had about this. In fact, it’s the same conversation we have with nearly every single guy she dates.
“You go through men like candy. How about throwing some my way?”
“I would but you’d probably throw them back.”
“You’re right. Because I’m a dating disaster. It’s hard to find someone in this city. For me, anyway.”
“Maybe it has something to do with your daddy? I mean, dating the only daughter of a mafia don would have to be as intimidating as fuck.”
I give her a reproachful look. “You know he isn’t involved in that life anymore. He left that all behind him when we moved to New York. That’s why we moved.”
When I was sixteen years old, we moved to America for a fresh start. My father shed his organized crime affiliations and started a new life as a successful restaurateur.
Now he owns five, highly renowned restaurants all over New York and is revered as a charismatic businessman.
Imogen looks wistful. “Are you sure? I mean, he looks so…”
“If you say dreamy, sexy, or fuckable, I’m leaving.”
Imogen also has a crush on my father. Which would gross me out if I wasn’t so used to it. Growing up, all my girlfriends developed crushes on him. He’s a very good-looking man, and he’s charming and stylish in his Armani suits and slicked-back hair, but he’s also my father and he’s pushing fifty.
“I was going to say he looks so mafioso. Like he stepped right off the set of Goodfellas.”
“He’s a businessman,” I say defensively.
She gives me a conspiratorial look. “A very well-connected businessman.”
This time I do roll my eyes. Imogen is prone to bouts of fantasy and likes to romanticize the whole organized-crime thing. Truth is, it is ugly and dark, and bloody. And it has taken a toll on my family. I wasn’t always an only child.
Before moving to New York, our family had gone to war with the Lastrantonios—a huge crime family back home—because of some business deal that went wrong. I’m not sure of the details because my dad has always been so vague about it. But the outcome was devastating to my family because my brother was caught in the middle of it. When he and my father were leaving a café one day, a car drove by and a gunman unloaded his clip into them both. My father survived. My nineteen-year-old brother, Gio, didn’t.
Rumor had it, the Castabella family—another powerful family back home—had allied themselves with the Lastrantonios, and both houses waged war against us, the Isle Cicculas.
But my father didn’t like me knowing the details.
Although, he was always very quick to remind me that we were enemies.
“The Lastrantonios and the Castabellas are our enemies, mia cara,” my father would warn whenever I questioned him about the feud and what led to my brother’s death. “The Castabellas may have pulled the trigger, but it was the Lastrantonios who gave them the gun.”
As I grew older, I stopped asking.
Imogen drains her margarita glass. “What about that handsome guy you met at the club a few weeks back? The chef. The one with the cute man bun and super white teeth. You guys had some serious chemistry on the dance floor.”
“I forgot to tell you. We met for dinner the following night.”
“And?”
“And then nothing.”
“Nothing? No kiss? No sexy time?”
I shake my head. “That’s the thing. He was into me at the beginning of the evening, but at the end of the night I suddenly got the I’m not really looking for anything right now talk. It was weird. It’s like something happened