Smoke (The Carelli Family Saga #1) - Eden Butler Page 0,57
comment on it. Since both my brothers had been home, they seemed to ignore the fact that Dario had taken the bid for Dante’s fuck up. Not exactly how I’d have like shit to go down now that they were home, but we had other things to handle.
“It’s fine,” I told him, pulling out my phone. “I don’t want the locals to know anything anyway. I just wish Kat would show up. I need her right now.”
“What about her little brother?” Dino said, his eyebrows going up like the thought just popped into his head.
“You know him?”
“Drew is his name. He’s in Albany. I can make a call.”
“Do it,” I told my man, tapping his shoulder, already thankful he was back.
My brothers liberated the bourbon from the bar when Dino stepped away to place the call to Kat’s kid brother.
I didn’t know the guy well, but he’d help Kat, who was the smartest woman I knew, on a couple of her jobs. She’d hidden cash for Joey Mancinni and Vinnie Russo’s businesses before they turned on each other and it should have cost her. But every time a warrant popped up under one of Kat’s identities, she made them disappear. Drew wasn’t as good as his big sister, but he could handle this, no problem.
But before Dino could make it to the other side of the restaurant to place the call, Maggie’s voice shrieked across the room and I turned, darting for her when she held up her own cell.
Vi’s number and picture flashed across the screen.
“Stay calm,” I told her, waving my mother back. “Put it on speaker.” When she hesitated, her entire arm shaking, I sat her down, moving the phone to the table and slid the call button to accept.
Maggie inhaled, resting her hands on her chest, her attention on me when she exhaled. “Alejandro?”
“Hola, mi amor.”
16
Maggie
I was a Pisces who didn’t like the water.
Lakes and rivers, the ocean, streams—none of it ever held my interest. I thrived in the woods, among the trees, getting lost in thick vines and inclined trails.
But water? Sand and spray? The wobbling current of waves?
No, I hated it all.
When Alejandro demanded that we meet him here, at this small fishing shack fifty miles away from Cuoricino, I knew this would all end in the place I hated the most: on the water.
A Pisces who did not want to swim, sitting next to the man who refused to give up.
“Fucking cameras.”
Dimitri was still seething as we pulled into the parking lot that led to the pier. The veins in his neck throbbed and pulsed, hadn’t stopped doing either since we sat around Vi’s phone listening to Alejandro taunting us. Dimitri had clutched my hand, giving me the strength he knew I needed, as my ex laughed at us.
“Maggie, mi amor, you think I’m stupid, don’t you?” There was a laugh in his tone that was forced, but the confidence, the cockiness, that hadn’t changed. Alejandro was beautiful and smart. But not smart enough to believe he could work, program, and shoot poison in his veins. “You think I haven’t been watching you?”
“You couldn’t be,” I tried, hating the shake in my voice and how tired, how weak I sounded.
Dimitri grabbed my face, kissing my cheek to calm me.
I exhaled, long and slow, my pulse rate easing. “There’s no way…”
“Tell that gringo cabrón to get his fucking hands off of you.”
Dimitri went still, backing up slowly, his entire body changing as he heard the threat in my ex’s tone. When he looked down at the phone, something shifted in his expression and I thought I glimpsed what I’d only heard horror stories about in the time I’d been working for the Carelli’s.
Smoke Carelli, the gangster had shown up.
“This cabrón doesn’t take orders from anyone, you feel me, pendejo?”
My heart thumped and I reached for the phone when Smoke grabbed it from the table. But he held me back, keeping me at arm’s length as he focused on that screen and the dip in Alejandro’s voice.
“You’re fucking with the wrong man,” he said, his voice clear and alert.
Dimitri’s laugh was sharp, biting and held no humor. It scared me, almost as much as what he said next. “Come say that to my face, if you’re such a man. I’m right fucking here. Got plenty of time and a lot of energy to burn. You meet me in the street, and we’ll see who the fuck the wrong man is.”