The Woman at the Docks - Jessica Gadziala Page 0,60

as the whole operation seemed to be in shambles.

I sat near my phone the entire day, my stomach in knots, praying everything would go right, that Luca would be able to come home to me.

And I waited.

And waited.

And waited...

Chapter Fourteen

Luca

Not much made me nervous.

I simply wasn't wired that way.

Maybe because my life came with so many uncertainties from such a young age. I never would have made it through if all I did was panic.

But I was nervous.

It was there in the tightness in my jaw, the thudding heartbeat, the churning discomfort of my stomach.

"Don't let it get to you," Lucky demanded, sitting beside me in the cafe at tables they only set up for us. We'd invested in their renovations a few years back, helping business pick up. They didn't care about the mafia connection, so they let us do whatever we wanted, having meetings at various places around their property.

Including this one.

Since the Costa family refused to have meetings at the docks or our restaurant, claiming safety reasons. Though, I was pretty sure that was Art talking, not Lorenzo who had always been a little less paranoid than his father.

"I don't know what the fuck my father wants us to tell him to excuse why we called in Feds to our operation."

Speaking of, he was late. Uncharacteristically late. And Matteo hadn't been seen in a day and a half, leading me to wonder if he had decided all the excitement was over, so he was going to go find some skirt to crawl up under.

"I don't know," Lucky agreed, reaching for his coffee. "Thank God it's Lorenzo, though," he added, shaking his head.

If it were up to the commission, we'd likely all be dead by now. But since Art had put his son in charge of dealing with us, the issue likely wouldn't come up in a sit down until he returned.

So this was big.

We had to spin the whole container thing as well as satisfy Art's desire for more money without having to let the Russians bring in guns, leaving us with a street war against the Henchmen MC in town.

And, let's face it, if you were going to have a war, you didn't want to go up against arms dealers.

Besides, we'd had a truce of sorts for longer than I'd been alive. We didn't want to start that shit.

Not even for New York.

"We've got to tell them to get an umbrella," Lucky decided, reaching up to wipe sweat off his brow.

Even if we had one, it was a day that meant it was ninety in the shade and the humidity was damn near one-hundred percent.

It was about half an hour before the planned meeting time when a long black sedan pulled up, parking a few feet away from us. We couldn't see much through the dark tint that would get him a ticket in Jersey if he stuck around for too long, but we knew it was Lorenzo.

First, because the car was damn near a hundred grand.

Second because there were no parking signs all over the curb in front of the cafe. And the only person who would so blatantly ignore them would be Lorenzo—someone who gave the middle finger to damn near any convention or rule he'd come across.

He didn't cut the engine, something that had Lucky and I sharing a look, unsure what that might mean.

That he wasn't planning on staying long, most likely.

But whether that was because he was going to tell us that the commission was meeting, and there was no reason to have this meeting, or if he was just going to let us handle our own business, well, that was anyone's guess.

It was a long moment that the car idled before Lorenzo climbed out, unfolding an exceptionally long body—six-foot-four, he dwarfed even his own father.

He was fit without being massive, someone who dedicated more time in the gym than I did, and therefore, not someone I wanted to face up in a fight.

Little was known about Lorenzo's mother—Art's first wife who mysteriously disappeared decades ago—but it was clear that Lorenzo took after her more than his father.

Whereas Art was just shy of average height, thick around the middle, round-faced, and had been losing his hair since his twenties, Lorenzo was tall, built well, had a face full of sharper edges, a full head of black hair, and almost startling bright, piercing green eyes. They were made more intimidating by the fact that he had a nasty scar that ran through