She shrugs modestly and looks away from the camera. “I tell them they’re worth it. I tell them they work hard, and that it’s okay for a woman to indulge herself once in a while.” She smiles. “And if it’s a guy, I tell him his woman will be very, very thankful and be sure to show her appreciation.”
Tavi laughs. “Well done, sis. Looks like you have a calling, eh?”
A calling to be the wife of one of our enemies. Yeah, she’s got a fucking calling.
“Guess so,” Rosa says. She walks back to her work, and Elise and Tavi chat it up again. She had a visit to the doctor today and fills him in on everything about the size of the baby, how healthy things are, and all the little details that matter. He eats it up like she’s feeding him manna from heaven.
Jealousy’s a hard pill to swallow.
I turn my back to them and finish my wine, until he hangs up the call.
The room’s silent for a minute, until the clock chimes eight. It’s two o’clock in Boston, then. They’ll be closing in only a few hours.
“Who’s watching them?” I ask nonchalantly, as if I’m not holding my breath waiting for his response.
“Amadeo and Tommaso,” he says. Amadeo was once reprimanded by Romeo for drinking on the job and jeopardizing his mother’s safety, and ever since then, hasn’t stepped a toe out of line. Tommaso is new, but trustworthy. I trained him myself.
“You’ve got two guards on them?”
He nods. “One per person. Not enough?”
He should have a fucking legion stationed out there.
“Need one for your bambino, man.” I watch him grin and smile to myself.
I change the subject. “Rosa looks pretty good for someone who just found out she’s betrothed to a stranger.” I try to keep the edge out of my voice but fail miserably.
I run a hand over my jaw and feel the beard I’ve grown in Tuscany. I hardly recognize myself these days.
Tavi looks away and doesn’t meet my eyes. He twirls his wineglass between his fingers and frowns.
“Ottavio.” He knows we mean business when we use his full name and not the nickname we gave him as kids.
He still doesn’t look at me.
Though technically Tavi’s above me in rank, we’re brothers. We’ve taken the same vows to The Family.
Well. Most of them, anyway.
Still, any of us would give our lives for the others.
But I don’t push him. I wait.
Finally, he releases a breath and looks to me. “She doesn’t know yet, brother.”
CHAPTER TWO
Rosa
“Rosa! No cheating!” Marialena’s sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor of her room in The Castle. She’s got her Tarot decks lined up, one deck in hand that she’s fanning like she’s a poker dealer.
It’s the full moon, and Marialena’s been begging us all to read our cards. I finally caved. None of us are as into it as she is, but we all love her, so we occasionally indulge her. She grabbed them from me when I kept trying to peek through them.
“I’m not cheating,” I tell her, rolling my eyes. “I was just trying to see what they looked like.”
Marialena frowns at me.
“Here, Rosa, you can come cheat with me,” Elise says, patting the tufted ottoman beside her. She’s nestled snugly into the armrest of the chair she’s in, her swollen ankles propped on a little stool.
I’ve known Elise longer than my brother Romeo’s wife Vittoria, and Orlando’s wife Angelina. Angelina and Elise are best friends, but I only met Angelina after she’d married Orlando. I met Elise long ago in Tuscany. We didn’t know until after we met we were each in rival mob families.
“I am happy to sit by the pregnant lady,” I say with a laugh. “She’s the one with all the good stuff.”
Typically fit as hell, Elise has grown a bit plumper with pregnancy. She grins at me and hands me a bowl of dip with sprinkles in it. “Pretzel dip?”
I shake my head and reach for the bowl of popcorn.
“Ah, right, you and the sugar.” She rolls her eyes. “You’ve got the willpower of a saint. Did you gain even a pound with Natalia?”
Natalia, my daughter, is six years old and sleeping under the watch of Mama, since it’s her nanny’s night off.
I laugh. “Uh, I gained like forty pounds during that pregnancy!”
Elise’s eyes go wide. “Well now that makes me feel better,” she says, dipping a pretzel into the bowl and taking a ridiculous amount of dip with it.
“What is that?” Vittoria asks Elise. “It looks like jarred frosting.”
Elise only shrugs. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.”
“Oooh,” Marialena, who eats literally everything, says to her. She abandons her cards and scoots over closer. “I love jarred frosting.” I watch her take six pretzels and dip them into the bowl, lift them, then shove them all into her mouth at once.