Page 7 of Leaving Lando

I throw my hands up. “What is it with you Adamo men?”

“Lando ask you that too?” Something dangerously like amusement glimmers in his eyes. Since he could probably snap me in half with one hand, I don’t call him on it, even though I’d love to give him some of my patented sarcasm.

“Yes, he did,” I retort, trying to keep my temper under control. “And last I checked, neither one of you is my father.”

“Adamo men,” Caitlin says delicately, “are protective.”

“Well, that’s great. But like I said, Lando and I are just friends. I’m not his to protect.” I leave unspoken the obvious implication that if Lando doesn’t have the right to dictate my behavior, Rico sure as hell can’t stop me.

The men exchange glances for a long moment. It makes me even madder that they’re silently debating whether to allow me, a grown-ass woman, to do as I damn well please. The women look simultaneously sympathetic, and like they’re trying not to smile.

“Okay,” Rico says at last, and slides out of the booth.

“Thank you,” I say a bit too acerbically, and give everyone a parting smile. “Have a good evening.”

The waitress arrives just then, carrying a tray laden down with plates. “Do you want your pizza?” she asks. “I can box it up for you.”

I love pizza, but my appetite’s gone for once. “That’s okay. Please help yourselves,” I tell the group, and wave at the twins, who have twisted around to stare at me with big brown eyes. “Bye,” I tell them, wiggling my fingers.

“It was good to meet you, too, Brianna,” Gina says, and everyone’s goodbyes follow me across the room, to the door and out. The wind slaps me in the face with vicious force. Shivering, I hastily zip up my jacket.

I’m going to freeze my ass off by the time I get to Carlotta’s house. My ears might fall off, too. Too bad. I asserted myself, and the consequences are mine to bear.

Trudging across the parking lot, I reach the sidewalk and turn right. I’m already regretting my decision; it feels about forty degrees colder than it was earlier, when I walked to the police station. Stubborn pride won’t let me go back to the restaurant, but I’ll call Jade and see if she can come and pick me up.

I fish my phone out, my fingers already stiff with cold, and pull my sister up in my contacts. To my relief, she answers right away. “Hey Bree, what’s up?”

She sounds a little breathless, and my imagination fills in the blank: hanky-panky with Romero, no doubt. The quick flash of jealousy shocks me. I’ve been nothing but thrilled for her since she and Rome got together.

“Hey, sis. Sorry to interrupt whatever you’re doing, but could I bum a ride?”

“Where’s Lando?” she says immediately.

I cast my eyes skyward in a silent plea for patience. “Working a case.”

“And he just left you?” She sounds indignant. Both my sisters know that Lando and I have a routine, that he always drops me off after my cop-shop deliveries.

“Jade, it’s cold out here. Could we please skip the twenty questions?”

Her response is drowned out by the squeal of tires. Lando’s truck jerks to a stop at the curb, and the next instant Lando’s out of the truck and around it to me. I stare at his furious expression.

“Get in the fucking truck,” he growls.

“I’m talking to Jade, she’s going to come—”

He plucks the phone from my hand and ends the call. “Get. In. The fucking truck.”

All my frustration—with Lando, with my unwilling celibacy, with the bossiness of Adamo men generally—boils over. “Stop telling me what to do!”

Wrenching the passenger door open, he picks me up, bending me almost double so he can lift me into the truck without banging my head, and sets me firmly on the seat. The door slams, and then the locks beep.

Disbelieving, I try the door. I didn’t imagine it; I’m trapped. The driver’s side door will open, of course, but I don’t have time to go that route before he’s in the truck with me.

His anger fills the cab like a living thing. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“You!” I shout. “You are what’s wrong with me. You and your domineering cousins!”

“You’re goddamn lucky they called me. The fuck were you thinking, walking around in this cold?”

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