Page 44 of Corrupted Heart

“Dude, I didn’t get a pita pocket and fucking French fries when I walked in.”

“I got French fries,” Deimos shrugs, grinning. “But I had to steal them from the kitchen when Ya-ya wasn’t looking. You know, because I’m not the favorite either.”

My eyes roll as I glance back to Callie and wave the plate in front of her.

“You suuuure?”

She sighs heavily and snatches a huge handful of fries, stuffing like four at once in her mouth.

“Ass.”

I grin as I watch her scarf them down. “Do I need to have a talk with Castle? Is he not feeding you enough?”

“Oh, don’t you worry. He’s feeding me plenty. You know, eating for two and all that.”

My brows shoot up. “Holy shit,” I blurt. “Cals, are you?—”

“Kidding,” she giggles. “I mean, I’m not yet.” She smirks at me. “But we’re putting in lots of practice.”

I make a puke face and wrinkle my nose. “Annnd there’s that daily dose of way T. M. fucking I. that’s been lacking since you moved out.”

“Aww,” she grins. “You miss it. Admit it.”

Ares loudly clears his throat. “So, yeah, if you’re done with lunch, Kratos,” he grumbles at me. “Could we get this show on the road?”

I grin, offering him my plate of fries, which he takes, because of course he does. No one in their right mind says no to Ya-ya’s food.

“How’s my nephew?”

“Loud,” my oldest brother sighs, looking about as exhausted as I’d imagine the father of a two-month-old would.

Hades chuckles. “Ares is just fucking pissed that Elias is stealing Neve’s tits away from him.”

“No, Ares is fucking tired,” our brother grunts. “Because he hasn’t slept more than three fucking hours at a stretch in two months. And he’d like to get this goddamn meeting started so that he can maybe sneak in a ten-minute nap before he goes home to diapers and cleaning pump parts. Also, if you could maybe never talk about my wife’s breasts again, that’d be swell.”

Hades chuckles. Callie wags a finger at him.

“Hey, laugh it up while you can, bro. That’s gonna be you in three months.”

Hades makes a face as Ares clears his throat again.

“Anyway. This can be brief, but…” He rolls his shoulders, turning to glance at each of us. “We need to talk about the Italian elephant in the room.”

Deimos’ brow furrows. “Nero?”

“Nero,” Ares grunts, nodding. “We all knew there’d be some upheaval and drama when the Carveli family went down in flames…”

Beside me, Callie shivers a little, hugging herself. I drop a heavy, comforting hand on her shoulder, which she seems to appreciate, turning and smiling at me a little.

I doubt many people ever had a good experience with the Carvelis. But Callie especially doesn’t look back on them with any fondness. There was a while there when an old blood marker our father made with the Carveli family betrothed our sister to the sleazy, cruel, sixty-year-old father of the late and unlamented Don Massimo Carveli.

“However,” Ares continues. “We didn’t expect the De Luca family to be the one filling that fifth slot on the Italian Commission. The problem here is?—”

“That Nero is a fucking violent, unpredictable lunatic,” Deimos grunts from where he’s still leaning against the bookshelves near one of the windows.

Hades scowls. “Great. So another fucking Massimo.”

Ares wags his head side to side. “Not quite, but he’s definitely a wild card. They’ve been calling him the young lion, both because of his ferocity and the fact that he’s got something to prove. To make things even more interesting, apparently Nero has bad blood with Davit.”

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