Page 24 of Tammaro DeLuca

I frowned, and she laughed. “I hate salad. It feels like somebody got bored one day and put a bunch of veggies on a plate with dressing and called it a thing. No thanks.”

“That is the exact definition of a salad. Vegetables in a bowl. I wouldn’t call it boring. You need to have mom’s version with bacon and eggs and stuff. I love it. She makes some kind of tangy dressing to put on top or you can use blue cheese.”

“No thanks. I hate that stuff.”

“Me too. Have you tried French?” She asked.

“You’re bad at history, aren’t you?” I asked joking.

“No…” she closed her eyes, finally catching on. “Ha ha. Very funny.”

I shrugged. “You asked the Italian about the French.”

“Dressing, dad, dressing.”

Dad…

“You can get all the ones you think I’ll like, and I’ll sample them. There will not be any French, though.”

She laughed. “Deal.”

We continued talking and joking until Yolanda finally came down a few hours later.

“Ma, you must’ve been up super late. You never sleep in like this,” Asmaria said to her when she entered the kitchen, still wearing her nightgown and a robe.

I smirked, and Yolanda rolled her eyes at me. “I had a tough night.”

I poured her a cup of coffee and prepped it the way she liked before sliding it to her. I popped bread into the toaster and pulled out her onions and chive cream cheese to go on it. She raised her eyebrow when she sipped the coffee. Instead of telling me I got it right, she turned toward Asmaria.

“How’d you sleep?” She asked her.

“Too good. The bed is much more comfortable than the one I had. I’m still getting used to the size of this place.” Asmaria said.

When the toast popped up, I spread the cream cheese on it and handed it to Yolanda. I kissed her temple and left the two of them to talk while I went upstairs to call Beni. He’d told me to call him if anything important came up. Turns out my two ladies downstairs fell into that category. There was also the cop following me last night. I needed to find out how well connected we were to them.

“I didn’t expect to hear from you.” He said.

“I didn’t expect to have to call you either.” I confessed.

“What’s going on, bro?”

Bro…

“Well,” I gave him the shortened version of the story. Yolanda was my old thing turned new. We have a child together, and I’m blackmailing her father because of my issue with Puff.

“I thought I was trouble.” He mumbled. “What is it with us and the men who brought our women into this world?” He asked, but it felt rhetorical. There was no way I had an answer for that. I didn’t even know what he meant by it.

“There was a cop that followed me last night. Never pulled me over or did anything.”

“He just wanted to make sure that you knew he was there.” Beni said, reading between the lines.

“Exactly.”

“Did you get his plates?” He asked.

“I did.”

“Then I’ll send Simo over to talk to you.”

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