Page 67 of Savage Lover

Then it ended, and I don’t know how to get back there, because I don’t know how it happened in the first place.

I pick up my phone once more, finding her number. I got it from Mason, who got it from Patricia.

I could call her. I could ask her out on a date.

But the idea of me sitting across the table from a girl just reminds me of my stupid lunch with Bella. I hated that. It was so fucking fake.

I set the phone down again, scowling.

Dante comes into the room. I’ve got my papers spread out all over the ancient oak table in the dining room. We never eat in here anymore. We used to have family dinners, when Aida and Seb were still here. Now we mostly eat at the little table in the kitchen, where Greta doesn’t have to walk so far to bring us the food. Half the time our meals don’t even overlap—Greta just keeps the food warm on the stove.

I kinda miss those family dinners. I think the last one we had was the night of Nessa Griffin’s party. We all ate up on the roof, under the grapevines. We could see fireworks breaking over the bay.

That night changed so many things. Aida wanted to crash the Griffins’ party. I agreed. We had no idea what would follow, from that silly little impulse: Seb’s star ripped away from him. Aida married against her will. An alliance with the Griffins. A war with the Braterstwo.

It’s not that I want things to go back. But I wish you could know when a moment will change your life forever. I wish I would have enjoyed that dinner a little longer and not been in such a hurry to get up from the table.

“What’s all that?” Dante grunts.

He’s dripping with sweat, having just come in from a run.

My brother was already a beast by the time he was sixteen, and he’s only gotten bigger since then. I think he spent most of his time in Iraq working out on base. He came home the size of a half-grown bull. Now he’s a fucking Kodiak.

I hear him in our basement gym, grunting and straining. We’ve got an ancient set of barbells, speckled with rust. Dante slings a couple of giant chains around his neck, then he does push-ups and pull-ups and dips until his muscles are bulging out in places that people shouldn’t even have muscle.

“You look wrung out. Have you tried getting a girlfriend instead?” I ask him.

“You’re one to talk,” Dante says. “At least I had one, once.”

Oh, yes. But we don’t talk about her. Unless you want Dante to rip your arm off and feed it to you.

“I’ve had a lot of girlfriends,” I say. “For an hour or two.”

Dante snorts. “Mama wouldn’t like you talking that way,” he says.

Now it’s my turn to stiffen up. That’s the one woman I don’t want to discuss.

“We don’t know what she would have liked,” I say. “Because she’s not here.”

Dante looks at me quietly, trying to decide if he should say anything else. He returns to the scattered papers instead.

“Is that a vault?” he says, pointing to the topmost diagram.

“Clearly.”

“Why do you have the schematics for a vault?”

“Is it obvious question day?” I ask him.

Dante gives a long sigh. Since his lungs are like bellows, it blows several papers off the table.

“Does Papa know about this?” he says.

“No. You know Doctor Bernelli says stress is bad for his heart. I was planning to tell him afterward.”

My father is currently out on the back nine with Angelo Marino, the head of the second-largest Italian family in Chicago. Papa hates golfing, but he’s supposed to be getting more exercise. Marino has lured him out with promises of clubhouse BLTs and pretty waitresses. In return, Marino gets to talk Papa’s ear off about how his four worthless sons can advance inside of the organization.

Papa won’t be home for hours, which means I can work uninterrupted. Other than Dante, of course.

---