Page 26 of Assistant to the Mafia

Another presence filled the hallway opening, this one larger and more naturally intimidating. “You know you have a problem outside?” Cristiano De Salvo’s deep voice startled Grace and wrenched her attention forward again.

Cristiano stood nearly exactly where Enrico had, his young wife Felicity tucked under his muscular arm. He had a duffel bag and a full-sized clothing bag strapped over his back. The clothes couldn’t possibly be for him, given the way the bag dangled.

Romeo straightened somewhat, keeping his arm around her, and grunted. “Yeah, I heard. Good of you to show up after the psycho with the eggs.”

Dante motioned to the chairs opposite them. “Mikey’s not coming, take a seat.”

Cristiano nodded and pulled the chair across from Grace out, ushering Felicity into it, before thumbing the straps. “Where do you want these?”

“They’ll go upstairs,” Romeo said. “For now, just set ‘em on the sofa. I’ll take everything up later.”

“Uh-huh.” Cristiano turned and strode away from the table.

Felicity smiled slowly and offered a small wave to Grace. “Are you feeling okay this morning?”

Grace hesitated. “I … I think so.” How was she supposed to answer that? Clearly Felicity had heard something about her night, which was embarrassing in and of itself. She and Felicity were friendly but not necessarily true friends, so it wasn’t like they socialized. And now she had to assume the kind woman knew about the whole mafia thing, just as she had to assume about Iris, and Grace had no idea what to do with any of it.

Dante spared her the trouble of articulating a more thorough response when he addressed Felicity and said, “Thank you for your help this morning, Felicity.”

“It was the least I could do,” Felicity said.

Cristiano reappeared, unburdened, and claimed the seat at her side. He tugged her chair up flush with his, curled his arm around her torso, and pressed a kiss to her temple. “You’re too generous, baby,” he said to her, his words carrying effortlessly.

Grace stared at them, suddenly hyper aware of Romeo’s arm draped around her shoulders and the way she herself was sitting decidedly off-center in her chair. In her mind, she could easily picture if Iris were with them, as she’d been in the company of Iris and Dante several times and knew the way they tended to always find a way to be touching in whatever they did. It was cute, heartwarming even, and up to that moment she’d had not a small amount of jealousy.

All of a sudden, however, Grace felt incredibly overwhelmed.

“I assume you haven’t had time to pay a visit to our latest guest?” Dante said, directing his question to Cristiano.

Cristiano looked over at his cousin without releasing his wife. “Not yet. Figured after this I’ll take Felicity home, then pay him a visit. He ought to be strung out by then.”

“Um,” Felicity said, her voice almost inaudible. “What about…?”

“She knows,” Romeo said.

Grace felt her breath lodge in her chest. What was she overhearing? What was she possibly about to overhear? Did she want to? She watched Cristiano arch a brow, cut a momentary glance at her, then return his attention to Dante and open his mouth. And she knew it was too much. She shoved away from Romeo and away from the table, nearly knocking over her long-forgotten coffee cup in the process. “I need a moment. Excuse me.”

She made no move to reach for her phone. She didn’t want anyone to think she was running away to call the police or FBI or whoever it was a person might call to report this sort of thing. She simply went the long way around the table, out of reach of all of them, and told herself firmly that she was not already missing Romeo’s warmth.

Because that would have been crazy.

Almost as crazy as waking up to a middle-of-the-night phone call because she was being ambushed by gangsters looking to hurt her boss who was, oh by the way, apparently a mafia boss.

If she knew the property at all, she’d have gone somewhere else, somewhere less emotionally conflicting. But she didn’t know the property. She’d basically only walked one path and she was well aware that her little freak-out was not the time to wander aimlessly, so she went to the only space she knew for certain how to get to. She took herself all the way back upstairs—mostly in the hopes of not overhearing the mafia conversation—and returned to Romeo’s bedroom. Which probably wasn’t smart, because it smelled like him. It felt like him.

Tears stung her eyes and Grace let her feet carry her to the bed, where she climbed on top and crawled to the center. She pressed her back to the headboard, grabbed a pillow, and buried her face in the cool cushion. She didn’t really know if she was going to cry or scream or hyperventilate, or all of the above even.

What the hell did one do when their world turned upside down?

“Give her a few minutes,” Dante said with a pointed glance at Romeo after Grace disappeared from the dining room.

“I still don’t understand how she didn’t already know,” Felicity said, almost as if she were thinking aloud.

“You’ve had very different lives up to now,” Dante replied calmly.

Romeo blew out an agitated breath, eyeing Grace’s abandoned phone. He recognized that more than likely Grace was feeling overwhelmed. Still, some part of her mind was obviously functioning, because there was no way that workaholic just forgot her cell phone when she left a room. She’d left it there—in plain sight—specifically so they would know she wasn’t calling to report them in some way. And whether it was self-preservation or an early sign of her acceptance, he chose to take it as a positive.

He just would much have preferred to follow after her rather than talk about more shit.

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