Page 17 of Beautifully Savage Butterfly

Sparrow rests his forehead against Xaviaro’s. “I love you too.”

“Gah, you two are seriously relationship goals.” Dante’s voice is unexpected. I was so absorbed with the distracting, too-intimate display they were putting on that I didn’t notice him approaching the table.

“Yeah?” Sal’s gaze traces a lazy path over Dante’s scantily clad body. “You looking for your own mafioso to warm your bed at night, angioletto?”

“I don’t have any trouble keeping my bed warm, I have trouble finding a man who can keep up with me.” The skeptical look he gives Sal with his own slow once-over is more devastating than a direct insult.

Alessio laughs and I rub a hand across my mouth to cover my own amusement.

“You wound me,” Salvatore says dryly, putting a hand over his heart dramatically.

Dante rolls his eyes. “I think you’ll get over it, playboy. Now, can I get you guys some drinks or anything?”

“We’re fine,” Enzo answers for all of us.

“Here’s a little something for taking Sal’s ego down a few notches though,” Alessio says with a wink, pulling out a hundred-dollar bill and tucking it into the waistband of Dante’s red shorts, pulling his hand back quickly on instinct before he can end up on the long list of men with broken fingers, courtesy of our favorite violent little stripper.

Dante leaves us be, and now that Sparrow’s here, we launch into our meeting. It’s a lot of the same old, same old—collections updates, the Fitzpatricks caught doing more business right on the edge of the city, practically begging for an all-out war, and an uptick in underaged prostitution that we’re working to get a handle on.

“I’ve got something I wanted to bring to your attention,” Salvatore says as things are wrapping up. He turns on his tablet and clicks through some spreadsheets to pull up a specific one, then he nudges it across the table towards Lorenzo.

I lean in to get a look at what he’s showing us. From the looks of things, it’s rows of numbers showing someone making their regular weekly payments. Everything is in the black, no missed weeks. I frown, and Enzo does the same.

“What am I looking at here?”

“These are the records for The Starlight, that bar on the corner of First and Van Buren, owned by Casimir Zelinski,” Sal answers.

“Mm,” Lorenzo hums in understanding, scrolling back to the top of the sheet to look it over again with fresh context.

The Starlight was on the verge of going belly-up last spring. When Casimir came to us for a loan to keep things afloat, we were happy to agree. With interest, of course.

It’s in a prime location, but the foofy, outdated name and the owner’s general lack of business sense haven’t done the place any favors. It was a vulture opportunity for us, just circling the corpse of his dying business, waiting for it to sputter out its final breath so we could swoop in and take it over ourselves. All we had to do was wait for him to start missing payments.

“Did he actually manage to turn the place around?” I ask.

Sal shakes his head. “It’s a ghost town. I’ve popped in there on Saturday nights and there hasn’t been a soul in the place. For a guy who came begging on his knees for this loan, he seems to have found some other source of income.”

“I’m not one to complain about someone staying on track with their loan repayments, but…” Enzo trails off, passing the tablet back to Salvatore.

“But if he’s up to some shit right under our nose, we want to know about it,” Xaviaro finishes for him.

“Exactly,” Lorenzo says.

“You want me to look into it?” Xav asks.

I’m sure he won’t have any trouble going in there and scaring the hell out of Casimir, knocking his head around until he spills any and all of his secrets. But I’m wondering if the direct approach is the right one. If he is up to something illegal in our city, he’s not likely to be doing it all on his own.

“I’ll handle it,” I volunteer before Lorenzo can answer him.

My brother raises his eyebrows in surprise, and he’s not the only one.

“Itching to get out on the streets and get your hands dirty?” Alessio asks with a smirk.

“Not everything needs to be messy,” I point out. “Some things require a scalpel rather than a hatchet.”

“And you’re a scalpel?” Xaviaro asks skeptically.

“You want to go and rattle Casimir’s cage that badly?” I counter instead of answering his question.

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