Page 20 of Mafia King's Surprise Baby

I gulp hard. Can’t be thinking of Bianca. Not when her brother will gladly eviscerate me when he finds I slept with her right under his nose.

Thankfully, we reach the house in Lenox Hill soon enough. We’ve hardly stepped out of the car when the front door opens and a woman squeals with joy. Hana squeals right back, before running off to hug her friend she seems so happy to see.

Bianca.

I freeze where I’m getting a suitcase out of the trunk. What is she doing here? Mattia didn’t tell me she’d be at his place when he returned. Also, I didn’t ask. Why would I, when back then, when we made the plan to pick him up, I’d had no idea what Bianca looked like now, how her appearance would upend my world, how her body would call to my baser instincts and her very person scorch my heart and lay claim to my soul.

Here he is, that idiot teen again. Guess they’re right in saying a man isn’t really a man until he turns thirty. I’m twenty-eight, so still green by that definition.

“Hey, Leo,” Bianca says with a small wave.

I nod and wave back. She turns toward the house, pulling Hana along with her. Mattia and I are dismissed by the women, and that’s just as well. He doesn’t seem to have noticed anything awkward in the exchange between me and Bianca. And whywould he? We know each other, have known each other all our lives. We’re not friends, though, so it doesn’t look weird that we don’t interact beyond polite greetings.

Mattia and I get the luggage and start toward the house.

“All well?” I ask my best friend.

“Yeah.”

“No stage fright?” I playfully throw with a smile.

“My wife had no complaints.”

“Yeah, I could see that. If there’d been a divider window in the car, she’d have fucked you right there behind me.”

He shrugs. “What can I say? I’m a lucky man.”

“Lucky bastard, yeah.”

We’re inside now. Hana jumps to us and snatches a case from my grip.

“Come on, gifts!”

Bianca squeals again, and the two women disappear around the corner toward the kitchen.

“Leo! Get in here,” Hana calls out.

“You heard the lady,” Mattia says.

I shake my head. “You’re totally pussy-whipped.”

“And proud of it, too.”

Fuck them! All that domestic bliss is hard to stomach.

Enticing smells of garlic and herbs scent the air as we turn into the open-plan kitchen.

“You’re making dinner?” Mattia asks.

Bianca nods from where she’s dropped onto her knees with Hana on the rug in the other half of the room that has couches and a massive screen on the wall. The suitcase is open between them.

“Spaghetti al Arrabiata,” she says.

“It’s the only thing she knows how to make,” Mattia tells me.

He’s never this chatty usually. Guess Hana’s got her hand in this more open, relaxed version of him.

“That’s not an issue,” Hana says. “Soon, she’ll be marrying an Albanian man. Albanian food is what she needs to learn how to cook.”

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