Page 34 of Salvatore

Apollo stays where he is. “Get going,” I tell him.

He stands, his gaze locking on mine. “No,” he says without flinching.

I push off the door frame and prowl forward. “I’m not asking,” I growl.

This time he does flinch, as he should. Aedry tries to step in front of him to shield him from me, but Gianno beats her to it. We face off, his nose just below mine. Hell, when did this little bastard get so tall? Doesn’t matter. I can still beat his ass, and he knows it.

Unlike Apollo though, Gianno isn’t looking for trouble. “Let’s go, Apollo,” he says.

No one moves, pissing me off more than I already am. Apollo opens his mouth, but Aedry cuts him off. “It’s okay,” she tells him, assuring him in that soft voice of hers.

He swallows a swear, but he bends to shove his crap into his backpack. He doesn’t look at me when he storms out, but my eyes stay trained on him. I don’t expect Gianno to shove his face into mine. But that’s exactly what he does. “Don’t fuck this up,” he says.

I tighten my jaw, not happy with how my brothers are pushing me today. “I’m serious, Sal,” Gianno says. “Don’t be an asshole.”

I don’t like the way he’s talking to me and if we were at home, I’d smack him upside the head. He knows I’m plenty mad and that this shit going down between us won’t be over when he walks out. Except he doesn’t care, keeping his attention on me when he calls to Aedry. “Bye, Miss Aedry,” he tells her.

“Bye, sweetie,” she responds.

Sweetie? Da hell?

I wait for him to shut the door behind him before turning back to Aedry. She’s sitting in her chair with her legs crossed, the skirt of her denim dress brushing against her shins.

“Hey,” I say like a dumbass.

She raises her brows. “Let’s get one thing straight. We’re going to talk about your brothers and nothing more. Am I clear?”

Most women who meet me want to shove me into bed. Aedry’s glare suggests she’d like to shove me through a window, without opening it first. I didn’t come here to argue so I take a seat at the sofa, putting some distance between us.

“How are they doing?” I ask.

The strain in her shoulders eases enough for me to notice, but not much more. She swivels in her seat and opens her file. “Gianno has shown tremendous improvement. His biggest challenges remain in history. I’ve started counseling him?”

“Why? He’s fine.”

She lifts her chin. “He asked to meet with me. It’s nothing formal, not like it is with Apollo. Just questions here and there, and brief talks during his tutoring.”

“Talks about what?”

“His past and some of the stress he’s going through.”

“Stress?” She nods. “All he has to do is go to school. How much stress can he have?”

She taps her finger against the desk. I don’t ever remember her being this, I don’t know, impatient with me. But as I keep looking at her, “impatient” isn’t quite the right word. Fit to be tied is more like it. Except, when she talks, her voice stays even and relaxed. “I think you’re forgetting what it’s like to be sixteen. There’s a lot of pressure to act a certain way, be accepted, and feel like you have a place in the world. It helps that Gianno is a natural leader?”

“He gets it from me.”

I mean it as a joke to loosen her up. Aedry doesn’t take it that way and is irate that I cut her off. “Do you want to discuss your brothers, or would you prefer to use this time to inflate your already immense ego and take control, like always?”

Damn. I start to tell her that I don’t have a big ego?and that I don’t always have to be in control, but that’s a lie and we both know it. A certain satisfaction sparks her eyes. It should piss me off, and it would with anyone else. But it’s not like that with her. Like I said, this woman is . . . yeah, I’m in deep shit.

I try to keep my face hard, but I don’t pull it off in time. Another spark lights her irises when she catches my smirk. I lean back. “If Gianno’s a leader, like I’ve taught him to be, he should be better off, right?

“He should be. And in a lot of ways he is. But he’s also very alpha,” she says, looking right at me. “Which gets him into trouble.”

“How?” I frown. “You mean the fights?”

“He doesn’t back down when he feels he’s been disrespected.”

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