Page 18 of Unforgivable Ties

Yeah, I definitely had to fuck her. She needed to get out of my mind ASAP. I just hoped it wouldn’t be awkward when I got bored and our relationship went back to business only.

“Vincenzo,” Emilio said, snapping me from my thoughts.

My four friends and I were gathered around, discussing the bug Stephanie had discovered at the dinner table. It was imperative we got to the bottom of this immediately.

“Yeah,” I responded. I needed to stop picturing Stephanie naked and start focusing on this conversation.

“Tell us about the bug.”

I had already briefed them on the night with Vito, so there was no need to recap that. But I had discovered some new information since then.

“I had one of my guys look into it. The bug was for Vito,” I said. “He’s been getting sloppy with his work, apparently.”

“Vito?” said Ettore, his knotted brow portraying his disbelief. “He’s always been the shrewd type. I find it hard to believe he let something like that slip.”

“I was surprised, too,” I responded. “But it’s true. My insider at the station confirmed it. It was a bug from the cops, meant for Vito.”

Ettore let out an audible sigh of relief. As a Don, something like this would have caused major problems if it had been meant for us.

“Well, that’s good,” he muttered, rubbing his hand against his jaw.

“Then it’s not our problem,” Felix, another fellow mafia member, interjected nonchalantly, swirling the amber whiskey in his glass.

“But we shouldn’t be lazy,” his twin brother Rocco added. “We can’t overlook the fact that there was a bug in our vicinity. Vito might have been the target, but we were in close proximity.”

“Good thing you didn’t get to the meat of the conversation,” Emilio said, lighting up a cigarette.

“Yeah, thank god Vito talks a lot,” Felix chuckled. “His incessant ramblings finally came in handy.”

“Agreed,” I said, my mind drifting back to Stephanie. If she hadn’t spotted that bug, we would have been dragged into Vito’s business.

After agreeing on plans for how we would tighten up security and keep watch, we switched the conversation to another subject. A topic that I hadn’t been able to tackle with this bullet wound in my side.

“We need to take down the men who tried to steal the meth shipment,” I said, placing my hand on my almost healed gunshot wound. “It’s punishment, and to serve as a message for anyone else who may be thinking the same thing.”

We finished up our conversation, making plans for our next steps. Ettore and Emilio would deal with increasing security, while Felix, Rocco, and I would take care of the retaliation. It was going to be a dangerous move, but necessary to maintain our reputation on the streets. Living in the underworld had its own rules, and inaction was not an option.

I bid them goodbye, and the minute I stepped foot out of the building my mind immediately drifted to Stephanie. She’d be getting out of classes soon. She didn’t have to work today, so there was no reason I had to see her, but I found myself justifying a visit anyway. There was no way she’d turn down a ride home, right?

I parked my car in the same loading zone as I did when I first picked her up from her college. The usual clamor of students leaving their classes had already begun. Young adults huddled together as they discussed the latest academic trials and tribulations. I marveled at their innocence, their ignorance. Innocence I never got to have. I had been in the mafia from a young age; the path predetermined by the blood coursing through my veins.

Slamming my car door, I walked around the side of the car and waited for Stephanie to appear. Soon enough, she and that prickshe called her ex boyfriend walked out of the building together. Even though they were broken up, and I knew she hated him, I still felt a surge of jealousy.

Fuck, no. It couldn’t be jealousy, we weren’t dating. I didn’t do relationships, my life had no room for such fragile sentiments. Attempting to shake off the negative emotions, I focused on Stephanie as she spotted me and gave me a wave.

Her prick ex boyfriend saw and eyed me with undisguised hostility. He said something to her, the words lost in the bustle of the crowd, but Stephanie’s reaction was telling. She rolled her eyes and said something snappy back before leaving him standing there, his face drawn tight with annoyance.

“Hey,” she said, walking up to me.

“Hey.” I noticed her asshole boyfriend was still watching. Carefully, I placed my hand against the small of her back, guiding her towards my car. She shivered slightly under the touch, but didn’t pull away.

“Uhm…what’s that for?” she asked as she glanced back at my hand, her eyes revealing a hint of surprise but not distaste.

“Well, your ex is watching, and he thinks we’re dating.”

That was only part of it. The truth was, I wanted to stake my claim, even if it was just for the moment. Something in me ignited when I saw him with her, and it was an emotion I didn’t recognize.

“Of course he is,” she sighed.

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