Page 20 of The Enforcer

I can’t look away fast enough. “So, you came to Naples,” I prod Shae.

“And I ended up at the restaurant. I found it on Yelp. It had great reviews,” she says with a shrug.

“Mariana will love hearing that,” Alfonso says.

“It was a coincidence,” Shae says.

“Oh, I love that,” Zahra says, leaning over Giulio to grab Shae’s arm. “I also love that you dumped that dickhead. My God, he sucked.” Giulio laughs and presses a kiss against the side of Zahra’s head.

“Yes, yes, yes. Everyone hates Steve. Can we get to the matter at hand? Why the hell did someone try to shoot you?” I ask Salvatore.

“I was wondering when you were going to ask that,” he says calmly.

I know he’s the boss, but in that moment, I also know that he must be powerful as hell. Only someone in possession of enough clout to take danger for granted could manage to look at me with twinkling eyes behind his glasses and a proud smirk on his face while we discuss an assassination attempt against him.

I turn to Shae and then Zahra. “What the fuck have you two gotten yourselves into?”

Alfonso

Well, that little family drama was a nice interlude. I’ve spent the last decade enduring my own family’s interrogations whenever I made it home, so it’s nice to watch someone else have to withstand that kind of scrutiny. It’s comforting. My mother and brothers would like Zoe.

But once she aims her attention at Salvo, I know that it’s time to get to work.

Giulio and I look to Salvatore, but he only has eyes for Shae.

He’s holding her hands in his, and he brings them to his mouth. We all look away from the intimacy of this moment. Not that I would have expected it, but I can’t even remember seeing Salvo touching Flavia like this in all the years they’d been married. And while he’s not the kind of man who would hide his humanity, this kind of tenderness is different. Giulio must know that because he pulls Zahra closer into his side and kisses her cheek again.

I turn to Zoe.

She turns to me and frowns.

I raise my eyebrows at her.

Her frown deepens, and she rolls her eyes, looking away.

I laugh.

Salvo’s chair scrapes against the floor, and he stands up. “There are things that I cannot tell you, especially not now.” He’s speaking directly to Shae. They hold a heated — and uncomfortably long — bit of eye contact, and then he turns to us.

“Here’s what I can share. I am a businessman with a number of enemies.”

“Oh, okay, he’s a gangster,” Zoe says.

“I mean, I thought so, because Giulio’s a bit” — Zahra holds both hands up as if she has a gun in each, and she shoots them — “but I didn’t want to judge.”

“I guess that explains the room with the dead body,” Shae says.

“Uh, he wasn’t dead,” I add helpfully.

Shae leans forward to whisper to her family members, “See how he used the past tense?”

I look toward Salvo and Giulio. My boss looks bewildered.

Giulio shrugs and hugs Zahra. “She was bound to figure it out eventually.”

“I mean, I assumed when you,” she shoots her finger guns again, “in San Gimignano.” She turns to Salvo. “Okay, so you’re a ‘businessman,’” she makes quotation marks with her fingers, “with a lot of enemies.”

Salvo’s mouth falls open. “I…” His brow furrows, and he curses in Italian.

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