Page 3 of Hold Him Like Gravity

“Good. So whatcha doing here?”

“Renz said you are starting construction here tonight. Figured you might want a set of eyes around. You know, make sure they’re behaving themselves.”

One of the members of a former rival family, the Costas, had started up a construction business. To wash their money, sure, but also to have a company that could be trusted to do work on all their own homes.

It was always a risk to bring anyone into your home or business. The cops were sneaky as fuck. They brought down some big dons back in the day by posing as cable repairmen, sneaking in, and placing bugs.

And that was back when bugs were bigger and harder to hide and with shitty battery lives.

Now? Those things were damn near invisible and could go on forever.

Hiring anyone on the outside to do anything was taking a big chance. Especially at a place like the meat shop, where we frequently engaged in family business and, even more often, talked about it.

So, when I told Renzo, the boss, that I wanted to spruce the place up, and that I didn’t exactly want to do all the work myself, his wife, Lore—a former Costa herself—had suggested we outsource to the Costas.

I’ll admit, I wasn’t exactly a supporter of Renzo’s plan to use a marriage to a Costa woman to bring an end to the feud that had existed between our families since Lorenzo Costa had taken over for his father a while back.

Sure, I liked Lore. And I was happy our boss was in love with her and shit. But I have to say that the distrust of the Costas did still simmer inside of me a lot of the time.

Clearly, Saff felt the same way.

Though, to be fair, Saff was always looking for an enemy to rail against.

“Dunno if it’ll look good if we babysit ‘em,” I said, going to the front to grab the money out of the safe. Not because the Costas would steal from us—the fuckers had enough money—but because men would be in and out and someone desperate might decide to sneak in and grab something that didn’t belong to them.

“Who cares what it looks like?” Saff said, rolling her eyes.

“Renzo, I imagine. They’re his in-laws.”

“I mean… if I remember their family tree, Anthony is only a cousin or something like that. Not one of Lore’s many brothers.”

“Still,” I said, shoving the cash into a bag to drop at the bank machine on the way home.

“Did you at least put some cameras up?”

“For what?”

“To make sure they don’t bug the place.”

“No more cameras than usual,” I said, going back into my office to grab anything I didn’t want getting covered in paint or dust. “They don’t have their sights set on Brooklyn. They have no reason to bug the place.”

“When did you get so soft?” Saff asked, following me as I piled the shit I was taking on a prep table, then grabbed the trash bags I’d told Kick to leave for me to handle.

Saff didn’t grab one.

I refuse to make any man’s life easier, she’d once said when someone asked why she hadn’t helped Elian clean up at a gathering at Renzo’s place.

And, hey, you had to respect that.

“Don’t think it’s soft to accept the wishes of our boss, kid,” I said, just to fuck with her. She hated being reminded that she was younger than the rest of us.

“Fine. Get bugged, stolen from, and arrested,” she said, leaning back against the wall in the alley, watching me walk back and forth to get rid of the garbage.

“Your concern for me is touching,” I said, shooting her a smirk as we moved back into the building.

“I am not above visiting you in the pen to tell youI told you so,” she said, eyes twinkling.

“Know you won’t. Go on, get home. Clean up those knuckles. Don’t wanna get infected,” I said, hearing the knock at the front door at that exact moment.

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