Page 8 of Black Widow's Kiss

Turning around recapturing my humor, I replied, “It’s my wedding day, Sister. I’m getting dressed.”

I was going to make this a day to remember.

Chapter 3

Dante

This isn’t good. None of this is fuckin’ good. Sato has made me wait two days for a face-to-face with him to get this marriage shit straightened out and I don’t like it.

As stressful as things are after Matteo did what he did, I wasn’t lookin’ to die. Maybe the rumors about Kuroi were true. Maybe they weren’t. But if being married to Kuroi didn’t get me killed, marrying a man would. There would be a target on my back, most of all from Pa.

He wouldn’t be able stand for this insult to the family. And how would the men I demand respect from react to me being with a man? Weakness is something that will get you killed in my line of work. So there is no way this can happen.

The problem, though, is that that Yakuza son-of-bitch won’t even talk to me about it. Yeah, he pretends that he doesn’t speak English, but I know he understands every goddamn word I say. Play ignorant. That’s how they underestimate you. Well, guess what, fucker, I know that game to and I’m not falling for it.

“You okay, Dante,” Lorenzo asked from the passenger seat. “You’re looking a little red.”

“I’m fine,” I tell him definitely not feeling fine.

I felt like my face was on fire and bugs were crawling under my skin.

“You sure your contacts don’t have anything we could use in this meeting?” I asked hoping a miracle would get me out of this.

“They got nothin’. I approached this from every angle I could think of. Sato isn’t in debt to any New York families. There are no location dock workers that they rely on for their imports that we could squeeze, and with the structure of their compound, extermination wasn’t an option.”

I looked over at Lorenzo. I was impressed. He really had considered all of the angles. If something happened to me, he should be the one to take over.

He could never do it. Running the family required as much intimidation as it did backroom dealing. Lorenzo was a master at working behind the scenes. Maybe even better than me. But that was where his skills ended.

To be the head of a family, you had to be a people person. Lorenzo wasn’t that. Being a people person was Matteo in a nutshell. But Matteo was a hammer that looked at everything and everyone as a nail. If I could figure out how to combine those two brothers, they might be better than I could ever be. But you can’t expect blood from a stone. With those two, you just have to take what you can get.

“That’s disappointing, Lorenzo. I was counting on you coming through for me.”

“I can only give you what I’ve found. Making up shit would just get you killed.”

“In this situation, that isn’t the only thing.”

Pulling up to Sato’s residence I had to marvel at it. He had somehow recreated Japan in upstate New York. It didn’t entirely work. To be honest, Sato’s compound looked like one of those 1920s American castles with the roofs replaced to make them do that Japanese swooping thing.

The garden was incredible, though. There were ponds and those manicured trees that looked like the tail of a poodle. In the front was sand with lines drawn in it and a large rock sticking out. And there was even one of those structures that look like Japanese writing. I didn’t see what the purpose of it was other than to look nice. But everything told a story.

The story this told was that Sato was a man who did everything he could to pretend he wasn’t where he was. My guess was that there was rage behind his expressionless exterior.There had to be a way I could use that to get out of this marriage. But how?

“Dante Ricci and family here to see Sato,” I said to the com box outside the gate.

“Park. Security will meet you there,” someone replied in a Japanese accent.

I turned to Lorenzo.

“Here goes nothing.”

“You sure it won’t be better to take care of this silently?”

“If you’re asking if it would be better to put a hit on a man with some of the best security in the city, I’m sure,” I said seeing a flash of our Pa in him.

“Think about it,” he said leaning forward to get a better look at the place. “We could put a sniper in one of those tree-lines. Or, it doesn’t have to be here. There are unguarded roofs around his office. With the right shooter, we could solve this problem in a second.”

I looked at Lorenzo feeling my heart thump. There was no mistaking that he was our father’s son.

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