Page 50 of Mafia Kings: Valentino

It’s not like it was serious, though.

It was just a fling.

It wasn’t going to go anywhere.

I kind of figured I’d wind up marrying some daughter of a mafia family.

I mean, when Dario married Alessandra, we all thought she was just some sweet little girl from the middle of nowhere –

But it turned out she was actually related to aCosa Nostrafamily in Genoa.

Adriano married a random chick he met in Florence. Bianca was really cool, but she wasn’tCosa Nostra.

However, I just figured that was a one-off exception, and me and the rest of my brothers would end up marrying mafia chicks.

So I didn’t take things too seriously with Cat.

She was just a cool chick who was great in bed…

Who I couldn’t stay away from.

She was the first thing I thought of when I got up in the morning…

And the last thing I thought of when I went to sleep.

(…sometimes in her bed.)

But it wasn’t serious or anything.

Or at least Ithoughtit wasn’t…

Until some really badCosa Nostrashit came knocking on my door.

It was the day after Adriano’s wedding. We’d just found out the night before that Uncle Fausto had stabbed us in the back.

After breakfast with the newlyweds, Massimo left to go sweet-talk the Widow – the oldmafiosawho ran all of Venice – into backing us against Fausto.

A little after lunchtime, I went down to see Caterina when a bunch of servants walked out of the kitchen. Cat was the last of them, and she had a puzzled look on her face.

“Hey,” I said nonchalantly. I tried to keep it lowkey between us when there were other people around. “What’s up?”

She broke into a huge smile as soon as she saw me. “Oh! Hello!”

I glanced at the other servants walking away. “Why’s everybody leaving?”

“Your brothers and Signor Henriksson wanted the kitchen.”

By ‘Signor Henriksson,’ she meant Lars.

I thought it was cute how formal she was about everybody’s names.

But the part about them clearing the room was odd.

“Which brothers?” I asked.

“Don Rosolini and Signor Niccolo.”

I frowned slightly, wondering if I should walk in and see what was going on –

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