Page 35 of Riding the Edge

Chapter Ten

Sometimes you gotta go with your gut. You gotta ignore the warnings and do what feels right. Asking Maria to dinner was impulsive, but I didn’t regret it. Not last night, not this morning when I woke up or this afternoon when I rented the Charger and sure as fuck not now. Sitting across from her in a tiny restaurant, watching her butter a piece of bread, the only regret I got is not asking her to dinner earlier.

Leaning over the table, I pluck a piece of focaccia from the basket in the middle of the table and ask the question I’ve been dying to ask since she opened her door. She wasn’t dressed in her designer threads and the casual clothes made her appear younger than usual. Knowing she had a son in his thirties, I tried to do the math in my head but none of it was adding up.

“I gotta ask…”

“Uh oh,” she teases. “That’s never good.”

Dropping the bread into my dish, I lean my elbows on the table and stare at

her flawless complexion.

“How old are you, Lady?”

“And here I was starting to think you were a gentleman,” she replies, folding the napkin over her lap. “There is an old Italian proverb,” she says, lifting her glass of wine. “Age and glasses of wine should never be counted,” she adds, bringing the glass to her lips. My eyes divert to her throat as she swallows.

Even that I find sexy making me realize a sea of whiskey isn’t nearly as intoxicating as a drop of her.

“Forty-eight,” she reveals, setting the glass back on the table. “And, yourself?”

“Got a year on you,” I reply. Leaning back, I bring the longneck bottle of beer to my lips. Letting it linger a moment, I continue. “Had your son young.”

Nodding, she meets my eyes and watches me drink.

“I was fifteen when I got pregnant,” she explains. “Sixteen when I delivered,” she continues. “I was young and stupid—incredibly naïve.”

“You were a kid,” I defend.

“Yes, and, having a baby as a kid forces you to grow up real quick. My father was a street guy who ran a social club for the Falcone family. Carmine, that’s my ex, he worked for my father as a bookie. When my father found out I was pregnant, he forced us to get married, sparing himself and his crew any embarrassment.”

Typical gangster bullshit.

“My father was killed five days after we were married,” she says, taking another sip of wine. “Leaving me with no one other than Carmine in my life.”

“Where was your mother?”

“When I was five, my mother had another child… a boy… both she and my brother died from complications during childbirth.”

“Jesus, Lady,” I hiss, placing my empty beer bottle on the table.

“Yeah, us Rinaldi’s never had much luck.”

“Had the horns on you,” I agree. “I take it Rinaldi is your maiden name?”

She nods as I grab the attention of our waiter and motion for him to refill our drinks.

“I never changed my name back because of the kids. If I had gotten remarried, I might’ve considered it, but I was so jaded by my first marriage, I swore on a stack of bibles, I’d never marry again.”

Smart woman.

“Where’d it go wrong?”

“For something to go wrong it has to be right from the beginning and me and Carmine were never right. After my father died, he stopped running numbers for the Falcone’s and picked up a gambling habit of his own. To say things were hard would be an understatement. I was working multiple jobs just to keep the house running and our son fed while he was out all night trying to win a buck instead of doing something to actually earn one. I became pregnant with Lauren and things just got worse. I’ll never forget being 8 months pregnant, standing on the fire escape of our apartment, throwing his clothes in the gutter.”

“Sounds like a scene out of Goodfella’s,” I teased, winking at her.

“Karen Hill’s got nothing on me.”

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