Page 30 of Prideful Union
“In this household, it is.”
“You suck, Santino.”
“And you watch your mouth.” I walk away before she can get the last word in.
My mind can’t focusduring my meeting. It keeps straying back to Lucia and what she told me. It also keeps straying back to our kiss.
Fuck. I need to get that out of my head, so I focus on my men. Three of them have joined me at my house to discuss the inner workings of the business. Typical conversations about financials and expanding our influence.
I manage to listen long enough for the conversation to change. And it does change. To Lucia.
“How are things with your wife?” Lorenzo asks. He’s a middle-aged man and married to Emma. He always brags about how he scored a supermodel for a wife.
“Things with Lucia are …” I pause, deliberating how to answer.
He chuckles. “I hear that. How Emma describes her, you’d think she was a menace.”
“She broke my wife’s phone,” Alessandro says. Alexandria and Alessandro. It could be the name of band—a terrible one.
“Did she now?” I ask. Lucia never mentioned that to me, but then again, why would she? It would have only gotten her deeper into trouble.
“You need to get your wife under control, Santino,” Alessandro continues.
“I’m working on. I don’t need you”—I make a point of looking at each and every one of my men—“or any of you, telling me what to do. I’m your boss. I’ll handle my wife.”
“Is she good in bed, at least?” Matteo, Isabella’s husband, asks.
“I don’t kiss and tell.”
The men share a glance and laugh.
“I bet she’s good in bed,” Matteo says. “If her mom was promiscuous, then I’m sure the daughter is, too.”
I tense. “What about Giulia being promiscuous?”
“Isabella told me Lucia’s mother is …”
“Is what?” I stare at him hard.
Matteo gulps. “It’s nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“That’s she a slut,” Alessandro says. “Alexandria told me the same thing.”
“Enough with the rumors,” I snap, standing up. “I’ll ask you all to keep your wives in line. Now, get out. Meeting is over.”
They scramble to get up and leave. I run a hand over my face, feeling tired. These rumors are getting out of hand. I need to get to the bottom of it.
But the only way to do that is to test Lucia’s DNA to that of her father and uncle, and both are dead.
There is one person, though, who I can ask who might tell me the truth.
Antonio.
I call him. “I need to know if the rumors are true.”
“What rumors?”
