Page 130 of Dirty Mafia Torment
Renzo doesn’t miss a beat. “Keep it up, and my girl won’t be the only one I tie up,” he says, stabbing a piece of pasta. “With a very different outcome.”
Riley’s mouth hangs open while mine is stuck on two words. My girl.
“Well then…” Riley finally breathes.
The servers arrive, interrupting the awkward moment, though Renzo, not an embarrassed bone in his body, still feeds off it. “All this talk with all thepossibilitieshas made me hungry.”
I snort. Riley giggles. And just like that, the tension breaks.
We eat. We tease. Renzo torments. Sandro grumbles. Basically, lunch is a beautiful, feisty mess.
Then the conversation shifts.
“My team lands in Sicily today,” Renzo tells Sandro.
“Let’s hear Father’s final plans before you act.”
“I just want a casual look around before we send in the mafiosi cavalry.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
They answer in stereo. “Covert drone surveillance.”
“Your boyfriend thinks he’ll modernize the mafia one toy at a time,” Sandro says, tone sarcastic as hell.
“Oh yeah, because storming in guns blazing is so effective,” Renzo shoots back.
Sandro waggles his fork at him. “Just run it past Father.”
“What if I prefer to fly it by him?”
These two could argue about dirt.
Renzo grunts. “Did you even open the one I sent you? Fully assembled, so any idiot could use it straight from the box?”
“Nope.”
Lord, they’re seconds from throwing down, aren’t they?
“Can you show me?” I ask, genuinely curious. Renzo hides the brainiac side of himself, but when it’s on, it’s such a turn-on.
“Me too,” Riley chimes in. “I’d love a panoramic view of Sardinia.”
Sandro grumbles, and Renzo’s pleased as punch.
Then, the barbs, jests, and teasing continue for the remainder of lunch.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
RENZO
As expected,the conference call later in the afternoon with my father is brutal and his idea of problem-solving all blood and bullets.
“My best shooters are en route to Sicily. We’ll storm the house, flush him out, and take him down.”
“Massimo will put a bullet in Dante the second it starts.”
“If Massimo hopes to preserve the Grassi bloodline, he’ll quickly realize the other Cosa Nostra families are behind us. So he surrenders, or we erase the Grassi name from the map.”
