Page 2 of A Very Rossi Christmas
"Oh, you know. The usual. I'm thinking the beach, some shopping, more margaritas than we should be drinking on our own, maybe a Christmas parade or two. Volunteering, of course."
"And boys," Brooks added.
"And boys," I agreed. "And anything that keeps me from having to talk to my parents or even think about New York this season."
That was a lie, of course. Nothing was going to keep me from talking to my parents or thinking about New York at Christmas. That just wasn't me.
Sure, my dad was the reason I wasn't going home this year. Sure, the even bigger reason was that as the head of the family, he was suddenly getting into things that were a whole lot bigger and more dangerous than they had been when I left the city to come out west.
And yeah, I was pretty sure that those bigger and more dangerous things were going to get him in a whole lot of trouble. Probably sooner rather than later.
It wasn't like this was the first time I'd dealt with it. I'd known for my entire life what he was. It would have been impossible not to. My whole life had centered around what he referred to as 'the life,' and I would have had to be incredibly stupid not to know what that life entailed.
I wasn't incredibly stupid.
But I was also studying to be a lawyer, these days, and that made it a whole lot harder to ignore the fact that my dad was one of the biggest mob bosses in New York. Head of the Irish side of the business in the city, to be precise, and the don of the largest family in the state.
Hell, Daddy considered himself the most important person in New York, most days, and there weren't many who would argue with him.
People who did often found themselves on the wrong side of a gun.
And therein lay the problem, didn't it? Because it had been easy enough to ignore that when I was younger and more naive. But now, when I was getting ready to take the bar and start practicing the law—on the right side of it...
Well, I'm sure you can see the personal conflict.
I closed my eyes and took a very big gulp of margarita—on the rocks, with salt.
What a fucking conundrum.
When I opened my eyes, willing myself to focus once again on the beauty of the Santa Monica morning, the sun and sea and sand and all that Californian stuff, my eyes landed instead on the guy who'd been shaking out his towel right in front of us.
The tall, incredibly well-built, and incredibly dark guy. The tousled curls that looked like he'd just rolled out of bed. The shadow across his jaw that made it look like he hadn't shaved this morning, even though he probably had.
The eyes, so blue they looked like they had to be fake.
My heart stopped.... and then started hammering so hard I thought for a second it was going to try to get all the way out of my chest, while my stomach did something that felt alarmingly like an actual somersault.
I knew those eyes. I knew that hair and that strong chin and the cheekbones that looked like they could cut glass. I knew the smoldering look, the narrowed gaze as his eyes met mine.
Joseph Rossi.
Oldest son and heir apparent of theotherbiggest mob boss in New York.
The boy I'd once counted as the friend no one else had known I had. And the boy my father would have told me was my biggest enemy.
2
JOSEPH
SLOANE FUCKING BRENNAN
Sloane Brennan.
Sloane. Fucking. Brennan.
And I know what you're thinking: Joseph, you were in LA, across the nation from the city where you were born and fucking raised and where you knew pretty much everyone there was to know. The city where you were every bit as important as the most important politician and twice as important as people who weren't in charge of (theoretically) running the city.
You were in LA, and there was no way you were looking at the girl you'd spent much of your life watching from across the street that divided your territory from her father's.
