Page 31 of Of Grief And Gratitude

“Twenty minutes too long.” She shook a finger at me and turned to Riona. “I am so glad you came. We have plenty of work to do.”

“Oh, I don’t–”

I shook my head at Riona, cutting off whatever she was about to say. “Mamma and the others always make Sunday dinner.”

“I see.” Riona nodded slowly, catching my meaning.

“Come wash up and meet my daughters,” Valentina called from across the kitchen. Riona washed her hands thoroughly and turned to face the others. “This is Gabriela and my youngest, Olivia.”

My cousins were polar opposites in personality. Gabriela always dressed in the latest fashion, with her pixie hair and designer floral Easter dress. Olivia seemed to despise color, almost exclusively wearing black. Somebody must have threatened or bribed her to get her into the modest white sheath dress beneath her apron. Her dark wavy hair was pulled back into a braid, and she'd toned the dark makeup down to just a bit of a black wing at the corners of her eyes. She'd swapped her black combat boots for white sandals, and none of her tattoos showed.

“We’ve heard about you nonstop since we got here,” Gabriela said with a nod, holding up a floured hand and wiggling her fingers before using her wrist to push a short strand of dark hair from her face. “It’s about time we had some fresh blood around here. You can take a turn rolling dough.”

Riona grinned and floured her hands. “I think I can handle that much.”

“We’re making cuzzupa,” Olivia explained, pointing to a bowl of colored eggs. “We bake those into it.”

“Interesting.” Riona watched as Olivia braided the bread into a nest shape and carefully inserted eggs into the braid, topping each with smaller pieces of dough to make a cross shape.

“You think you can do that?” Gabriela asked, dividing the dough for Riona. “We’ll do them together.”

Riona nodded and began carefully braiding the dough alongside my cousins. I wandered away, sampling some pastries until my mother smacked me on the back of the head and shooed me out of her domain. Riona sent me a pleading look, but I smirked in return and told her to have fun with the girls.

“Butthole,” she mouthed just before I turned away with a laugh.

Dante and Cosimo sat in the family room, sipping espresso and talking in low voices. The younger of the two seemed to have a sixth sense when people approached, and he used that to his advantage. It freaked some people out, but it was nothing new for me.

“Did you throw her to the wolves?” Cosimo asked without turning around.

I chuckled. “She might feel that way, but everybody is being nice enough.”

“Mamma loves her already,” Dante told me, taking a seat in one of our mother’s white cushioned chairs. Each piece of furniture had a small floral-embroidered Easter quilt draped artfully over it, adding to the ambiance with all the fresh floral vases around the house.

I took the espresso Cosimo made for me at the bar area and sat across from Dante. “So she’s said repeatedly. She called to remind me to bring Riona to Easter three times. I was a little nervous she’d send father’s men to pick her up.”

“Given who she grew up with, I think she’d be fine.” Dante tapped the side of his tiny coffee cup. “I thought Seamus O’Connor might have picked her for one of his sons, given how Shane and Sean act around her.”

I shrugged and shoved down the jealousy that crawled underneath my skin. It was illogical, given that I wasn’t actually dating Riona. “I haven’t heard anything like that.”

Dante looked at me for a long moment, analyzing. The heir to the Chicago mafia didn’t get to stay in his position without honing his bullshit-detecting skills. One day, he would take over for my father, and everybody would be vying for his position. You could never trust anybody in our business.

As such, I’d rehearsed keeping a straight face for years. First, when I was a child and my father went on his tirades, screaming at us and sometimes smacking us around. Showing weakness ended badly. When I got older, I learned to lie about sneaking out to spend time at parties and with girls. Now, I forced my body to relax. The key to a convincingly neutral face wasn’t freezing all your muscles in place. No, it was making typical expressions. It was sipping my espresso and letting it slowly coat my tongue so I could focus on the slightly bitter, nutty flavor and how my face moved in response.

Finally, Dante looked away and addressed Cosimo. “Have you talked to any of the Russians?”

“Not yet,” Cosimo replied. Now, that wasn’t a neutral face. His jaw ticked with tension, a sneer curling his lips. “They’re making a valiant effort to hide.”

“Do you need help?” Dante asked, placing his empty cup on the coffee table and steepling his fingers.

Cosimo’s free hand twitched next to where he hid a blade at his waist, and I wondered if Easter was about to get interesting. Much to my disappointment, he didn’t threaten to cut our oldest brother. “No. I can wait them out. Somebody always lets information slip.”

“Are they still causing trouble?” I’d been so busy with Riona the past couple of weeks that I wasn’t aware of recent developments with the Russians. There had been tension between the Zolotov family and ours in recent years. They mostly stuck to their lane in pot and high-end escorts—a few I’d used myself—but for whatever reason, my father had been displeased by a business deal he wouldn’t discuss with us, and it made co-existing in the city unpleasant.

“The occasional disruption,” Dante answered diplomatically. “Nothing Cosimo can’t handle.”

“Nothing that would bring repercussions?” It would be helpful to know whether I needed to watch my back.

Cosimo scoffed and pulled out his knife, flipping it open and thumbing the blade. “Give me a little credit. They don’t know I’m questioning their men.”

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