Page 4 of The Leader

“Sorry.” Mary immediately looked contrite.

“Don’t be sorry. I’m sorry I snapped at you. I just don’t want to talk about it.”Ever.

“You never do.” Mary sighed.

“So, um, how’s the counseling going?” Jazzy felt obligated to ask about it, though a part of her really didn’t want to.

Mary immediately perked up. “Quite well, actually. I mean, what happened was over a decade ago, and I still have a lot to process, but I’m getting there. I wish you would go see Dr. Stein as well, instead of bottling everything up. In fact, he asked about you and how you were handling it. I mean, I know I wasn’t to blame for—”

“Of course you weren’t. You were just a kid.”

“So were you, Jazzy. So were you. I think sometimes you forget that.”

It wasn’t that she forgot, per se. She just hadn’t really been a kid since her parents had died the day before her tenth birthday. And the irony of it was, that it hadn’t been by a hit by one of the other Families. In fact, it had nothing to do with her father or grandfather’s business. There was nothing to blame but bad weather conditions for the car crash that had killed them. That, however, had made Jazzy all the more determined to keep whatever family she had left.

Speaking of remaining family, her grandfather just turned around the corner. She peeked over his shoulder, curious if Detta trailed after him, but that was not the case. When hernonno’s gaze roamed over her sweaty workout gear, she expected him to scold her. He surprised her though, by gesturing her to him, and not saying a word.

“I was going to change before dinner,” she muttered. She didn’t want him to think she would disrespect him like that, showing up in front of his guests all sweaty.

“I need something from the safe. Please get me my pocket watch.”

“Really? Right now?”

Him sending her to his almost prehistoric safe had started when she’d hurt her arm. The blade that had cut through her wrist had done some nerve damage, almost causing her to lose strength in her arm. A long and gruesome healing process had followed. Her grandfather, being the ornery man he was, had played a big part in her regaining that strength. Any normal grandfather would have given her a ball to pinch. Hers had taught her how to open a safe, over and over again, until she had rebuilt the muscle power she had lost. Every now and then, he still sent her to open the safe with the heavy bolt on it. It had become their thing.

“Yes, Jocelyn. Now.”

She knew that tone. It meant she wasn’t going to win this argument.

CHAPTER 3

JAZZY

Dinner would be served in less than an hour and Jazzy still had to take a shower, but apparently that wasn’t important. Maybe him sending her doing their thing was his way of telling her that the upcoming dinner would be okay.

“Fine.” She left her grandfather in the hallway and climbed up the stairs, making a right until she reached the library in the upper right wing.

She didn’t bother to turn on the lights as she walked in the darkened room. Nowadays, she could open the safe blind, in less than a minute.

Thirty seconds later, a personal record for her, she got the pocket watch out and shut the vault.

“Yes!” She did a fist pump.

“Put it back.”

Jazzy jumped up and slowly turned around, looking to where the voice had come from. There, in the corner, in a chair overlooking the yard, sat a man. She couldn’t make out much of his face since the light came from behind him, obscuring half his face.

“Excuse me?”

He got up from the chair, standing into the light, and she stifled a gasp when she recognized him.

Giovanni Detta was a tall man. Much taller than she would have expected from the picture she’d seen on the screen of her phone. The picture didn’t do him justice. Then again, maybe no photo could grasp his magnetic look, with shocking blue eyes. She instantly suffered from a case of lust at first sight.

“Whatever it is you stole from that safe, put it back. Now. Or I will make you.”

And just like most hot, gorgeous men, he was an arrogant prick. It was the ordering tone in his voice that had her hackles rising. The way he justexpectedher obedience. It was the way Franco spoke to her sister. Cold and commanding.

Who the hell did he think he was, giving her orders in her own home? She could, of course, easily diffuse the situation by telling him who she was, but...she didn’t want to. Fuck him, and men like him, thinking they were king of the world.

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