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“No, this guy is a real tight ass. He also has a tight ass, if that at all sways you towards saying yes.”
“Sorry again,” I mouth, and she gives an absolutely lethal eye roll that I will be thinking about for the next three weeks while I shower and every time I close my eyes to sleep.
Her smile is everything to me, like it might make my brain melt the way her cheeks push up her eyelids and she tries to keep her lips closed.
“I like Artie, I really do, and now I like him even more knowing that he’s ended up so normal coming from a family of spoiled socialites who pay off their problems instead of, oh I don’t know, having a normal conversation about them? Truly, what the hell were you thinking?”
As if her face isn’t already perfect, she needed to have a dimple. Sure.
and Mary haven’t always gotten along—something about Cillian gets under her skin, always has—but Mary at least hasn’t threatened to strangle him in a few years, which is progress. She tolerates him. He recognizes that she’s an asset.
“Because I don’t know very many women.” “Flattering,” I say, wry. “And even if I did know many women, you might be the most beautiful one.”
Vanessa is hot, like stupid hot. She is hotter than me, I am aware. I would probably have to be an Avenger, or a fucking vampire to be as hot as she is.
Vanessa’s wearing such high heels, but she said no to each one of my offers because she likes walking and that I would be amazed at the things she can do in her heels. (This made my neck hot because I just kept thinking about things she potentially does in those high heels and my mind isn’t better than that of my fourteen-year-old students, it’s just better trained.)
My mind paints a very clear fantasy, unbidden, in which Vanessa and I live in domestic bliss. I’ve quit my job, just for a few years, just until the youngest is in pre-school, and Vanessa runs the world all day before she comes home to be with me and our two babies. After the children are asleep, after a delicious dinner I made, unless we ordered in, we make love and in fact make another baby, a third, a girl who we name Vanessa Jr. She has my nose. I think there is something wrong with me.
“Tell me I have this wrong. Tell me I can’t call the police right now and tell them what just happened because you’re a spy, and that it’ll mess with your operation—just, don’t tell me what I think you’re saying. Don’t tell me you’re a fucking criminal. Please.”
Mary is right there with her. “You want us to go to warehouses and look for clues? We’re in charge, Ness, we’re not on Scooby Doo.”
Nate is better than us—too good for organized crime.
“But crime is like. . . a man’s world, no? Godfather shit?” “I will not pretend to know the intricacies and workings of the mafia, Jenna. Maybe they’ve entered the 21st century.”
My eyes find the source, a man hung up in my shower, his arms suspending him in the air, one tied to my shower head, the other strung up to the curtain bar. His neck, his torso are both— I fall back onto my ass and Ranger starts barking again, loud howls at the man whose stomach was sliced open, his insides on my tile. Tony.
slowly pull open the door and it swings outward to reveal a staircase down to what I can only assume is a murder dungeon. I steel myself before descending and when I get there, murder dungeon doesn’t seem that far off.
“He’s staying,” I agree. Mom wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls me towards her. “This is going to be fun.”
Vanessa takes a deep inhale through her nose. “I will hire you to interview them.” Oh. She’s lost her mind.
“Ultimately, we’re all family,” Vanessa says. “And family takes care of family.” This is very Fast & Furious of her, but I don’t mention it.
I don’t know what that word means or even how I will spell it to Google it later, but I think in Godfather terms, we’re pretending that I’m equivalent to Tom Hagen, which is hilarious.
“Consider this my hat in the ring,” he says, his voice low. “Why?” I whisper. “I can’t stand the thought of you marrying some idiot,” he says, and leans closer still, his breath warming my cheek. “It’d be bad for business.”
I recognize that she is no longer a romantic possibility and will live a long life with a loving criminal, but she’s still the hottest woman I think I have ever seen, in real life or on TV.
I think this must be how Vanessa feels every morning when she wakes up perfect.
Goons are most common, they’re stupid or they’re violent or they are stupidly violent.
“Vanessa’s the one who told me that a likelihood of hidden tenderness was a requirement! And at what point does the number of men they’ve killed become too many?!” Everyone in the room gives my question serious thought—though the obvious answer is not much higher than one, right? “Number doesn’t matter if they have a good reason,” Mary says.
I can handle any number of things on my own, but I didn’t realize how nice it is, sometimes, to have someone whose job is to handle things with you.
“Oh, it all makes sense,” Nate mutters near my ear. “I thought you must take after your dad, but I get it now. Your mom made you scary.”
I’ve not once let myself be a victim—to do so would be a victory to the men who’d like me to be weaker than them.
“Ronaldo, I must be clear,” I wait until his eyes meet mine to continue, “this is the second time in as many months you have come into my home with derision and disrespect. My father was fond of you, and because of this, we tolerate you. But you know full well that if he was here, watching you disrespect his legacy, in the home he built with his own hands, he would shoot you where you sit. Uncle.” I add this last part as a reminder. He is where he is because I allow him to be.
“We’re all just making things up here,” I say. “And you’re lucky. You have your family to make it up with you. And a very talented math teacher. For now.”
I get the heebie jeebies thinking it might have been Mary. I lock the door every night because even though I interact with her daily in training, I am only 60% sure Mary won’t try to kill me in my sleep. Good to know that my sense of security with a doorknob lock was false.
Another criminal, then. This one of the Irish variety.
I don’t know how to tell her she’s the most beautiful woman, monster or not, that I’ve ever seen, and with every day that passes in her presence, I’m increasingly certain that there’s hardly a bad or cruel or monstrous thing about her.
“Does this person love you back?” I hedge. “Maybe,” Leo says, then shrugs. “I wouldn’t say a lack of love is the problem. Maybe more of a lack of opportunity.”
“Shall we dance? If we get lucky, we might see Mary stab the Russian.”
“He was my first kill. I was protecting my family, and every time since has been to those same ends,” I say.
This is it, I realize; the moment Nate really sees me for who I am. My mouth creeps up into a sardonic smile as he backs away. Of course, he backs away. He’s not meant for this world,
“We can pretend. Just tonight.” After a pause, she nods. “Just tonight.”
“You’re the most beautiful person I have ever seen,” I say. “It’s barely human how much I want you.”
press another finger inside and I have to close my eyes before I come at the sight of her face scrunched up in pleasure. I really might. I am 19 again, touching a girl for the first time, but this time it’s a mafia goddess instead of someone I met at a party.
“You have to know,” Mary says. “You have to decide what you can live with to protect the people you care about.”
“Three men stand between you and my sister, she’s—” I don’t even hear the rest of the scenario, already aiming and shooting the upper two targets then the middle one, pulling the trigger with precision three times before emptying the rest of the magazine into the middle target. I’m panting when it clicks open, no ammo left to shoot.
“It’s tonight again.”
“That was before,” Mary says. She puts a big bite of oatmeal in her mouth before speaking again. “He’s okay now.” “Before what?” “Before,” Mary shrugs. “Before he got good at shooting. Before he got a haircut.”
“You’re so good,” I breathe, surprising myself. It’s true, though, he is really very good. “I have to be,” he says, moving to pay equal attention to my other breast. “I see the competition every day and they are very handsome.”
Not after she and the whole Morelli family were charmed half to death by Maxim Orlov—whose name literally translates into Greatest Eagle (I googled it) which makes me even angrier somehow.
It’s only tomorrow from now on, just tonight is canceled.
“You know what I am,” Vanessa says. “I do. I think you’re the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Maxim is a better choice. He’s perfect for you,” I start. “But I want you to choose me instead.”
“I know I’m not strong, I barely know how to fight, and I throw up when I see blood, but I can learn. I’m learning. Mary’s lessons—she’ll teach me how to defend myself better, I can keep working at the school, or I can do accounting for you, I can learn whatever you need, I’d learn for you.”
