Page 68 of Protecting Charity

He exhaled with contempt, folded the paper down its proper creases, and then placed it on the table. “I’m not doing this for you.”

He made his way to the kitchen while I took his seat at the table and watched him work his way around as if he was familiar with it all.

“Where’s Nico?”

“Home, changing,” he said as he poured the flour into a large metal bowl. “He should be back anytime.”

Water ran through the pipes, telling me she was taking a shower before coming out. Which meant Luca could take his time, something that he noted as well.

“How do you think she’s going to handle it? Do you think we should be worried? I mean, more than we already are. I feel like I have been asking this question way too much lately.”

“I think she’ll be okay. She’s handled it rather well so far. Better than I thought she would.”

He poured the entire bag of flour into a bowl and mixed it with other ingredients, causing me to question if he knew how to make pancakes. “You trying to feed an army or what?”

There was more flour in the bowl than was necessary to feed four people, even if I had an enormous appetite.

“We are expecting guests.”

I raised my brows as this was the first I had heard of it. I highly doubted her family would come here with us staying here. So who was it we were expecting?

“Who?”

“Family.”

Seeing as we are Italians, that could be the entire northeastern states. Even if he narrowed it down to a small town in Jersey, I still wouldn’t know who he was talking about.

“Yeah, that’s not helpful in the slightest.”

The lock on the front door flipped open, and I watched as Nico walked in, bringing the devil along with him.

I stood, wrapped my arms around him, and gave him a hard slap across the back. “Shit, man, it’s been a while.”

He didn’t look like he aged a day even though it had only been a few since I’d seen him.

“Yeah, it has been.”

Filing in behind him was a stunning blonde with legs for days, dressed in a long wool coat which seemed a little over the top for barely Fall weather.

Charity boomed from the hallway, “Alek? Liz? What are you guys doing here?” Charity was still buttoning her pants as she walked forward, her hair dripping wet and soaking the back of her old t-shirt, giving me the sudden urge to want to cover her up and hide her from prying eyes. She had a thing about not wrapping her hair in a towel like all the other girls when she was in a hurry, so that meant she must have heard the commotion of someone coming through the door.

“Hi, Charity,” the blonde that must be Liz said. “We came to pay our respects.”

Liz walked towards myBellaand gave her a compassionate hug that drew a smile from her lips and a wince, as she squeezed a little too hard for a broken rib. Well, that was something. “Thank you. You didn’t have to come all this way.”

“Of course we did, but I had to basically push the guys on the plane. We made it, though.”

“Guys?”

“Oh, yeah, Randall and Jake are still outside having some spat.”

Charity raised her brows, clearly surprised they came as well. It worked out flawlessly that they were here. Once Charity had her head cleared and the funeral over, we could get down to business about Allie. Putting Charity to work would help keep her focused and her mind off her dead brother.

“How’s it going, Luca?” Alek asked.

Alek and Luca weren’t exactly on speaking terms after our buyer ended up murdered by his psychotic rival. It left a bitter taste in his mouth even though it had been several months since it all happened and not exactly his fault.

I froze by Alek’s side, waiting for the shoe to drop and Luca to go berserk on him. Luca looked up after flipping a pancake on the stove, took a deep breath, then responded. “It’s going.”

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