Page 10 of Angelo's Vengeance

Me: Not yet.

Frankie: K. You call — I’ll answer. Things with the husband are good. Better than. Haven’t told him yet, but I’m going to the doctor tomorrow to have the implant taken out.

Me: No way! I might get to be an Auntie Theo?!

Frankie: SHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I haven’t told him yet.

Me: Bitch he can’t hear me, and I’m so excited. I’ll come home for that shit.

Frankie: Really? LOL. I’d have gotten knocked up sooner if I had known that. Text me after your meeting. Let me know how it goes.

Me: Will do. Love you, babe.

Frankie: Love you back.

I was thrilled for Frankie. She had been twisted up about marriage and the idea of having kids, but she had found her groove now. I was excited for her and about the prospect of becoming Auntie Theo. I would be making baby clothes galore! She might think I was joking about coming home, but the thought wasn’t unappealing. It might take me a few months to wrap things up here, but with business on the downturn, it wasn’t so hard to imagine closing up shop and going home. I definitely wouldn’t want to miss out on a baby Frankie. Maybe movingMythosto NYC and regrouping was what needed to happen, but either way, I would be there if Frankie was going to be preggars.

CHAPTER 7

ANGELO

Asshole Chat

Ilias: Heads up. I’ve got reliable intel that your lovely mother has been poking around. She’s been seen having lunch here in the city.

Me: Fucking great. Just what I need right now.

Ilias: You want me to put a pin on her? We lost sight of her, but we can start tracking her when she pops back up again.

‘Put a pin on her’ was Ilias’s way ofhaving Kostas and his crew mark someone for surveillance.

Me: I think that’s a good idea. I’m not sure what she’s up to, but whatever it is, I’m sure I won’t like it. Thanks, man.

Ilias: No problem.

It worried me that my mother had been spotted. She left New York just before my father’s death twenty years ago. I had always assumed she’d become fed up with old Stefano and given it all up. She left him and abandoned the three of us. Carlotta was a cold fish with no maternal bone in her body, and none of us felt sad she was gone or surprised that she didn’t take us with her. Still, after I took over the Santellifamigliaand all it entailed, she never crawled back for a penny. You’d think she would have. If there was anything I was sure of, it was that Carlotta was only out for one thing — herself.

Of course, we had recently learned that another mafia don was my sister’s biological father, which meant our mother might have had other sources of income we were unaware of. Iwouldn’t be holding it against her if she’d made any sort of financial arrangements to give birth to us, but knowing her, they were all strategic. She probably made all kinds of deals that we didn’t know about. All three of us were illegitimate. At one point, she took great delight in telling me that Don Santelli couldn’t father children and that I was a bastard. It later became clearer to me why we were so disposable to him, or perhaps it made it easier to accept. Remo and I still didn’t know who fathered us. I wasn’t sure I cared, but Remo did.

Deep in my bones, the one thing I knew about Carlotta Santelli was that she was trouble. If she were back, it didn’t bode well for us. She was mean to her core. Something inside her had festered and rotted to black long before my father had gotten hold of her. There were many things I could have forgiven in a person given the right circumstances, but nothing redeemable about her remained. I had no soft memory of her, not even a tender moment when she held my hand or my siblings’ hands. Neither of my parents deserved to have children in their custody, let alone care for them. The best thing my mother did was hire a nanny. At least then, sometimesmy siblings were fed and sent to bed on time. I had seen movies where the parent comforted their kids or loved on them, but that wasn’t her.

She’d been cruel on her best days and evil on her worst. The day of the blood oath, she’d looked over my father’s copy with satisfaction, telling Stefano he’d done a good job. She’d ignored my split and bleeding lip as if a beat-up eleven-year-old was no big deal. She hadn’t cared that my sister and I had been bartered away like sacks of potatoes on the altar of greed.

I hated her. She had been right not to ask me for a fucking penny because she wouldn’t get anything from me.

CHAPTER 8

THEODOSIA

I knewsomething was off when I entered the dimly lit, ultra-exclusive lounge. Not in a ‘this-place-has-no-sparkle’ way, but in a ‘this-place-feels-like-a-trap’ way. Which, honestly, was kind of exciting. Aside from the mysterious messages and collapsing business, my life had felt too routine lately. But a little mystery kept things interesting, right?

I adjusted the oversized vintage glasses perched on my nose, which I didn’t need since I had perfect eyesight. They were tinted, but I loved them. The lighting was so moody that it was practically a whisper, and even I had to admit it was a bit hard to see, but fashion was a commitment. So was looking untouchable, especially when walking into a businessmeeting with one of the most powerful names in Italian couture.

Except it wasn’t Bassiano Torsiello waiting for me.

Instead, lounging like a cat that had just eaten a particularly plump canary was Carlotta Santelli. Geez, what were the odds that she was here by accident? Zero.

Angelo and Frankie’s mother. The woman I had heard whispered about in dark corners. Ruthless. Manipulative. Cold as ice. My pulse spiked, and my fingers instinctively curled around my folio and tablet as if they might shield me. Suddenly, my cute jumpsuit felt too snug across my breasts, and my confidence started to wilt. Had I just gained a few pounds? I wished I’d used some kind of tamer on my hair. Immediately, I stopped myself. Those weren’t thoughts I indulged in anymore. Counterproductive. I was fierce. I was all-powerful.

---