Page 89 of Angelic Vengeance

“You’ll see.”

“Since when are you so fucking mysterious?” I asked, getting in the luxurious F8 Spider model. The powerful rumble of the engine shook through the leather seats.

Forty minutes later, we were on the Upper East Side, parking in the underground garage of Natalia’s building. I raised a brow at Trevor as we headed to the lobby, but he pretended not to see. When the back door closed behind us and the soft, amber lighting of the reception chandeliers glowed from above, Kali and Francesca entered through the revolving glass front doors.

We stopped in front of the elevators and the girls waved when they saw us, hurrying over.

“Tony went to buy a pack of cigarettes,” Francesca explained, a fancy bottle of red wine in her hands that matched the color of her dress. “He’ll meet us upstairs.”

“Gìo couldn’t make it?” Trevor asked, hitting the button for the elevator with more force than necessary.“What a shame,” He drawled as the metal doors opened, his sarcasm bleeding through. No one knew why they didn’t like each other.

As we stepped inside, Kali elbowed her brother in the ribs hard enough to get a hiss out of him – which never happened. “Be nice.”

“Don’t bother. Gìovanni’s been a real goddamnstronzolately,” Francesca snapped about her own brother.

“What’s new?”

Francesca ran her tongue over her teeth as she looked between us. “He wants to remove me from the family business.”

“No!”

“The fuck?” Even I couldn’t hide my shock. Francesca had been the brain behind multiple operations of the Cosa Nostra; she’d even handled the war with the Russians. If Gìo replaced her, there’d be a decline in his bank account, and since I did business with the DeMones, that also meant a decline inmyaccounts.

“Why?”

“He thinks I should do other things. Like, get a hobby. Or worse:married.” I could tell the word tasted sour on her tongue by the way her lip curled in disgust. Francesca wanted more than money and popularity; she wanted respect and power – something I could understand.

We were who we were.

And we wanted what we wanted.

There was nothing her older brother could do to keep her out of the mob. Her mind was already dead-set on becoming Underboss.

Once we arrived on the fifty-second floor, Trevor knocked on door number 111. Moments later, it swung open, revealing Natalia in a pink glittery dress.

They all stopped to chat in the entryway, but I nodded a short greeting at Natalia and made my way in.

I walked into the lion’s den, clueless as to what was awaiting me inside. Or for the rest of the night.

The gold bullet burned in my pocket along with a gold piece of jewelry.

I tried to stop myself when I passed the shop window earlier tonight, but before I knew it, I was walking backward to get another look at the bracelet through the glass. A twenty-four-karat gold, delicate chain with two charms: an abstract design of an angel and a devil holding each other, their eyes diamonds.

I shouldn’t be buying her shit.

And I had somewhere else to be.

But I still pushed the store’s door open and half an hour later, walked out with a ten-thousand-dollar box in my hands. Hence why I’d been late to get to Brooklyn in the first place.

I didn’t know why I did it. Maybe because I was aware she hadn’t been wearing a bracelet anymore, since her Bvlgari one broke. Maybe because I wanted to gain her trust in order to break her down so much more painfully.

My jaw flexed and tension coursed through my muscles as I watched her from across the goddamn room. She’d insisted on sitting on the far end of the dinner table to avoid shit from hitting the fan, but the distance she constantly put between us only seemed to make my hands itch more.

Maria’s eyes pierced me from across the table as she lifted a spoon with tiramisu. Her lips parted before closing around the silverware. She twisted the cutlery before dragging her lips off seductively, leaving a drop of white cream on her bottom lip. When a manicured finger came up to wipe the desert off before she slowly licked it – warmth flooded my veins, settling in my stomach and drifting lower.

Fuck me.I stifled a groan and readjusted my position in the dining chair.

She’d started doing that in retaliation after I almost burned the clothes off her with my own staring. She avoided meeting my eyes at first, shifting uncomfortably under my attention, but after a while, she came back to her senses and remembered she couldn’t possibly let me win this little game between us.

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