Page 40 of Runaway in the Mafia
I shot up. “Where’s your whiskey?”
“I was talking.”
“And I’m thirsty.”
He nodded to the trolley next to the door. I ignored the smirk lining his fucking lips. The chrome and smoked glass encasement sparkled like a rescue point.
“Midday whisky, huh?”
I had to put in an unhuman effort not to shatter the crystal in my hand. It was too risky. I abandoned it and kept a calm face as I turned back and nodded at the clear glass with his favourite drink in it.Amaro.“The pot calling the kettle black?”
He cradled it like a lover and took a sip from it. “Nothing new for me. But you...” I turned back to pick up the decanter. “Drinking midday. Agitated enough to annoy the fuck out of anyone. I did those too.”
“Weren’t you born like that?”
He didn’t pay heed to the nonsense coming out of my mouth. “Didn’t smoke though. That’s your thing. But you’ve been chain smoking these days.”
“Is there a point to all this rambling? Fuck, is old age getting to you?”
He ignored my taunt. Rightly so. He was only four years older than me. I popped the cork off.
“I had an obsession.” His laugh was wicked. “I still do, but then I couldn’t get hold of it.”
Fuck.My focus was on the glass and getting the liquid in there.
“It was caramel brown.”
Fuck.
“But I think yours is darker.” The whiskey spilled. Fucking next to the glass. I slammed the decanter angrily on the trolley, and the Christel jiggled with the thump.
“Vero?”
No. No. No.
She was not my fucking obsession. She was nothing. I didn’t want her. What I wanted was not to want her. Not to disappoint Mamma. Not to become fucking Carlo.
Silence was all that hummed in his walnut-clad office. That and my uneven breathing. I grasped the bars of the trolley and rasped a breath through my nostrils.Calm the fuck down.
“Nothing stops you from having her.” His voice was light. Laced with approval.
A shiver rolled up my back. A silver lining within the dark, stormy clouds.Could I?My breath shallowed. “I’m the fucking don.”
“So?”
“So, I am not marrying a fucking brown girl. That’s not accepted, and you know it.”
“Marriage, huh?”
“Goddammit! That’s not what I meant.”
“If you say so.”
But he was right. Was I already thinking of marrying this girl, or what? No, I wasn’t. She. Was. Nothing. I’d prove it.
I gripped the whiskey decanter in my hand and spun around. His smirk was too wide for my comfort.
“I’ll sign the contract.”
