Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
His brothers might not understand.
That’s all.
“So what’s the problem?” Lucian asked.
Dante sighed, pulling his car into the parking lot of a club his wife owned. She’d bought the property and shoddy building a few months ago, spent a good four-hundred-grand getting it up to par and on the legal side of things, and then opened it for business.
By the looks of the parking lot, the place was packed.
“The problem,” Dante said, “is that my wife didn’t tell me Gaetano was in town.”
“I don’t get it,” Gio admitted.
Lucian shrugged. “Me, either.”
“She didn’t want me to know,” Dante explained quietly. “Which is why I said I found out he was in town. That means, Cat is doing business. Some kind of business she knows I wouldn’t approve of right now.”
Lucian frowned. “Dante—”
“Shut up. My wife, my house, my rules. You manage yours, Lucian.”
Gio leaned between the seats, his cigarette dangling between his lips as he said, “You know, millions of women have gone through this before Catrina, man. It’s nature. It happens. It’s what their bodies are made to do.”
“Those women aren’t Queen Pins working in a very dangerous environment with a mob boss for a husband, Gio.”
“Fair enough,” Gio muttered.
“And not all of those women struggled to have a child,” Dante added quieter, his anger rising again. “We’re not going to get another shot after this, okay. This is it for us. So forgive me if it pisses me off that my wife is knowingly putting herself and her pregnancy in danger simply because she’s crazy.”
Gio coughed. “You said that, not me.”
Lucian agreed.
“What if she had asked you to go with her tonight for whatever she’s going?” Gio asked.
“I told her no business.”
“But—”
“No business means no fucking business,” Dante interrupted sharply.
“Yeah, well you go tell her that.” Lucian smiled in that cocky way of his. “I’m sure it’ll be one hell of a fun show.”
Anxiousness slipped through Dante’s veins. His brother had a point, which was why he brought Lucian and Giovanni along for the ride.
“That’s why you two are here,” Dante informed as he turned off the engine.
Gio smacked the middle divider with his hand. “Right, you’re funny tonight, man. Hilarious.”
“I’m serious.”
Lucian glared at Dante. “Coward.”
Dante smiled. “Hey, if your wife was Catrina Marcello and you were about to break up her little schemes, what would you do?”
Lucian still glared. “Coward.”
“My point exactly.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Gio muttered. “For one thing, she isn’t that bad. It’s only when she’s in a mood that you kind of have to steer clear.”
Yep.
And at the moment, Catrina was ten weeks pregnant, hormonal as fuck, and apparently doing business after her husband had explicitly forbid her from doing so.
It was going to be one hell of a fun night.
“She’s working, so she’s in a mood,” Dante informed. “And I’m the boss, so you two just stay quiet, do whatever I ask, and stay out of the range of her claws.”
“Coward,” Lucian repeated.
Dante smirked at his brother. “Oh?”
“Yes.”
“Then go in there and get my wife, Lucian. What the boss wants, the boss gets. Right?”
Lucian’s cheek twitched.
“Go get her,” Dante continued unfazed, “and you can bring her home to me. I don’t mind going to pick up my son early from Ma. Maybe I’ll take Michel out for some gelato if you think it’ll take a while to get Cat out of here.”
“You’re an asshole,” Lucian said.
“You don’t get to pick your family, brother.”
“Lucky for you,” Gio mumbled as he got out of the car. “We’d have kicked your ass out long ago.”
*
“Dante.”
Cat’s eyes burned with a fire as she glanced up at her husband from the booth she was sitting in. Dante offered Cat a smile he knew was cold.
She started this, after all.
“What are you doing here?” Cat asked, lifting her glass of sparkling water to take a sip.
“Evening, wife,” Dante murmured. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“Working. I own this place, remember? The owner has to stop in every once in a while.”
Cat’s excuses were lies.
Dante knew it.
He could fucking smell the bullshit from feet away.
Several men sat around the booth, surrounding his wife. What Dante didn’t want to do was cause a major fuss and make Catrina look unworthy or bad in front of her men, if that’s what they were. Dante didn’t have an all-access pass to Catrina’s inside business. He knew the few faces she had at on the front lines, like Gaetano and Pao, but that was it.
It would do neither of them any good to get into one of their battles in front of people.
No good at all.
Gaetano waved from the seat across from Cat. “Boss.”
“Gae,” Dante greeted.
Quietly, Lucian and Gio stepped to either side of Dante.
Catrina sighed heavily. “You brought your brothers?”
“Boys night out,” Dante lied. “Apparently, you’re enjoying the same thing. I thought we talked about this Cat—no business. There was a reason we agreed on it. Gaetano was handling things, wasn’t he? Or have you fallen short, Gae? Is she pissed about something you did, is that it?”