The Woman at the Docks (Grassi Framily)

With that, he moved out into the hallway, not even bothering to tuck the gun away.

I managed to slide the chain and wrap my belt around the bar again before I completely lost my shit, sliding d

own the wall, knees curled to chest, trying to remind myself that I could do this, that I would do this. Regardless of the consequences.

"Get it together," I snapped at myself, disgusted with myself, forcing myself to climb off the floor, clean up the mess I'd made, drink my juice and eat my dry cereal.

Common sense said I needed to lay low for a couple of days, let security get lax again, allow Luca Grassi to believe his threats had worked, that I had gone back to California.

The problem was, this was a time-sensitive matter. I couldn't just hide away in this hotel room for a few days.

I had to be back on the pier that night.

And I had to try not to get caught.

Chapter Three

Luca

"New York isn't happy," my father told us, moving to sit down at the table at the back of our family restaurant, Famiglia, whiskey in a glass catching the soft overhead light.

Everything was bouncing with energy around us.

The bartender's knives tapped the cutting boards as they sliced fruit for the drinks. The hostesses made reservations, answered the phones. The serving staff and bussers rushed around dressed all in black, doing side work, prepping for the shift ahead.

Their practiced efficiency made my slow, sleep-deprived brain feel lazy and useless as I sat in the high-backed booth, one of several that lined the back of the restaurant, allowing privacy to couples or—in our case—family meetings.

Matteo was nowhere to be found, which had ceased to surprise me a decade ago. When God was divvying out the work ethic genes, I got all of them, and Matteo had to go without. He handled his niche—albeit very loosely—and left all the heavy lifting to me. And our father, to some extent.

So this family meeting was my father, me, Leandro, Dario, and my cousin Lucky. He and Matteo were the same age, had been close when they were younger, but where Matteo shirked off his responsibilities, Lucky dove headfirst into the family business, always looking for opportunities to prove himself. He'd once shown up to a meeting three hours out of the hospital with a bullet hole still fresh in his shoulder.

Tall and fit, he notoriously dressed all in black. That choice, paired with his jet hair and inky-dark eyes, gave him a menacing appearance. If you saw him darkening your door, you knew you'd fucked up.

"Is New York ever happy?" Lucky asked, leaning back, unconcerned with the news.

That was fair.

New York was forever on our ass, despite our family making more than any single one of the Five Families, or even a few of them grouped together, each year.

More.

They always wanted more.

We always did too. But we had to do it smart. There was too much at risk. Too many people wanted what we had. One misstep would have us all with bullets in the backs of our heads, bodies thrown off the docks.

If New York wanted the docks back when we were gone, they'd have to go to war for them.

Which was why we needed them to leave us to our own devices.

"What do they want?" I asked, watching as my father pinned me with dark eyes, his shoulders shrugging.

"They want to make a deal with the Russians."

Of course they did.

Because that kind of money was hard to turn down.

But a deal with the Russians meant risking our good standing with the local arms trade, an outlaw biker club called the Henchmen, who'd been running guns in our town since my father was young.