The Woman in the Wrong Place (Grassi Framily)

I made a beeline for that area, finding the ticket, and finally letting out a sigh of relief as I tucked it into my bag and rushed back toward the offices.

And it was right then that I heard voices in one of the rooms at my side.

Raised, angry male voices.

The sound made everything inside me recoil as my heartbeat that had just calmed back down leaped back into overdrive.

I couldn’t tell you why I turned.

I wasn’t even conscious of telling my body to do so. It was more knee jerk, like I needed to see what the threat was before I turned and ran for my life.

But whatever the reason, I turned.

Just in time to see a man raise a gun, aim, and shoot.

No.

Not just any man.

Matteo Grassi.

Matteo Grassi, the man I swore up and down was not some big-time mafia guy, raised a gun, aimed, and shot at another man whose freaking head exploded with the bullet.

I wasn’t aware of screaming or making any noise whatsoever, but I must have made one. Because one second, Matteo was looking down at the man he’d just killed. The next, his head was whipping over to see me standing there in the doorway.

I didn’t stop to think.

I did the only thing I could do.

I turned and ran.

The problem was, I was running in heels. The ankle-breaking kind of heels. I could barely walk in them with any success, let alone run on smooth hardwood.

I tried, though, even with the footsteps of Matteo gaining on me as I went.

But before I could even reach for the door, I felt my heel wobbling, and I was tumbling down onto the floor.

CHAPTER TWO

Matteo

I tried never to let my two worlds collide if possible.

My brother would probably argue I tried never to exist inside the Family world at all. Which, admittedly, was probably fair. I did as little work as possible. But that was born out of many years of realizing that the Family didn’t really need me.

My brother, Luca, was fiercely ambitious. It was always known he was going to take over for our father after he decided to retire from the Family business and focus more on the family restaurant business. Then there was Lucky, who was Luca’s next-in-command, also a hard worker. Hell, even Massimo, the Family’s hitman, worked his ass off.

They didn’t need me.

And when they did, they called me in.

The thing was, they called me in.

Not because they needed me, per se.

But because they didn’t want to have to deal with this guy any longer.

When it came to patience, Luca didn’t have a whole hell of a lot of it. Lucky even less. And, well, to put it plainly, people tended to like me more than them. I got a bigger dose of the charisma that made my father so likable to everyone he came into contact with at the family restaurant, Famiglia.

So I was going to spend my Friday night dealing with the pain in my brother’s ass who was almost three months late on the money he owed the Family. Which was a really generous amount of time for Luca to let someone go. Typically, I was not the second line of defense in a situation like this. It made more sense to bring in someone to scare the guy a bit, maybe rough him up. But for whatever reason, Luca was giving him another chance to make good, thinking that I could help the situation.

It had been months since I handled anything for the Family other than giving them their cut of the banquet hall business, so I couldn’t be too annoyed about it as I drove back to work after leaving for the day. I didn’t want to invite the guy to my house, and there tended to be ears everywhere in Navesink Bank, so talking outside wasn’t an option either.

So the banquet hall it was.

The guy’s name was Allen Boyle and the only thing I knew about him was that he owed us money. So I was surprised when he showed up and was younger than I was, wearing clothes with designer branding all over it, and a watch on his wrist that was likely worth what he owed the Family.

I barely got through greetings before I understood why Luca couldn’t stand him. And why he couldn’t trust Lucky or Massimo with him. Because, quite frankly, they would have killed the bastard in five minutes as he managed to both plead poverty and brag about all the fancy shit he owned in the same breath.

I turned away from him to go behind my desk, taking a deep breath, looking for just a little more patience.

But even as I was about to turn back, I saw it.

A flash of metal catching the low light in the corner of the room.