The Woman from the Past (Grassi Framily)

CHAPTER TWO

Massimo

“So, what I’m hearing is, this meeting could have been an email,” Milo, Lucky’s little brother, said, shaking his head. “‘Hey guys. Everything’s good. See you at Sunday dinner.’”

“It’s because of little shits like you that we need to have the meetings,” Lucky told him, rolling his eyes. “The rest of us know what we need to be doing. Your asses need your hands held.”

“I just did that Carlito job,” Milo said, chest puffing up.

“Yeah, yeah,” Lucky said, clearly enjoying pissing off his little brother. “Come talk to me when you are kicking up millions, not a couple grand.”

“Eighty grand,” Milo said, shooting daggers at Lucky.

Everyone who had been around for a while knew that kicking up eighty grand was nothing to sneeze at. It meant that Milo had brought home close to half a million for one job. Which was pretty fucking good for someone who hadn’t been officially made for long.

But we all also knew it was a right of passage to give shit to the younger guys, to keep them humble, to make them hungry.

My older brother, Nino, and I took it upon ourselves to give our newly-made younger brothers Dante, Santo, and August—short for Augustine, after the saint, because our mother was having a moment—as much shit as we possibly could.

It was a right of passage.

None of us would be the men we were today if it were not for the old-timers giving us a hard time.

“He’s not wrong,” Luca said, shrugging. “There’s not a whole lot to report right now. Things are status quo. Which is how we like them,” he added, giving all the younger guys a hard look, like he knew they wanted the chaos, but he was making it clear that he didn’t want any of that in the Family.

Lord knew, the chaos would come. It always did. Which was why we all appreciated the calm when we could find some.

“So, whose Ma is cooking today?” my youngest brother, August, asked, clapping his hands then rubbing them together.

Really, he was too young to be made. A late-in-life baby, he was all of twenty-one with no life experience and constantly indulged by our mother who had loved getting the chance to spoil one last boy after our only sister was already in fourth grade.

I’d even told Luca that he was too green. But, he’d reasoned, that the books always closed for a couple years at a time, and in that time, August would get antsy to get made.

So he’d been made early.

And was going to have to work his ass off to prove himself to me, let alone Luca.

“You know, you could cook for your damn self sometime,” Sofia, who everyone called Smush behind her back—and only behind her back because she’d slap the shit out of you for saying it in front of her—said as she came into Famiglia with several bags in her hands.

Smush was the family… personal assistant, for lack of a better word. She ran errands for those of us who paid her to do it. Myself included, since my job had me out of town fairly often and for long stretches.

“Aw, Smush, but they love cooking for me.”

There was a collective held breath in the room as Sofia slowly turned on her heel to face him.

“Whatdid you just say?” she asked, taking slow, threatening steps forward. “Because I know you didn’t just call me that old nickname, right? Only an idiot would do that. Because, see, I’m not like your mom who indulges, treating you like you are the golden boy and wholly untouchable. I will go to the kitchen, grab a can of diced tomatoes, and dent your skull with it.”

“But, Smush, they don’t use canned tomatoes here,” August said with a smirk before he, smartly, hopped up out of his seat and ran.

“He needs an ass-whooping,” Sofia declared, exhaling hard.

She wasn’t wrong.

Life had been too kind to August. He needed it to knock him down and beat the shit out of him to teach him some lessons.

“Anyway,” Matteo said. “The moms aren’t cooking. Josie is cooking. And her crazy ass wants all of you to show up.”

Josie, Matteo’s woman, loved the chaos our family brought. She said that she’d been raised in a small, quiet family, and that she loved the craziness that happened when all of us got together.