Sighing, I took off my jacket, laying it over the back of the couch, then pulling off my cufflinks, and put them down on the coffee table. Rolling up my sleeves, I made my way into the kitchen, seeing the pasta in the pot and the fresh herbs and cheeses spread across the counter.
Lasagne.
The woman was making some sort of lasagne.
And it sounded fucking amazing.
But there was no way I was going to start making my own at that hour.
So I grabbed some frozen filo dough, loaded it up with feta, olive oil, mozzarella, basil, and parsley, and threw my makeshift pizza into the oven. The entire time, Isabella danced around me like I didn’t exist. I may as well have been a damn ghost in my own kitchen the way she completely ignored my presence. Even when I tried to get in her way, or stick my hand in the same container of cut spices she was reaching into, she managed to move around me and snatch her hand back before there could be any proof that I was actually there.
I had to find a way to get on her good side.
Because while it was originally funny and maybe even a little cute that she could act like I didn’t exist in my own fucking home, it was getting old fast.
A week was long enough.
The problem was, I had no idea what I could do to make shit right.
I lucked out the next day, though.
I’d just been making my way down to grab some coffee and head out when Terzo rushed into the apartment, eyes telling.
“We have a situation,” he said,” he said, glancing over at Isabella who was sitting at the dining room table with her coffee and writing down what was likely a grocery list since we were getting low on everything.
“Okay,” I agreed, skipping the coffee, and following him, keeping my mouth shut until we were in the elevator. “Where are we going?”
“The alley,” he said, making my brows pinch. “You need to see it for yourself,” he said, shaking his head at me.
Interest piqued, I followed him down to the ground floor, and out into the alley.
Where I found Vissi holding the leather-jacket-clad arm of a woman.
“I swear to fucking God if you don’t let go of my arm, I am going to cut each one of your fingers off with a really dull set of scissors,” she growled at Vissi, staring at him with daggers in her eyes.
Fierce enough that I was sure she was actually capable.
She had different coloring than Isabella, looking more like their brother Emilio with her medium-brown shoulder-length hair, and the blue eyes that came from their mother’s side of the family.
But there was no mistaking the soft, feminine face shape, the deep-set eyes, and the plump lips.
“Mirabella,” I greeted her, watching as her head whipped over, brows lifted, surprised that I knew who she was. As if the family resemblance wasn’t almost painfully obvious.
“Mira,” she corrected, chin lifting in a move that was so much like her sister that I felt my lips twitching.
“Mira,” I said, nodding. “You know you’re not supposed to be here.”
“Why? Why am I not supposed to be here? Because you’re doing awful shit to my sister, and don’t want the Families to know? Is that why?”
“As I told your brother and Lorenzo, Isabella won’t come to harm from my Family or me.”
“Yeah, right, because I am just supposed to take the word of a fucking psychopath, right? ‘Oh, no harm will come to her. Except, you know, the whole kidnapping and forced marriage thing,’ you fucking lunatic.”
“I’m not seeing the family resemblance to your sweet wife,” Vissi said, shaking his head as Mira glowered at him.
“Only because you have yet to piss Isabella off,” I said, snorting.
“So you admit it. You’re pissing her off.”
“I piss her off by existing, Mira,” I said, shrugging. “But I don’t put my hands on her.”
“Just keep her trapped in a tower like fucking Rapunzel. Totally normal thing to do to your supposed wife.”
“She is free to move around.”
“With babysitters,” Mira snapped.
“With guards. For her own safety,” I corrected.
“Oh, so she is free to come and see me then, right? Great. Send her down.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Right. Because she’s not your wife. She’s your fucking prisoner.”
“As I told your brother, once Isabella settles into her life here, she will be able to be in contact with all of you again.”
“Oh, when she is so brainwashed by your stupid face and your big-dick-energy that she will forget that she is here against her will, you mean?”
“My stupid face,” I repeated, lips twitching.
“Would you prefer me calling it ‘punchable?’ Because it is that too.”
“Don’t you know better than to threaten a boss?” Terzo growled.
“Oh, please. And what do you think you’re going to do to me?” she asked, eyes rolling. “One hair on my head goes out of place while I am here and my brother will sic Brio on you so fast that you won’t be able to reach for your gun before he’s plucking each of your teeth out with a set of pliers.”
She wasn’t exactly wrong about that.
She might have called me a psycho, but the title for that absolutely went to Brio, who was a member of the Costa Family. I’d never seen anyone who enjoyed blood and pain and death as much as he did.
“Mira, you have my word that Isabella will see you again in the near future.”
“That near future is now,” Mira declared, gaze holding mine.
I’d known lifelong mobsters, professional hitmen, who wouldn’t dare to speak to me or look at me the way she was right then.
You had to admire her balls.
“And if I have bruises, you fuckface,” she said, looking over at Vissi again after she tried to pull her arm loose, “I am going to find out where you live, let myself in, and pour hot grease all over your twig and berries,” she told him, and there was something a bit chilling in her eyes as she gave him the threat, something that made me think she was completely capable of doing exactly that.
Vissi seemed to pick up on it too because his grip loosened ever so slightly.
“Let me see my fucking sister, you monster.”
She said that with a smile, too.
I didn’t know dick about Mirabella Costa, but it seemed like I needed to have some of the guys look into her. I guess I’d figured that Emilio’s sisters had been raised at an arm’s length from the Family business, so they would all be softer and sweeter. But Mira had a toughness about her that said she brushed shoulders with bosses and capos, and managed to hold her own around them, too.
I wasn’t intimidated.
We both knew she didn’t have a leg to stand on, that her sister and the Families had all agreed to this plan. Whether she liked it or not.
The reason I wasn’t immediately telling Vissi to drag her back out of my borough had nothing to do with her.
And everything to do with the fact that I had a woman a couple of floors off who might stop giving me the silent treatment if I let her sister visit.
“Tell you what,” I said. “If Isabella agrees, you can visit for a bit,” I said, ignoring Terzo’s gaze on my profile. “But you will have the visit here,” I told her.