He didn’t answer me. He stayed silent as if he didn’t even hear me, but I knew he did. He heard me loud and clear, but he was choosing to ignore me. He blew hot and cold, and I had no idea what to expect next.
CHAPTER 8
LORENZO
Morning meetings with The Enterprise weren’t a common thing, but today I had been the one to call it. Several of the heads of the families weren’t happy about it, but I honestly didn’t give a single fuck.
They were trying to block all of my deals that were in the works, too afraid of what message it would send to everyone else, and I wasn’t having it. The Enterprise was there to protect us, not halt our businesses because of the opinions of other people.
I glanced at Mateo in the driver’s seat and Christian in the passenger seat. They’d both be attending the meeting with me as my personal guards, but Christian was there for more than that. He’d been a captain in the few weeks that Uncle Alonzo was acting boss, and now that I was in charge, he was underboss, but only until Dante took his rightful place. Dante had only ever been a soldier—he still was—so there was no doubt it would be years until he moved through the ranks to become my second-in-command.
“Sorry I’m late, Mateo,” Aida shouted as she ran out of the front doors and across the gravel, trying not to drop her backpack. “I was up all night—” She cut herself off as she spotted me sitting in the back. “Oh…sorry, I…”
“No, do continue,” I said slyly, tilting my head to the side. “Why were you up all night?” I could feel my anger building at her words, and I hated it. I hated how under my skin she was getting. Hated how I liked sitting next to her. Hated how she was becoming a fixture that I wanted in my home. I’d taken Christian’s advice to keep her close, but it was backfiring, and I didn’t like it one fuckin’ bit.
“Erm…” She glanced at Mateo, but he couldn’t help her. “No reason.” She slid into the back and closed the door behind her.
I didn’t take my gaze off her as she placed her backpack on her lap and pulled her laptop out. “Aida,” I warned.
“What?” she asked, her focus on anything but me. She started typing away as Mateo pulled out of the gates, the clacking of the keys driving me insane. How the hell did she type that fast anyway?
“Why were you up all night?”
“Does it matter?” she asked, finally turning to face me.
My nostrils flared, my hands clenched, and I saw Christian shuffle in his seat in front of me. “Yes, it does fuckin’ matter.” I leaned closer to her. “I asked you a question. Answer it.”
Her breath fanned over my face, her sweet goddamn scent driving me insane. It was too much. She was too much. All of this was too much. I couldn’t take it, not anymore.
“Why do you care?” she asked, her brow rising. She was defying me, being evasive, and I hated it. I hated her. I hated this entire situation. She was pressing my buttons, something no one had ever been able to do, and she knew it. She could see it in my face; read it in my eyes. She was playing a dangerous game, one she wouldn’t win. I’d make sure of that.
“Answer me,” I ground out, trying to keep my voice low. “Now.”
She rolled her eyes, a move a teenager would do, and groaned out, “I was finishing my assignment.” She turned back to her laptop. “Which I still haven’t finished, by the way. And you talking isn’t helping.” Aida pushed some hair behind her ear, her face getting redder the more she stared at the screen of her laptop. “And this piece-of-shit laptop keeps trying to update, so I’m losing hours at a time.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her to buy a new one, but I wasn’t here to solve her problems. That was what a real husband did, and I needed to remind myself of that. I needed to remember that she didn’t matter to me. So, I turned back to face the front of the SUV, keeping my attention focused on the road ahead of us and trying to ignore the clacking of her laptop keys.
I ground my teeth together, feeling like I was about to explode, when Mateo finally pulled to a stop outside of her college. She slammed her laptop closed, haphazardly pushed it into her backpack, then left without another word.
“What the fuck?” I whispered, staring at her as she rushed down the path and into one of the buildings. “Did that really just happen?”
“Yep,” Christian answered. “That really just happened.” He chuckled, and if he wasn’t my best friend, I would have put a bullet in his arm. “I didn’t think she had that in her.”
Yeah, neither did I. She answered me back, had an attitude, and I fuckin’ liked it.
Fuck.
“Drive,” I barked out, slumping in my seat and needing something to distract me from the woman who was turning out to be more than I’d realized. She wasn’t meant to be a handful. She wasn’t meant to talk back to me. She wasn’t meant to have me on edge.
“Call Veev,” I told Mateo as he pulled up outside of the restaurant. “Tell her to be at the house by four.”
I smirked as I did my suit jacket button up and ignored the burn of Christian’s eyes on me as I slipped out of the back of the SUV. I’d teach Aida a lesson, but more than that, I’d remind myself what was most important: the business. I didn’t have time or space in my brain to think about her. I didn’t want to think about her, which was why, as I walked into the restaurant, I schooled my features, forgetting about the ride here and preparing for the meeting. I needed to be respectful, but I also needed to let them know that I was the boss of the Beretta family, the founding Mafia family in this state.
Aida didn’t know who she was messing with, but they didn’t either.
No one else was in the restaurant, just the waiting bosses sitting around a large table. All chairs were taken apart from one in the middle of one of the sides. I bypassed it, stopping next to the chair at the head, and staring down at Alessandro Roti. “You’re in my seat,” I told him, keeping my tone even.
He looked up at me, his lips quirked at the corner. “Is that so?”
“It is so,” I snapped back, narrowing my eyes. “The head of the Beretta family sits at the head of The Enterprise.” I glanced at the other three men around the table. They were all older than fifty, with Alessandro Roti being the youngest of them all.
“He’s right,” Neri Riva said, leaning forward. Neri was the oldest here. He’d been at the table when my dad had set this entire thing up, and I knew if there was one person on my side, it would be him. He’d been the one to fill me in on what Uncle Paolo had been up to. Neri’s business was all about money. He dealt as a loan shark and also made most of his money through gambling, owning an array of casinos throughout the country. “His place is at the head.”
“And what if I want to take a vote for a new head to be appointed?” Alessandro asked. He didn’t make a single move to get up. Instead, he sat there, waiting for what everyone else was going to do. Alessandro knew he had power at the table, especially with the business he was in. He held several unions in the palm of his hand, but most importantly, the construction union.