I’d asked Angelo, and he’d given me the same vague shit about me waiting on a table and supposedly overhearing an important conversation. I wasn’t buying that for a second, especially when no one had tried to question me after Angelo saved me from torture.
From bits and pieces I’d heard during dinners with the Riccis, they were in a quiet criminal war with a new family in Siena. One who had risen quickly, amassing a ton of power in a way that didn’t feel natural. Like they were being backed by another older, richer family who wanted to keep their hands clean. Or as clean as possible.
The Wilson family were into shit even shadier than the Riccis, and that was saying something. Maybe Giovanni thought I was working for them, that I’d been working as a waitress that night at the bequest of the Wilsons and was somehow spying on the Riccis. No doubt he assumed my relationship with Angelo was just part of the plan, and everyone was biding their time until they could knock me off in a less obvious way.
After their heir was born, of course.
Or maybe I’d been dismissed as not a threat when compared to the Wilsons? No one told me shit in the Ricci house, but I had ears and from the snippets I’d overheard, destroying the Wilson family appeared to be their focus for now. The new player had become too powerful, so they would be wiped out entirely.
Tension rode the Ricci house hard most days, and I felt like we were in this eerie calm before the storm. The interfamily gangland politics were a whole tangled web in this criminal world, and maybe it was for the best that Angelo and I were being given a chance to remove ourselves. At least for now.
Clearly, Angelo sensed the danger too, or possibly, he didn’t like the thought of his prisoner being outside of his control for weeks or months while he dealt with this new merger. I wasn’t going to argue again. The devil I knew was better than the one I didn’t, and even if Bellerose iced the fuck out of me, I could deal with it. They weren’t killers. Angelo was. Not a hard choice to make.
Shit, we probably wouldn’t even see them. I was fairly sure they didn’t hang out at the record studio on the regular, even if it was in the same city where they’d all set up their home bases.
Don’t ask me how I knew where they all lived; my patheticness recently was better left unrevealed. Besides, Naples was a huge city; it’s not like we’d just cross paths at Dutch Brothers.
There was a knock on the door, and I pushed myself up to stand, shuffling the heavy bag forward with my foot. “Yeah,” I called. “Come in.”
In the time it’d taken to pack my shit, I’d resigned myself to this next venture. It helped cool my anger, leaving me calm, if sullen. Angelo might scare the shit out of me, but I truly didn’t believe he would hurt me physically. At least not without a real reason. With that touch of optimism, I’d try my best to be amicable and get along with him for this next part of our insane plan.
When the door swung open, I lifted my head from where I was nudging the bag forward still, and a near silent gasp escaped before I could stop it. Angelo wasn’t on the other side of the doorway. It was Giovanni, his beady eyes narrowed as he stared coldly at me, like I was a rat that had stumbled under his feet. When the fuck had he dropped by this compound?
“All packed, I see,” he said, voice without any inflection. He didn’t need a tone since his face told me everything. This asshole loathed the very sight of me. “How’s my future grandson coming along? I haven’t seen any updated ultrasounds, and at this point, I’d expect confirmation of sex. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you we need a boy to carry the Ricci name.”
Of course this misogynistic piece of shit required a male heir. What was this, the dark ages?
Swallowing hard to clear the lump in my throat, I forced a friendly smile across my face. It was disconcerting for him to direct conversation my way. Generally, he talked over and around me. But never to me. “Everything is coming along great with the baby.” I patted my belly to emphasize it. “Angel and I have decided that we’re not finding out the sex. I mean, I can't change it now, amiright?”
My forced laugh sounded absolutely ridiculous, but I was midway through my act and couldn’t back down now. Giovanni always hated me calling his son Angel, so I was making every effort to reuse the old nickname just to piss him off.
“But I can see you’re excited to become a Grandpa, so I promise to send you the next ultrasound images,” I lied. “We’re trying not to have too many taken, in case the sound waves are damaging to the baby. Only the best for the Ricci heir.”
Everything from my mouth was pure bullshit, but Giovanni didn’t appear to notice. I was banking on him having never bothered to attend one doctor’s appointment with Fiorella—Angelo’s mom—giving him no real idea of developmental milestones. It was working in our favor at the moment, since the last person I wanted to discuss any pregnancy with was this murdering cocksucker.
I was hoping he would fuck off now that he’d said his piece. He instead stepped into the room, moving close enough to me that my skin prickled, and I had to actively fight the urge to back up.
You never ran from a predator, right? Or was I supposed to run?
Giovanni reached out and placed his hand on my stomach. No asking for permission or even hesitating. If I’d thought my skin was prickling before, it was nothing on how I felt as he touched me. Like he owned me.
Bile rose in my throat, and I wondered what the punishment would be if I let loose and hurled all over him. At least it would get him away from me for now, even if he killed me for it later.
“Has he started to kick?” he asked, eyes narrowed.
I shook my head roughly. “The position of my placenta is stopping us from feeling the kicks yet,” I rasped. “But I’ll be sure to let you know the moment I do. My OBGYN warned us that it might be hard to feel anything even when he is bigger. But I really hope we do.”
All new mothers would want to feel their child’s kicks, right? It felt like the right thing to say.
One fuckup here, and I’d be dead, so it was critical that I played my part with far more acting skill than I actually possessed. This part of survival I knew for sure.
Giovanni pressed in even closer, staring down at me, his hand sandwiched on my belly between us. “I can see why my son is so obsessed with you,” he murmured, his eyes, dark like Angelo’s but without the warmth his son’s possessed, locked on me. “You were a pretty child, but you’ve grown into a captivating woman. Maybe there is room for you in the Ricci—”
“Bella!” The snapped word came from the doorway, making me nearly jump out of my skin. “What are you doing?” Angelo strolled in, showing no real sign he was bothered by the way his father was touching me. “We need to get going; hurry up.”
No one moved, and I silently counted in my head, needing to stay calm until this creep got away from me. The moment he did, I needed to burn these clothes and scrub my skin within an inch of its life. The prickling across it was near unbearable now.
“Right,” Giovanni said. “You’re off to Big Noise.”
Angelo nodded, and when his father finally moved away, he positioned himself so he was standing as a barrier between me and the head of the Ricci organization. The Don, Godfather, Big Boss. He used many names and titles, but they all meant one thing: He was the one who decided who lived and died here, and we couldn’t afford to piss him off. Okay, I might be making those names up after watching too many mafia movies, but I was pretty sure his goons didn’t call him Big G or Vanni.