Chapter 1
Enzo
My heart hammers, my breath heavy and labored, as I pound the pavement and run harder. I’m trying to punish my limbs and school my thoughts. But every step I take, every smack of rubber on pavement, brings me closer to Mia.
Fucking Mia.
I try to refocus. There’s something about the thick, humid air and strains of music filtering through the night sky that reminds me of my home in Calabria.
I grew up in Boston, but my heart is in Calabria, the warm, coastal peninsula that juts out into the Mediterranean at the southernmost part of Italy. My family’s still there. All of them.
I push my body to run harder, run faster, rivulets of sweat blinding my vision and my lungs constricted, but it doesn’t work.
I should be back in Calabria, feasting on swordfish and arancini, zeppole and cannoli, drinking wine with my brothers. Not stuck here, an ocean apart from my friends and family, grading papers and playing babysitter. But Mia’s in Boston, and I need to be near her to do my damn job.
But I fucked up. I’ll take my punishment on the chin and finish this fucking job.
Christ, what a job it is, though.
I slow to my cool-down, jogging down the cramped, narrow street that leads me home, then taking the steps two at a time, and almost make it inside before she catches me.
“Hello, professor.”
I inwardly groan. This is not the woman I want to see right now.
“Michele.”
I don’t look at her but grit my teeth, grab the mail I didn’t bother to get earlier from the mailbox, shove it under my sweaty arm, and nod in the general direction of the porch to my right.
Christ, I miss the relative privacy of my home in Calabria. In Boston, we’re crammed in like goddamn sardines in a tin. Privacy doesn’t work so well when you’re doing surveillance, though. I fucked up once, and once was enough. I never fuck up twice.
I turn to face her and nearly choke when I see what she’s wearing. Or more accurately, what she isn’t wearing. She’s got a gauzy little dress on that looks like lingerie, her tits hanging out like ripe peaches.
Honest to Christ, any other place and time, I wouldn’t ignore a woman like her. Tall and curvy, with tits and ass for days, I’d take her home and fuck her good and hard. She doesn’t want a commitment. She wants my dick. Hell, if I wasn’t here on probation, I’d give it to her. But not here, not now, not when every moment’s consumed with keeping up my position and not failing at my job.
It’s an important job, too. I can’t fuck this one up.
Michele props a hip against the building and shoots me a coy look with half-lidded eyes. “Hasn’t anyone told you? It’s the feast of Saint Anthony, professor. Must you stick to such a spartan regimen, even tonight?”
“Even tonight,” I say through clenched teeth.
My phone buzzes, and her pout’s quickly forgotten when I look at the notification on my screen.
Mia’s home, and right now, that’s all that matters.
I open the heavy wooden door, and trot up the stairs. Michele’s protests are drowned out when the door slams shut behind me.
I may not have the privacy I need, and I may be here in a sort of purgatory to pay for my sins, but I have to hand it to Piero. The boss doesn’t do cheap rentals. My apartment’s large, airy, sunny, and sprawling, and on the top floor, about as private as it gets in the heart of Boston.
I open the door, still panting from my run, to find Emilio sprawled out on my sofa, holding a cardboard takeout container and chopsticks.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I ask.
“Eating, douchebag,” he says before he slurps chow mein and smacks his lips.
I roll my eyes, rifle through the mail, then toss it on the table.
I hear Emilio strike a lighter to light up a smoke. I snap my head around to glare at him.
“Out on the balcony. You light up in here and I’ll shove it up your ass.”
He pauses, lighter to the tip of a cigarette. He can’t be bothered with all that modern-day vaping bullshit. His brows shoot heavenward. “My, my, my,” he says. “Aren’t we a little uptight?”
“Fuck off, Emilio. Not tonight.”
He holds his hands up in surrender, walks across my living room, and opens the door to the balcony. He sticks his head out, lights the smoke, and keeps his hand with the smoke on the balcony while his body stays inside.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“What?”
“I told you not to fucking smoke in here.”
“I’m not,” he says. “My smoke’s out there.”
“And the rest of your ass better be out there by the count of five, or I’ll—”
“Fine, fine,” he says, stepping out onto the balcony. He shoots me a glare, then quickly schools his features when I take a step toward him. “Better view of your neighbor here anyway.”
“Give me one damn excuse to kick your ass,” I mutter. “Do it.”
Christ, I’m hungry to take out my aggression somewhere. I don’t give a shit if he stares at my neighbor or if he even picks her up. The only woman on my radar is Mia.
Because it’s my job. I’m being paid to make her the epicenter of my universe.
That’s all.
Emilio shakes his head. “You should’ve run harder,” he mutters. “All good, Enzo. Now answer my question.”
“What question?”
“Why are you here, instead of there?”
There being the North End, where everyone else is partying tonight. We’re so close, I can smell the food across the wharf, the scent of grilled meat making my mouth water. I can almost taste the ice cold beer. From my balcony, I get a beautiful but hazy view of the Boston harbor.
I roll my eyes, pull out my phone, and smack my fingertip on the screen. The video feed next door pops up, and I flash him my phone.
“You know why. That’s why.”
When his eyes widen and he swallows hard, I look back at my phone.
Christ.
She’s sunbathing. On her roof.
In a fucking string bikini.
“Don’t look at her,” I snap.
“You showed me the phone, you douchebag!”
“You weren’t supposed to actually look!”
“Okay, okay,” he says.
When I took this job, I had no choice. I stood, disgraced, in Piero’s office, my head hung low. I deserved to have my ass kicked, my honor stripped, my status as made man yanked away.
But the boss gave me a chance.
“I’ll give you one opportunity to make this right,” he said. “You know I love you like a brother.”
I nodded, humbled and chastened. Even though I had no way of knowing what was going to happen, I should’ve been more careful. I put the lives of my brothers at risk with my carelessness. I’d do fucking anything to be reinstated in the good graces of the family.
“My daughter’s going to America,” Piero said. “She’s been accepted into Boston College’s School of Arts.”
Mia is his pride and joy, and he’s spoiled her rotten since birth. If she wanted to go to school in America, he’d allow it. If she wanted the goddamn moon, he’d wrap it in golden paper and hand it to her.