yacht.
The staff party is fueled by festive cocktails and the type of glitter I’ll still be brushing off my suit come Easter. Leaning against the bar, I watch in amusement as Nico cuts through the tables toward me.
I know what he’s going to say, because he always fucking says it.
“Whose idea was karaoke?” He swipes an eggnog off the bar and regards the set-up over the glass rim.
Laurie has done a solid job. The stage is lit with Christmas lights and flanked by two towering Christmas trees. A large projector screen covers the wall behind it, displaying the lyrics to whatever song is being butchered by whoever imbibed enough mulled wine to believe they’re Mariah Carey.
“Why, not enjoying it?”
He stares at Benny, who’s on stage crooning along to Janis Joplin’s Mercedes Benz. His mulled wine must be super-spiked, because his hip thrusting rivals Elvis. “Are you kidding? Name a better combination than drunk people and a microphone.” He shakes his head. “You can’t, because there isn’t one.”
Laughing, I down my vodka and flick the tumbler across the bar for a top off.
“And I suppose we have you to thank for this glorious show, Laurie?”
“Yes, Nico, you do.” I turn just as Laurie slides in between us. She sparkles in a silver dress, and her reindeer ears wobble when she whips her head around to glare at me. “Boss, I have a bone to pick with you.” She pauses, cocking her head. “Only a small one, obviously, I don’t want to get fired.”
I laugh and press an eggnog into her hand. “Hit me with it.”
“You told me to organize a staff Christmas party. Why is your entire family here?” She sneers toward the stage. For some reason, Benny’s now sliding across it on his knees. It’s not even nine p.m. “And why’s that idiot asking the Lord Jesus for a Mercedes Benz? He already has three of them.”
“Uh-huh, and how would you know?” Nico asks, quiet humor tugging his lips.
Laurie doesn’t flinch. “I’ve fucked him in two, and I keyed the third,” she says simply.
I shake my head. “I really didn’t need to know that. Here.” I pull out a small velvet box from my pocket. “I was going to give this to you later, but since you’re pissed off, it might sweeten you up a little.”
She eyes it in mock suspicion, but she can’t hide the excitement dancing behind her glare. “If it’s an engagement ring, I’m not signing a prenup.”
“Good thing it’s not an engagement ring then.”
Her annoyance evaporates when she snaps it open and tugs out an Audi car key. “Oh my god, you’re shitting me.”
I raise my glass to her. “Heated seats, white trim. Already parked outside your apartment. Now you can fuck my cousin in your car where there’s more room.”
She flings her arms around me, squeals her gratitude and insists Benny’s sticky fingers won’t be allowed anywhere near her white seats, then she bounces over to the other girls to jingle the key in their faces.
As my gaze follows her, it slides left and locks onto Penny’s. Man, she’s just got this way of making my heart flinch every time she does that—catch my eye from across the room. She’s at the side of the stage with Rory, who’s studying the karaoke book. Penny grins at me, then pretends to pick her nose. Only when I realize it’s her middle finger stuffed up her left nostril do I realize she’s flipping me off.
I huff a laugh into my vodka and flip her off back. The heat of Nico’s stare burns my cheek.
“Be good to her, Rafe.”
Nico’s voice is quiet but it still squeezes my spine. Good to her? Fuck, if only he knew how good I am to her. This morning, I stared at her for an hour as she snored beside me. Maybe it was the guilt of nearly slitting her throat or the fascination that she was sleeping in my bed, but I brought her breakfast on a fucking tray. Even put a flower I’d swiped out a vase in the dining room on it. When she tells me not to be nice to her, she no longer says it with a grimace but a smile, and this little eye roll that makes me want to be nice to her all the time.
I drag my hand over my throat. An hour watching her, yet I still don’t have a plan to get out.
“What was she like?” I say suddenly. “As a kid?”
By the way Nico purses his lips, I don’t think he’s going to answer. He glances up at Penny, who’s now impatiently tapping a stiletto and glaring at Benny as he takes an unrequested encore.
“She was a little shit,” he laughs. With a more serious tone, he adds, “She was lucky. Still is.” I rub my mouth, the irony prickling at my skin. “All the patrons at the Grand thought it. At first, it was just because of her name. You know—find a Penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck? Well, when they actually started picking her up and letting her blow on their dice, it turned out that old adage was true.”
I frown. “She’d actually make them lucky?”
“Always. Back then, I only knew her from seeing her around. But then one day she started charging men a dollar to blow on their dice, and I wanted to know why.”
I bite out a laugh. “She was hustling from a young age, then.” Nico glances at his shoes, but I press on. “Did you know her parents?”
He cuts me a dark look. “Alcoholics. She spent more time with me in the cloakroom than she ever did with them. Some nights, they’d forget she existed and one of my father’s men would have to drive her home.”
This irritates me beyond belief. The thought of this little red-head sitting on the steps of the Visconti Grand, waiting in vain for her parents, makes my stomach churn and my fingers twitch to break something.
“Who killed them?”
He shrugs. “No one important. Two men they were in debt to. Not a Visconti.”
Like stills from a black-and-white film, my mind cuts from the little girl on the steps to the teenager cowering between the fridge and the washing machine, a gun that’d never go off pressed to her head.
“And where can I find these men?” I ask, as calmly as I can muster.
He swallows. Shakes his head. “Both were found with bullets in their heads a few days later.” He gulps his eggnog and grabs another. “They were unofficial loan sharks in Visconti territory, you can connect the dots.”
Penny’s loud laugh touches my ears and draws me back to her. She’s going through the karaoke book now, my watch sliding up her wrist with every flip of a page.
“Nico?”
“Uh-huh?”
I turn to him. “You taught her to swindle, didn’t you?”
He pauses for the longest time, eggnog halfway to lips. “Depends.”
“On?”
His expression turns thoughtful. “How much it’s going to hurt when you swing for my jaw. I’ve never seen you hit anyone, so I can’t gauge it.” He pauses. “But I’ve heard you do that now.”
Laughing, I clap him on his back and push off the bar. “You’re a good kid, Nico. I’ll let you off this time.”
He’s right to be concerned, though. I’m a big believer in cheats getting punished, but I’ll give him a pass, because the thought of him being the one stable presence in Penny’s childhood instantly bumps him up the ranks to favorite cousin.
Leaving Nico with his third eggnog and a reminder of what happens when he gets past five, I take a seat beside Angelo. Over the rim of his whiskey, he cuts a glance at me, then to the vodka I set on the table. He turns his attention back to his wife stepping on stage and says nothing.
“Where’s Gabe?”
“I don’t know. Where’s Griffin?”
By the tick of his temple, I’m certain he knows where both men are. My former head of security, along with all the men underneath him, are in the depths of our brother’s cave. Some to be tortured, some to be interrogated. I’m not sure who of my men I can trust now, but one thing’s for sure; Gabe will send only the loyal ones back to me.
In the meantime, his men are surrounding my boat like the crown jewels are onboard. No doubt they’ve had a stern warning from my brother, because one of them even followed me into the fucking bathroom earlier.
“Have you made a plan yet?”
That fucking question. It sparks something hot and irritable in my stomach. “Did you make a plan, brother, when you shot our father in the head? Or when you blew up Uncle Al’s Rolls in a fit of rage? Or when you shot his lackey between the appetizers and the entrees at Sunday lunch?” I lean over the table so only he can hear my venom. “Did you think for a fucking second of the consequences, or were you just living in the moment?”
His stare slides to mine, the heat of it dampened with mild curiosity. “Is that what you’re doing? Living in the moment?”
I run my finger across my collar pin. Glance back up at Penny. Right now, I don’t know how to live anyplace else.
Darkness shades Angelo’s glare; someone dimmed the lights. He turns back to the stage, straightening when he realizes his wife has taken center stage.
The mic thuds when she taps it. “Hello, lovely people. Since I seem to be the only person to grace this stage tonight who remembers it’s Christmas Eve, I shall be singing a festive classic.” The lopsidedness of her grin tells me she’s been on the white-wine spritzers. “I’ll be singing, Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” Squinting into the spotlight, she spots Angelo and beams at him. “Obviously, it’s a duet, so…”
The room starts cheering my brother on.
“No chance,” he mutters, scowling behind his whiskey.
“Pretty please?” Rory says sweetly, clasping her hands together.
He stares at her for a few seconds. The moment his shoulders slump in defeat, I press the heel of my shoe against the toe of his under the table to stop him getting up.
“You are a capo, brother. You command respect from every man in this room. Do you think that’ll be the case when you sing Tom Jones’s part to a Christmas song? Sit the fuck down.”
“Fuck,” he grunts, stroking his jaw. “You’re right. Think I need to switch to water for an hour.”
When he shakes his head to Rory, she yells boring! down the mic, and Tayce fills in for my brother.
I’m not watching Rory butcher Cerys Matthews’ lines; I’m watching Angelo. How he’s staring at her like there’s no one else in the room. How he lunges over and smacks one of my deckhands upside the head when he dares to talk over the chorus. How he rises to his feet and whistles as she and Tayce take a bow.
When he sits back down, he’s still grinning.
“How did you know?”
It slides off my tongue, loosened by liquor and this weird, foreign feeling that’s been sitting under my ribs for the last few days. He turns to me. Confusion mars his face but only for a split second, then mild amusement replaces it.
He knows what I mean.
“When you start doing stupid shit, like eating spaghetti with raw meatballs and going back for seconds, because she cooked it. Smuggling a labradoodle out of your house in a duffle bag at three a.m. so it’s still a surprise on Christmas Day.” His attention falls to my knuckles and his jaw tightens. “When you start using your fists because you need to the feel the bones of the man that hurt her break underneath them.” He eyes my vodka and shakes his head. “When you start drinking like a Russian, even though you own a seventeen-percent stake in one of the fastest-growing whiskey companies in the world.” Meeting my eyes again, he adds, “That’s how you know.”
There’s a fresh wave of cheers, but I hear them like I’m underwater. A very un-festive guitar riff pours through the speakers and turns my head to the stage. Penny’s standing under the lights, microphone in hand. Fuck, she looks good. Beautiful, even. Wearing a little red dress and heels that both shimmer when she does an awkward wiggle to the beat.
“I haven’t heard this song since we were in school,” Angelo says.
“What song?”
When she starts singing, realization spreads through me. I still, looking up at Penny’s shit-eating grin as she sings into the mic. Fucking Kiss Me, by Sixpence None the Richer. Running a hand over my jaw, I laugh in disbelief. I’m sure there’s nothing coincidental about that song choice. You’re a little brat, I mouth at her. She winks in response.
Angelo’s stare heats my cheek. His chair groans, then he’s on his feet, his hand on my shoulder.
“When you have private jokes,” he murmurs.
He strolls over to join his wife, while my grin dampens at the edges.
