Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76456 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76456 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Mix in the suits, the nice car, the beautiful house that he didn’t even live in full-time, and, yeah, it was all making perfect sense.
Why he was involved with a tiny little flower shop in Maine made less sense.
Except, of course, it wasn’t just a flower shop, was it? Something else was coming in with those shipments.
Something illegal.
Hence the bad guys.
And, of course, Dennis hiding from Cesare.
Had he screwed him over? Was that why Cesare was really in town? To figure out what was going on?
My mind was struggling to reconcile these two sides of the same man.
The one who had been soft and sweet with me. And the one who must have been calculated and brutal to survive in an organized crime family.
Somehow, though, I wasn’t upset about only seeing the one side. Or angry about the deception.
All I could seem to feel was relief.
Because if Cesare found out what was happening, he was capable of helping me, of doing… whatever needed to be done.
Vega would reach out to him, I knew it. She would even suspect him at first. That was just how she was. But she would quickly learn the truth.
Then they would save me.
I just had to hold on until then.
“Maybe we should wake her up…” Dennis suggested.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Cesare
“Vega,” I said after pulling open the door to her insistent slamming. “What are you doing here?”
There were other questions.
Like How do you know where I live?
But the wide-eyed look in her eyes had me choking that kind of shit back down.
I couldn’t claim to know Vega well. But I knew her well enough to know her as pretty unflappable. This Vega, though? She was freaked the fuck out.
“You need to come with me,” she said, reaching out, grabbing the side of my jacket, and yanking.
I was surprised for a moment how strong she was. Until I remembered that people got superhuman powers when they were in life-or-death situations.
“Vega, what is going on?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm, even though my mind was spinning.
Because I was sure there was only one thing that could get Vega this panicked.
Something happened to Mere.
“Get in,” she barked, letting go of me so she could jump into the open door of her still-running car.
Not having much of a choice, I rushed around the hood to get in the passenger side.
Gav stood in the doorway, brows pinched, and I gestured toward my car in the driveway, then to Vega’s car, giving him the order to follow us, then jumped in.
The door was still halfway open as Vega floored it back out of the driveway.
“What happened? Where is Mere?”
“So, Mere was weird yesterday. And this morning,” Vega said, her wild eyes staring out of the windshield, but I got the impression that she wasn’t really paying attention to the road.
“Okay,” I said, putting on my seatbelt because I’d be of no help to anyone if Vega slammed on the brakes, sent me through the windshield, and splattered me all over the pavement.
“So I just wanted to drop in on her at lunchtime, see if she was ready to talk. You can’t push Mere,” she said, seeming to talk half to herself. “If you try to, and she’s not ready, she shuts down. Or she scrubs the shine off the bathroom tile. So I give her emotional space, but stay close when it comes to proximity. You know, for when she needs me.”
“Alright,” I agreed, wincing as she took a corner so fast that I was pretty sure we went up on only two wheels for a second.
“So, I was bringing lunch. But the thing was… as I pulled down the street, there was this line out front of the flower shop.
“Something inside of me tensed up. Like I knew. I read about that somewhere. The ‘flinch,’ I think the guy called it. How something in you processes all the information at once and gives you that little flinch.
“I didn’t even find a spot. I stopped the car right there in the middle of the road, flying onto the sidewalk to ask what was going on.”
“And?”
“The shop had never opened. And people were waiting for arrangements. Mere went to work. She went. Her car was down the block. I could see her purse on the desk through the front windows. But the shop was locked.”
“Fuck,” I hissed, suddenly wondering if she could drive any faster, even though I knew she was already going as fast as the narrow, winding roads would allow.
“I need you to get in there. I need to see if she is hurt or… or something worse,” Vega said, voice tight. “You can do that, right? Mr. Mafia Guy,” she added.
My head snapped in her direction. The movement must have caught her attention, because she glanced over at me.
“Did you really think I didn’t know?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “Like I would let some rando fuck my best friend,” she added, snorting. “I did a full report on you, Cesare Costa. Capo in the Costa crime Family in New York City. The most powerful of the Five Families.”