22. Davide

In my blissful dream, I'm lying beside a beautiful woman, her body pressed close to mine, and all we're doing is listening to each other breathe. Nothing more, only the deep, increased peace that comes with being completely at ease with another person. I've never experienced it before in my life, but in my dream it's like heaven, feeling the weight of her body and the warmth of her skin, and knowing that I could kiss her and she would kiss me back, and basking in the strange, foreign safety of that knowledge.

Except my phone starts ringing, and it won't shut the fuck up.

"What?" I grunt as I roll over and answer. Stefania's still asleep, the lower half of her body nestled into mine, and I realize I wasn't dreaming.

I'm in bed with my fucking wife, and I feel incredibly comfortable.

When I should be out stalking the warehouse, barking orders, smoking cigars, and drinking too much whiskey just to keep my nerves calm.

This is so unlike me I almost jump out of bed.

"We've got a problem." It's Emilio on the other end of the line. He sounds like I should feel: absolute fucking shit. Instead, I got a decent night's rest, and I'm still totally relaxed from the weird calm I felt while holding Stefania in bed.

I don't even recognize myself.

"The shipment just showed up," Emilio's saying as I stumble into the bathroom. I have to get my shit together because I can't be lying around in bed with my damn wife like I actually care about her, not when I have Famiglia problems barking at my face.

"And how's that an issue?" I piss with one hand, not caring if Emilio can hear.

"Well, the truck's okay, but?—"

"Stop fucking delaying." I shake my cock and start getting dressed. "What the fuck is wrong?"

"Some of the crates are open and half the weapons are missing."

I nearly drop the phone. His words hit me like steel-toed boots to my skull, and I have to stand there and stare at the mirror for a few seconds as the implications race along my spinal cord.

"Say that again, and this time, give me every fucking detail you have."

Emilio fills me in as I finish racing out the door. My truck's parked out front and I jump behind the wheel, firing it up and switching his call over to Bluetooth.

"Shit seemed totally fine, everything according to schedule, but when we popped open the back half the crates were empty. It didn't look like anyone broke in, you know what I mean, like all the stuff was packed nice and stacked the way it should've been, but there aren't any fucking guns."

"What about the driver?" I tear ass out of the oasis and head toward the warehouse. I'm livid with myself—I never should've come home last night. I just needed a distraction, and I knew Stefania would be perfect for taking my mind off all this crap for a while.

I don't know how to process. I've never felt this way for a woman before. Stefania's unlocking emotions in me that I thought were gone for good. She makes me want to fucking hold her—fucking cuddle—and that's a revelation in itself. I've never woken up spooning a woman before in my life, and I never wanted to, at least until she began sleeping in my bed.

And now it's fucking things up.

"He's swearing up and down that he never stopped. Do you want me to rough him up? Maybe if I take an ear?—"

"Absolutely fucking not," I say, nearly shouting at the damn phone. "Do not hurt the goddamn driver. He's a fucking Rossi employee, and we're supposedly their ally. Keep him restrained, keep him talking, but don't go beyond that." I rub my face, fingers drumming on the steering wheel. Time to take charge of this clusterfuck before it gets worse. "Call Dominic and tell him what's up. He'll report this to my father. I'll call Carlo Rossi and find out what the fuck he has to say for himself. When I get there, I'll talk to the driver personally, and we'll straighten this out. Do you understand this? Call nobody but Dominic. Keep this quiet for now."

Emilio clears his throat and I know he's about to say something I won't like. "There are half a dozen soldiers here, you know, to help unload. They're our guys, but you know how the soldiers can be. They don't shut the fuck up."

"Keep them contained. Take their fucking phones if you have to, I don't care, but keep them quiet. I'll be there soon."

I hang up, breathing hard. This is fucked. This is beyond fucked—it's the worst-case scenario.

If the truck had been caught midway and robbed by someone like Santoro, I can handle that. I'd hunt down my merchandise, steal it back, and kill anyone that dared to take what's mine. That's simple math.

But this is a mess. It sounds like nobody actually stole from the truck—so either the Rossi Famiglia decided to short me, which I really doubt considering Stefania is still in my bed right now, or somehow the whole mission was compromised from the start, and Santoro's got spies all the way in the Rossi organization.

If that's the case, my life is going to get very difficult.

* * *

Don Alessandro standsin the middle of the warehouse with his arms crossed over his chest and glares down at the opened crates before him. I remain off to the side, watching as my father inspects the weapons that managed to show up. His personal bodyguard and close advisor Dominic Amato, a severe-looking bald guy with a graying bushy beard and a bizarre obsession with Adidas track suits, walks beside him and quietly points out what's missing based on a shipping manifest.

"Carlo swears he oversaw packing himself," I say once my father's through. He stands motionless and it's hard to read his expression, but I know him well enough to say he's beyond fucking pissed right now, as I expected. "He says every single weapon was accounted for when the truck left his facility."

"You trust him?" Father asks, and it's the sort of question that comes laced with a dozen implications.

"I'm married to his sister. I trust him."

He grunts and looks back at the crates. Right now, he's not my father—this is all business, and the kind, jovial man that lets his guard down among his family during Sunday dinner is gone, replaced by the cruel, vicious kingpin of a powerful crime family.

That's my father's real superpower. He's multiple people jammed into one body: loving and doting, sinister and terrifying, deadly and heartless, kind and magnanimous, all depending on what the situation calls for. Growing up with him was both good and terrifying depending on the day, and I learned how to ride his moods like a wave, adapting and surviving as needed. I wouldn't say my father is a bad man, and I'd kill anyone that suggested I had a hard childhood, but I'm also aware that my father is more complicated than most people understand.

"The driver," he says and looks back toward the storage room where he's being held.

"He swears he stopped only twice, once to use the bathroom and once to get fuel. He claims he was out of the truck for a total of thirty minutes, tops, and Carlo vouched for him."

Dad grunts and looks at Dominic.

"We could get creative with our questioning," the bodyguard suggests.

I grimace and hold up a hand. "He's a Rossi soldier. If we start hurting him without permission, there could be problems. We don't need to start anything with an ally right now, not when Uncle Luciano's getting aggressive."

Dad gives me a hard stare. "Stop calling him that," he says, his nose wrinkled as if he smells something bad. "What do you suggest then? Since this was supposed to be your job."

I look away from him and step toward the crates. "I've been running this through my head all morning, and there are only two reasonable scenarios. First, the driver is lying, and he's secretly working for Santoro, but if that's the case it's basically suicide to show up here with missing goods. Second, Santoro somehow knew this was happening, and he had a skilled team break into that truck while the driver was taking a piss and cleared out what they could before he came back. I think the second of the two is the most plausible."

Dad paces away. His hands are clasped behind his back. I try not to show how angry I am right now, because he doesn't react well to big emotions during crisis situations, but I'm simmering with rage. This was supposed to be my mission, my contribution to the burgeoning war effort—marrying Stefania, building trust and ties to the Rossi Famiglia, and securing guns was going to help win this conflict before it escalated.

Now, the guns are missing, our alliance is on shaky footing, and I don't know what's going to happen.

"How sure are you that the Rossis give a damn about your wife?" He looks back at me, face completely serious.

The question pisses me off. Not because the idea is absurd—but because the thought that Stefania's family might be so cruel as to marry her off to a bunch of dangerous men knowing full well they planned a violent betrayal is too much to bear.

"She's their youngest sister. Would you do something like that to Laura?"

He grunts and begins pacing again. I know what his answer is without him having to say it. None of us would ever hurt a member of our family, not for any reason, and I have to assume the Rossis are the same.

"Get creative with the driver." Father's stare is level and cold. "I don't care if it pisses off our new allies. I will personally speak with Renzo and handle any issues. Make sure the driver isn't lying."

"And if he's not?" I ask, already preparing myself for a brutal, bloody conversation with a man who's probably innocent. Not that I mind. I feel nothing for the driver.

"We take the guns we currently have and we make sure Santoro never steps out of line again."