Page 54 of Taking Savannah
"When and where?"
"The parking structure off Eighth. Lower level. Noon."
"That's a shit location for a meeting, Renzo."
"It's the only location I can guarantee isn't being watched by my own people." A pause. "Marco pulled the alliance. Officially. Two hours ago. He's reassigning soldiers to the old territorial lines. The shared checkpoints are being shut down as we speak."
"That wasn't your call?"
"My call hasn't mattered in days. Something changed, Emilio. The order to pull the alliance didn't come from Marco. It came from above him. From people I don't recognize giving instructions through channels I've never seen."
The Silent.
The same people who need the chaos between the families to continue because cooperating organizations are harder to exploit than warring ones.
"I'll be there at noon," I say.
"Bring backup. Not a team. One man. Someone who can keep his mouth shut."
"Carmelo."
"Fine. Just get here before this window closes."
I hang up and go find Savannah first because that's who I am now, the man who tells his woman things before he tells his boss. She's behind the bar in the morning doing inventory becauseSavannah Cole cannot exist in a space without organizing it, and the sight of her in one of my t-shirts with a clipboard and a pencil behind her ear makes me want to skip the meeting entirely and spend the day watching her count bottles.
Just so I can stare at that fine as fuck ass.
"I have to go out," I say, fighting my impulse.
She looks up from the clipboard. Reads my face in about two seconds. "How dangerous?"
"Probably not very. Meeting with Ferrara, off the books."
"Probably not very is not the same as not at all."
"I'm taking Carmelo."
"Carmelo doesn't have his knife anymore."
"Carmelo has a gun under the seat of the SUV, and probably has a hundred other knives, so I think he's fine."
She sets down the clipboard, and walks around the bar, then stands in front of me and puts both hands on my chest and looks up at me with those brown eyes that I will never, for the rest of my fucking life, get tired of looking into.
"Come back in one piece."
"I always come back."
"You came back with stitches last time."
"Stitches are one piece. Just with thread holding it together."
"That's not funny."
"It's a little funny."
She grabs the front of my shirt, pulls me down, and kisses me hard enough that I forget about Ferrara and the Castillos and Matteo Billone and the entire concept of leaving this bar. Her mouth is warm and her hand is fisted in my shirt and for about four seconds the world is nothing but her lips and the taste of the coffee she's already had and the pressure of her body against mine.
She pulls back. "One piece, Emilio. I'm not joking."
