Page 224 of The Devil We Crave
“You know, kid,” he sighs. “I was once a bit of a heartbreaker, too.”
Which would surprise nobody who’s ever met my handsome, charming father.
“But you want to know something?”
“The second you saw Mom, you realized it was all a bunch of bullshit, and she was the love of your life, and you couldn’t imagine a reality without her in it?”
Dad grins at me. “So you do listen sometimes.”
“Kinda hard to miss that one,” I chuckle. “I’ve heard it about a million times.”
He winks at me as he walks over and drops a hand on my shoulder. “You’ll understand, one day. You'll see thatoneperson, and boy….” He whistles and shakes his head. “Boom. Thunder. You’ll bedoneafter that.”
Don’t hold your breath, Dad.
Because even though I look just like my father, I know I’m different from him. His charm is genuine.
Mine is a veneer that I’ve perfected after a lifetime of studying him.
“I’m going to go grab some of your mom’s pie,” he grins. “And then I might have some dessert.”
“Jesus,” I groan. “You can’t say shit like that to your own son!”
Dad cackles. “You coming in?”
“Yeah, after I bang my head against a wall hard enough to erase that mental image.”
He laughs again. “I’ll see you when you’re done, then.” He looks down into my eyes and smiles widely. “Love ya, kid.”
“Love you too, Dad.”
I take a deep, cleansing breath after he’s gone and glance at my phone again.
More “sexy” shots from Kyla.
Great.
Instead of responding, I set my phone face down on the table in front of me and lean back in my chair, fingers laced behind my head. My gaze swivels across Ya-ya's gorgeous rooftop gardens until it lands on the rooftop of a building on West 58thStreet.
Fuck.
My family spentdecadesmoving the right political and monetary pieces to make sure that when that building went up for sale,wecould buy it.
Except a month ago we had the rug pulled out from under us when it finallydidgo up for sale andsomeone fucking elsescooped it up.
Two someones, actually. One is Angelo Santoro, whose fuckstick son, Kyle, is a recent graduate of Knightsblood and the former president of Para Bellum. The other is the notoriously psychotic mafia kingpin Nero De Luca, whose daughter, Yelena, is going to be a sophomore at Knightsblood this coming semester. I think she pledged The Order.
I’ve seen her on campus. She’s pretty, but I know almost nothing about her except for the fact that her psycho dad just boughtthatgoddamn building.
I’m about to head inside and grab some dessert with the rest of the family when movement in the shadows on the roof across West 58thcatches my eye.
For a second, my first thought is that the shadow creeping through the dark is a sniper, or some other threat. I mean, Iwasraised in the world of the mafia.
I spring from my chair and bolt across the roof, slipping into the darkness of Ya-ya’s rose bushes and slinking over to the side of our roof closest to the other building so I can get a better look.
I'm not armed. But if thisisa threat, I’ll be calling for assistance, and in under sixty seconds, a dozen of the men my father has stationed all over this building will be up here lighting that shitup?—
Wait.
