Page 23 of Because I Need You
“Don’t worry about it,” Noah said, “We’ll get to the bottom of it.”
“Absolutely not,” I said, my voice no longer quiet. “You two go home to your girlfriends and leave this alone. I don’t want Tina or Piper to kill me over this and I definitely don’t want Ms. Smith to think I got you involved in some illegal shit.”
“Asking around is not illegal,” Luke said. “I’ll go to Mike.”
“No.” Mike was friends with Giovanni. He was also my friend, but I wasn’t sure who he was more loyal to. “Let me handle it.”
“You? Really, Isa?”
“Yes, really, assholes. Just shut down the bar if you need to. It’s not like we’re raking in tons of dough.” I rolled my eyes.
It was true. Luke and Noah had full-time jobs, they only worked at the bar as a favor to my father, and now, me. Not that they minded. They could drink on the job and chill with the guys from the block, away from their very inquisitive girlfriends. I loved them, but I could see why they needed a break from them for a few hours a night.
“It ain’t about the dough and you know it,” Noah said. “This is your bar. Our bar. No one should be fucking with it.”
I sighed as I reached my father’s house and set the truck in park. “Please don’t go looking for trouble. We don’t know what we’ll find.”
It was true and it was scary. It didn’t matter how many people doing bad things we knew, it didn’t matter how many gunshots we heard at night, it didn’t matter how many times we received awful news about yet another kid we went to school with. None of it “got old.” None of it “became normal.” Maybe those who only heard about things on the news were desensitized to it, but we weren’t. Whether I lived in a fancy apartment or not, I was still a Queens girl for life. We hung up after they promised they wouldn’t go asking, but I had a feeling they’d go to Mike anyway. I knew them. I hoped Mike was on our side. He owed me, but I didn’t know how much he owed Giovanni.
10
GIO
“Really, Giovanni?” My sister glared at me as she stood beside the small table where Natasha and I were currently about to enjoy a meal.
My brows rose. She never called me Giovanni unless she was pissed. It was always G. That was what most people called me. G, Gio, most people I surrounded myself with didn’t call me my full name, though. It felt too formal. I watched as my sister turned to the table behind her, where there were three seats, but only two people were twirling spaghetti around their forks. Without even asking permission, she pulled the third chair and brought it over to our table, making herself at home in the middle of our date. I couldn’t help but smile. She’d always been quiet, only really coming alive on center stage, but ever since she married Lorenzo, she walked around like she was hot shit. Well, at least in front of me. She was still mostly quiet in front of everyone else. This display was a play straight out of my handbook, though. Out of our father’s handbook.
“Hello, Catalina,” Natasha said across from me, dazzling smile on her face.
“Yeah, hi.” My sister looked at her briefly and nodded a few times, before ignoring her. I sighed. She’d never accept this woman and I genuinely couldn’t understand why. “You were just going to skip town without telling me?”
“Skip town?” I laughed. That was what this was about? “I’m here every other weekend, sometimes every weekend.”
“Yeah, well, I’d like to see you from time to time, you know.” Her brows pulled in. “Have you talked to Mom?”
“I should’ve known this was about Mom.” I shook my head.
It was always about Mom, which was borderline comical since she’d abandoned us and probably never gave any mind to what we were doing. Catalina had even paused her wedding plans, just so our mother could be there. She got married in freaking Italy, where no one was gunning for Evelyn Alvarez, but she never showed up. She never showed. I was tired of trying to figure her out. At first, I bought the whole story about her brothers gunning after her for the inheritance her father left her, but now I knew for a fact it wasn’t true. I had pictures to prove my mother and her so-called-brothers were doing just fine. So-called, since the three of them were adopted. My sisters were sent to boarding school abroad, and while I knew they’d had a very difficult time with all of it, I was the one here, left to deal with my father’s madness. I was the one doing dirty deeds for him. Sometimes when I thought about my mother, I hated her for leaving. The majority of the time, I was indifferent.
