Page 9 of Savage Grace
“Look,” I cut her off, putting Eliza down. “You go lay down and have a sleep. That’s why I’m here.”
She yawned at the same time I mentioned it, as if I had reminded her of the sleep deprivation.
“Where’s Ren?”
“With Toni,” she rubbed her eyes.
“Still tracking the source of the text?” I asked.
Antoni had received a text one day from a long-time supplier of his to organise a meet-up. But when they showed up to the meeting, they were met with a warehouse full of explosives.
Toni downplayed the incident a lot, but things had been tense since the assassination attempt. The most confusing part was that the supplier never sent the message.
The man had been a loyal supplier of the Santino Crime Family since my grandfather had been involved. And more importantly, he didn’t even have access to that phone number anymore.
The boys had done their due diligence, of course, and used whatever methods they leaned on to extract information from people—but they got nowhere.
The old man was innocent.
Which meant that no one knew who had tried to blow my brother to bits.
Of course, we all suspected the Redline Angels.
The local MC had been trying to tear us down since their little club was formed. They’d failed every single time, but now they had a new president, and maybe this guy actually had more than two brain cells to rub together.
But Valerie just shrugged, not offering any of the new information I knew she had. No one hid this stuff from Val, or Rome, or anyone else in the family.
Just me.
If I wanted to know what was going on in my family, I had to piece it together from bits and pieces that I overheard through eavesdropping.
Until recently, I hadn’t really cared that they kept this stuff from me. I didn’t even particularly want to know what kind of danger my siblings were putting themselves into. Maybe that made me an ignorant fool, but whatever.
I brushed it off and looked down at the girls.
“Shall we go cook some pancakes?” I asked them, holding out my hands for them to grip. “Aunty Zaza needs a hangover feed!”
“Zarina!” Val scolded.
“Bye, Mummy,” I encouraged the girls to wave goodbye to Valerie as I opened the baby gate wider and led them to the kitchen downstairs.
* * *
I’d not long finished scrubbing the dried pancake mixture off of chubby cheeks when the door flung open and Ren and Toni came inside, still deep in their hushed conversation.
Toni had that all too familiar look on his face, hisDonface, the part he played whenever he was doing mafiaDonstuff—whatever that was.
Well, maybe after all these years, it wasn’t a part he played anymore.
Maybe it was just a part of him now.
It was strange, especially after seeing how much he resisted his role at first.
Rome, his wife, definitely played a big part in him accepting it. I think he found it hard to see himself as this horrible monster after knowing her. Because how could he see himself as evil when the woman he loved was just like him?
The guys shot me a smile before the twins noticed their arrival and started demanding attention.
Ren hurried over and scooped up his daughters, planting a kiss on each of their cheeks. Toni held out a finger and let Eliza grab onto it momentarily. He was still a little scared of Evie though, and gave her a wide berth for fear of getting bitten (again).
