Chapter 1
Fiorella
There’s nothing like the smell of grease and a big, fat wrench to get me going in the morning. I blast the local alt-rock station, cover my hair with a cheap, stained bandana, and survey my domain.
It’s a godawful mess. Tools are scattered all over. Car parts lean in teetering stacks. Vehicles in various states of decay and disrepair are parked across the massive garage. Bumpers lean at precarious angles. The concrete floor is stained from years of oil and blood.
In a half hour, this place will be crawling with my father’s men. They’ll tear, break, strip, smash, and chew through the remaining cars until there’s nothing but scrap and parts left. Then the work starts over when the next shipment shows up.
Until then, it’s glorious, and it’s all mine.
I walk through the mess, smiling and humming. This is my happy place. Away from the politics of the family. Away from the expectations of my brother and my father. An oasis in all the madness that is the Serrano Famiglia.
Sitting in the very back corner, in a little space I carved out for myself, is my baby.
She’s beautiful.
Rusty exterior. Interior ripped to shreds. Engine in shockingly good shape though, and an undercarriage rivaling my own. Headlights cracked, tires shredded.
But she’s mine. All freaking mine. A 1972 Alfa Romeo Spider in silver, or at least it was silver twenty years back. Now it’s more like pockmarked gray.
I run my fingers along her curvy sides. She’s just a finicky little thing with two leather seats and a classic interior. There’s a 2.0-liter twin-cam four-cylinder engine in there, and it purrs like a cat in heat when I get her fired up. The electrical system needs to be ripped out and rewired, the carburetor is going to be a pain in my sweet ass, and I’m lucky as hell rust didn’t eat her to little Swiss cheese pieces already.
But my sweet baby’s going to sing when I’m done with her.
I get to work. Not much time until the monkeys arrive and ruin my peace and quiet. I gather up my tools and pick up from where I left off yesterday. Finishing this beast of a project is going to take forever, but this isn’t about the end result.
Rebuilding a car is about love. It’s about patience. Those are both things I desperately need to learn because I don’t have much of either left these days.
I’m lost in the work down on my back, my fingers covered in black slick and smelling like crap when I hear a noise at the far end of the garage. I sit up too fast and bump my head on the undercarriage. It hurts like freaking hell, and I’m cursing as Islide myself back out from under my baby. I should still have at least twenty minutes.
“Who’s in early?” I call out, rubbing my head and cursing. “You know I hate it when you assholes?—”
I stare as a man I’ve never seen before comes toward me.
He’s big and muscular. I can tell he’s mafia just at a glance. There’s something in the dangerous way he stares at me like he’s sizing me up. Only predators have that look, and I’ve learned to spot it from a mile away. Fear flutters in my chest, and my breathing comes short. Nobody’s supposed to be here.
Especially not a stranger.
“Are you alone?” he asks. Behind him, more men start pouring into the place. Six of them by my count. All mafia, all armed.
This is really, really bad.
“Who the hell are you?” I stand my ground. My fingers are stained, and I nervously rub them on my shirt. Another ruined top to throw on the mountain of clothes I’ve destroyed over the years.
“My name’s Luca Marino, and you’re in deep shit.”
The name rings a distant bell. The Marino Famiglia’s a big, powerful mafia organization in Philadelphia. We’ve done business with them over the years, but mostly we’ve kept our distance and stuck to our niche. They do drugs; we do stolen cars. It all works out beautifully in the end.
But what the hell is one of their guys doing here?
“I don’t want trouble.” I back away from him and bump into my girl’s side. She rattles on the lifts. My stomach’s twisted withfear, but I refuse to completely back down. A hammer’s within close reach, and I’m tempted to make a grab for it.
But Luca’s eyes drift past me. “Is that an Alfa Romeo?” he asks, brows lifting.
The question rattles me. “1972 Spider,” I say awkwardly.
“Gorgeous,” he whispers, his eyes drifting back to meet my own.
