“Maybe not, but remember Mom at Cal’s funeral? Yeah. I know you do.Herfamily did that toours.”
“Jesus. It was hard on all of us. I’m not killing some innocent woman for revenge. I’d ventilate Giovanni Accardo’s skull without batting an eye, but we don’t kill innocent people.”
“Please. She’s not that innocent. She has that ‘rich girl’ look to her. She has no trouble taking that blood money, does she?”
“Don’t be a fucking hypocrite,” I snarled. “You have no idea what she is or isn’t.”
“Wait. Do you want to fuck this girl? Isthatit? Are you thinking with your Little Leon and not with your brain? Because that’s gonna get you killed.”
“I don’t need life advice from my stupider younger brother.”
“Clearly you do if you’re falling for an Accardo. She isn’t even Irish.”
“Are youtryingto get me to break your face? So what if she isn’t Irish? This is America, dumbshit. If we rolled back into Ireland tomorrow, they’d call us Americans, not Irish, you stupid son of a bitch.”
Ryan snorted and took a sip of his beer. “Yeah, you’re right. I shouldn’t have said that. Not everyone can be Irish, so why hold it against them?”
“You’re an ass.” I shook my head and took another drink. I didn’t know why I was suddenly defending Sofia so savagely—to the point where I wanted to rearrange Ryan’s face. It was crazy.
“I can’t help but notice that you didn’t answer the question,” Ryan said.
“What question. You said a lot of stupid shit in the past five minutes.”
“About you wanting to fuck her.”
“Ah. And it was such a classy fucking question too.”
“Yeah. So find some balls and answer.”
“No, I don’t want to fuck her,” I lied, as slick as wet glass. “She’s a pain in my ass.”
“Is that right? Think she’d go for a good-looking gent like me?”
I balled my fist to punch that cheesy grin off his face when the back door opened, saving his ass from a brotherly beat down. We both glanced in that direction.
I figured it had to be Sofia, despite the ugliness of our last conversation. She was as curious as a cat and just as obnoxious.
It wasn’t Sofia. It was Declan.
Declan looked more like a construction worker with his short-cropped hair, his fighter’s build, and the casual work clothes he liked to wear, but he was definitely the brains in the family. Despite the scars and tattoos from his days in the fighting pits, he would’ve breezed through college if he’d gone. Instead, Declan went from brawling to running illegal fights to running numbers games, special poker tournaments, and now he was into white-collar crime—or whatever it was they called computer crimes. He wasn’t a hacker, but he knew his way around a computer well enough to talk the talk. He hired out for hacker talent, financing the bigger jobs with gambling and games. The Sartini Family got their cut too. No one operated illegal games in the Bronx without the Sartinis getting a slice.
Declan grinned at us, holding his arms out in a gesture that said:I can’t leave you two alone for a second. “Why are you two degenerates out here when all the women are inside?”
“One of those women is our mother,” Ryan said pointedly. “And the other is an Accardo.”
Declan strolled over, bringing along a beer of his own. He joined us at the railing, putting me in the middle between my two brothers. “This is a real mess.”
“No shit.” I held out my beer bottle and clinked it against his. “Thanks for dropping everything to come out here.”
“Yeah, it’s nothing. Good to see Mom again. Besides, I was curious about this honey trap you brought home.”
I rolled my eyes, feeling my anger already stirring. “She’s not a goddamn honey trap. She’s a doctor. Or studying to be one.”
“Too bad she’s not studying to be a lawyer,” Ryan said. “It would be hilarious if she ended up prosecuting you for taking her hostage.”
Declan ignored Ryan and focused his attention on me. That was usually the best course of action with a baby brother. “What do you need from me? Say the word and you’ll have it.”
Damn, did I appreciate that more than I could say. Sometimes family was really fucking amazing.
