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Vespa leaned against the wall in the family’s restaurant and watched the other woman. She’d thought about talking to Montrell and Beatrice about what she and the boys were up to the night before, but they’d both looked so sappily happy that she’d held off. Montrell had finally told his wife that he loved her, and from the looks they’d been giving each other all morning, she’d reciprocated his feelings.
With things settling between the couple, and their return to having a meeting at the restaurant, Vespa should have been feeling sappy herself. Instead, her hand kept checking the gun in her holster. She wished she’d kept a couple of the Albanians to torture today. There’d been no need to, no information to drag out of them.
The hairs on the back of her neck kept standing up, though, and she circled the edges of the restaurant to check the windows.
The Coronella boys were all engaged with their new consigliere. Beatrice had a way of commanding a room. She had plenty of thoughts about the business opportunities both the Rossi and the Barone families had mentioned the day before, but she also opened up the floor for knowledge their capos might have picked up. Their consigliere was gorgeous in her tight dress and heels and flawless makeup, but the men weren’t ogling her at all. No, they hung on her every word because she had plans to improve the family.
Vespa wondered how she had missed the moment when the men had given the newest Coronella their loyalty. Maybe it had been the way Beatrice went to bat for them with her father, making sure the original contract was honored. They’d respected her need for revenge on the Albanians as well. Revenge was a language they understood.
It hadn’t hurt that Beatrice had held her own during the shooting at the docks. Her aim had been spot-on, even before she’d put a bullet in the Albanian who’d tried to ambush her.
Beatrice was so different from Vespa, and the men respected her anyway. Not just respected her, but seemed to like her.
That was the difference. Vespa was accepted, but the Coronella soldiers would never be her buddies. Her job over the years was to protect Montrell, and she’d gotten her hands dirty doing it. Being enforcer meant she took out some of their own, and not just that one time. She didn’t blame the men for not wanting to be around her, not when they all knew she was watching their every move.
No one got to hurt Montrell. Not anymore.
Her eyes found him, and she froze at his expression. It had been a long time since she’d seen that exact look on his face: dread mixed with a spattering of toxic hope.
She drifted to the swinging door of the kitchen after he’d disappeared, and she wasn’t surprised at all that the phone call he’d taken was her worst nightmare. Her finger went up to slide along the scar that cut through her eyebrow and had nicked her cheek. Montrell’s mother frightened Vespa more than any man ever could. There’d been an energy to her when she’d hurt them as children, one that told a young Vespa that the woman knew exactly what she was doing and enjoyed the fuck out of the torture she inflicted.
“Why would Maeve contact you?” Giulia was asking Montrell.
He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I was expecting it. The O’Connells want to do business with the Di Salvos.” Vespa cussed herself for forgetting that snippet from the meetings; her nausea lurched at the way Montrell eyed the backdoor. “Maybe I should sneak away now,” he was saying, “before—”
Vespa shoved into the kitchen. “Absolutely not!” Memories were already swamping her, ones of every time she’d been too late to turn the woman’s attention onto herself.
Montrell’s hand lifted to try to reassure her, as if she had been the one most hurt by the woman. “Ves—”
“Your fucking mother.” She buffed her arms, trying to stop the tingling of a phantom touch there. “No wonder ants were crawling all over my skin. There’s no way. No fucking way you go to see her without me watching your back.”
Beatrice cleared her throat delicately from where she’d slipped into the kitchen without Vespa even noticing. Montrell’s wife flicked her gaze from one of them to another, her brow creased. “The O’Connells called? Do you know what they want yet?”
“My mother wouldn’t say over the phone,” Montrell admitted.
Of course she fucking wouldn’t say. She was trying to reel him in again, to get her hands on her favorite toy to break. “Then just don’t go,” Vespa muttered. “That bitch can rot.”
Her friend looked at her with that desperate little boy expression that scraped at her heart.
“I agree with Vespa,” Beatrice said.
“You don’t—” Vespa had expected her to side with Montrell, so it took a moment for her words to sink in. “Wait, you’re taking my side?”
Beatrice’s arms were crossed, and she looked worried. Vespa realized Montrell had talked to Beatrice about his mother. That surprised her, though it shouldn’t have. They really did love each other. Montrell never talked about the past with Vespa. There was a silent agreement between them, since they could never agree on what the best outcome would have been.
Vespa wanted to kill Montrell’s mother with her bare hands so she could watch the life squeeze out of her.
Her mind became numb as she listened to Beatrice trying to put herself in place of Montrell for the meeting with his mother. Vespa knew better than to expect Montrell to go for that.
“I’ll take Vespa with me if you’re concerned it’s a trap,” Beatrice said
That either of them had considered leaving her behind at all made Vespa’s nausea worse. “I’m fucking going, all right.”
Montrell shook his head, though it was becoming clear it wouldn’t do him any good. “You’re the last person who should be around my mother.”
“Because I’m willing to kill her,” she said. Not just willing, but eager. Her lips spread, though her smile wasn’t a nice one.
“That’s not a selling point. She’s my mother, Ves,” Montrell reminded her, like she could forget. “Maybe not much of one, but I don’t want her dead.”
