Page 61 of Humility

“Can I tell you how annoying you are instead?” I growled at him.

“You can if it makes you feel better. I couldn’t care less,” Dario said.

“Fine. I go along with it because I’m a carpetmaker’s son, not an underboss or anyone with power or authority within the mafia families.”

“Very good. We will go back home, and when we do, you are just a soldier like me. So go ahead, propose, and run off with her if she agrees. Do whatever you think you must, but at the end of the day, either Ciro is marrying her, or Angelo is, take your pick.” Dario opened the door and got out but leaned in and looked at me. “Personally, I like to use the little bit of influence I have to point Angelo in a direction that doesn’t cause Jasmine distress. Besides, this will blow up in his face, and he will have to grovel.” Dario smirked. “I’m dying to see that happen. She’s going to kick his ass.” Dario closed the door, and I smiled. He had a point.

Hopping out, I followed him to the house. We could hear Angelo on the phone and walked down the hall to his office.

“Don’t tell me to fucking calm down. I’m going to gut the fucker, pour salt in the wound and lower him an inch at a time into a tank of piranhas so they can eat him slowly. He’s dead,” Angelo yelled as we walked through the door.

He slammed his cell down and, in the next breath, pointed his gun at me. “Oh fuck man, what did I do?”

“Did you have a nice day,” he asked, his hand never wavering.

I glanced at Dario as he casually leaned against the fireplace mantle, and something in his eyes told me to say no.

“Um…no?”

“Is that what I’m going to find if I look at the video footage of Jasmine’s house?”

I cleared my throat. “Probably not….”

Angelo moved his arm slightly and fired. I ducked as the bullet whizzed past and shattered a statue on the table behind me. I looked at the mess and then back at Angelo.

“Have you lost your fucking mind?”

“Don’t whine. I didn’t shoot you.” He sat his phone down as Dario chuckled.

“The two of you are fucked up,” I said, pissed off.

“Agreed, but we have an issue. Kristof found the snake who set up Roberto. and sent us on a two-and-a-half-year wild fucking goose chase.” With a yell, Angelo pushed everything off his desk. “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to string him up by his cock until the weight of his body pulls it off.”

“Creative. Mind sharing who it is?” Dario drawled.

“Fucking Jacopo.”

“What?” Dario snarled, and his entire demeanor changed as his furious energy filled the room. “If you don’t kill him, I will. You know what it has to be about, right?”

“Jasmine,” they said together.

I hated being out of the loop. I knew the name, but no more than that. I wasn’t from the same part of Italy as Angelo and Dario, and only met them for the first time in Chicago. I didn’t know all the players in their inner circle, and we were forced to run not long after returning home, so I didn’t have much time to learn all the pertinent family politics. “Can someone fill me in?”

“I’m going to do you one better,” Angelo said as he walked around his desk. “Learn as much as you can about him. I want to know everything Jacopo has done over the last ten years, right down to where he buys his socks, what color he likes, and who he’s been fucking. I want it all. That piece of shit is mine.”

Angelo marched for the open office door. “We leave in thirty to visit Jasmine. Be ready to go.”

“You still want to try and talk him out of doing this?” Dario laughed as he walked out of the room.

“Prick!” All I got in return was more laughter. “Hey, what is Jacopo’s last name?” No one answered and I grumbled as I flopped down at my laptop. “Never mind I’ll figure it out myself.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

JASMINE

I spent a good fifteen minutes arguing with myself over whether I should take the Absolem, but in the end, the dirty little angel on my left shoulder won out. If it was a one-off dream, so be it, but if it wasn’t….

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” I mumbled as I downed the second spoonful. “It could be laced with something.” Even as I said the words out loud, it didn’t dull the urge to see if it would happen again.