Page 6 of Dirty Pool

This would help with that.

“All right,” Michel said, “just for the summer.”

“Perfetto,” Sal praised, raising a brow to David who was smiling again. “Seems we’ve got a new recruit. What do we teach him first, huh?”

“Ah, I don’t think he’ll need much training. He is a Marcello, after all. It’s in his blood. As long as he’s not stepping on anyone’s toes or working in the wrong places, he’ll be fine.”

Right.

In his blood.

Michel didn’t correct them.

Blood never mattered to him, anyway.

TWO

“Did you check your sugars, lass?”

“My sugars are fine, Da.”

“Gabbie—”

She popped the small sweet chocolate into her mouth, and turned to face her father, Charles, with a grin. “My sugars are fine.”

Aye, she was going to suffer for that little treat later, no doubt. She would have to check her sugars simply because she broke her diet for one itty, bitty piece of chocolate, but it was worth it. The chocolate melted in her mouth, and slid down her throat like it was pure heaven. She didn’t get sugar very much, if at all.

Her dad raised a brow, and fought the urge to smile. “When you act like this, you remind me so much of your mam, lass.”

“Probably more today, huh?”

He nodded once, and reached out to tuck one of her stray red curls behind her ear. “Today more than other feckin’ days.”

Charles moved to stand beside Gabbie, and then turned to watch the rest of the people in his home gathering around the large table to get their plates ready. Every year on this day, they celebrated a woman who was no longer with them. Her mam. Gabbie didn’t remember very much about her mother—Betha Casey passed on when she was still a young girl from an accident on the highway as she was driving home from a dinner with friends.

The absolute love of her father’s life, next to Gabbie, he’d never remarried, and she was his only child. It showed, too. Like this conversation right now.

“No more sweets,” her father grumbled, giving her a look from the side. “I don’t want a call from the hospital because you didn’t manage your—”

“I’m twenty years old. I can take care of my diabetes, Da.”

Charles sighed.

Gabbie shrugged.

This was the same conversation they had more times than she cared to admit over the last few years. She understood, though. Her father’s greatest fear was that he was going to lose her, too. She was the last person he truly loved in the world. It made him feel out of control because he couldn’t manage her disease like he had when she was younger. She was the adult with the say so about her own body, what she did with it, and the things she put inside it. Like sugar.

He had to trust that she was doing what was right, and he simply didn’t feel like she was doing what she needed to. She was used to him hovering, but lately, it just annoyed her more than it probably should.

As a child, she never understood why her father was quick to bark at anyone who dared to offer her something sweet. She’d been born insulin resistant, and while they were able to manage it for the majority of her childhood, as she slipped into her later teenage years, something changed.

Hormones.

Life.

Who feckin’ knew?

She packed on the pounds—almost thirty in her senior year. People heard type two diabetes and automatically assumed someone was unhealthy because nobody developed type two unless they weren’t taking care of themselves, right?