Page 51 of Bene

Always nearby.

She couldn’t have him ruining her plans.

“Why?” he asked.

Vanna quickly turned off the screen of her phone and dropped it into her bag as she came up to her door, keys in hand. God knew he didn’t need to see either of her chat windows. That wouldn’t be good for her end goal. “To see a new restaurant one of the previous graduates opened up last year—she’s looking for someone to apprentice under her, and my name was suggested.”

All lies.

She pulled it out of nowhere.

Thing was, Mario had never been very interested in her schooling, the fact she wanted to be a chef, and he didn’t have the first idea what it would take for her to become one. Like the fact that she would need to apprentice under someone for a set number of hours before she could get her seal.

As she turned to slide the lock into her deadbolt, Mario slipped in beside her. His hand landed to the door right by her head, making Vanna still as she tilted her head to the side, staring at him. He looked back, a smile curving his lips, but a fire burning in his eyes.

It meant nothing good.

“What?” she asked.

“You didn’t think to tell me you were going out of town for the weekend? You just dropped off the radar, Vanna. Hell, you didn’t even stay long enough to say goodbye to my parents on Friday night. I had to apologize to my parents for you. Do you even realize how fucking stupid that makes me look to them?”

Oh.

Was that the problem?

He needed to make things good with Senior, and his ma?

Vanna wished she cared.

“Didn’t think I had to mention it,” she replied.

Hoping that would be the final say on the matter, although she knew that was a pipe dream in and of itself, she unlocked the door, and reached for the knob to twist it open. Mario’s hand dropped to hers, his fingers tightening almost painfully.

It stopped her from opening the door.

“You didn’t think to mention it to me?”

That nice smile of his was gone.

Mario wasn’t even pretending now.

This man could ruin everything for her—beyond just the Guzzi family, and her plans … he could screw her entire life with a single conversation. All he would need to do was go to his father, say Vanna had stepped out of line, made the clan look bad, and best-case scenario would be that she was put under lockdown by the boss. Given a chaperone to follow her everywhere, to the point she probably wouldn’t even be able to piss alone.

Worst-case scenario?

His patience for this game he thought he’d been playing with Vanna for years suddenly ran out, and instead of locking her down … he just ended her. It was the Camorra way, after all, but especially for women who didn’t stay in line.

God knew Vanna walked a thin line for a long time in this life.

She searched her brain for something—anything—to focus Mario’s attention elsewhere, so that he dropped this line of conversation. If he started looking too deep into her business—more than the asshole already did—her plans would come crashing down before she could properly get started on making them work.

“Do you want to go out for dinner?” she asked.

He blinked. “What?”

“Dinner. You and me. Right now, because I’m hungry and I don’t feel like cooking.”

“We’re talking about something right now.”