Page 207

“Just spit it out.”

“Marriage.”

I stared at him like he’d grown two heads. Maybe a third.

He continued to speak carefully.

“Ventresca has a daughter.”

I gave him nothing.

“She’s… difficult.”

A dry laugh escaped me.

“Who isn’t? We can’t even get the old man to a meeting, and you’re telling me a girl is difficult?”

He reached into his briefcase and took out another file. He slid it across the table. I opened it.

There was a photo of a young female with dark hair and sharp eyes. It looked like a mug shot photo.

Fuck me, it was!

Behind the photo was a stack of newspaper clippings. From the headlines, I could see they were all about the same woman. Various stories about scandals and bar fights. She was once charged with a nightclub assault. How she got off that charge, I didn’t know.

Ayla Ventresca was a reckless little princess.

She was twenty-six, unmarried, and by all accounts, infamous.

I shut the file.

“No.”

Matteo leaned against the table.

“It would solve The Narrows issue.”

“It would create ten more.”

“You need the land, Zeno.”

There it was again. That damned word. Need.

“I’ll get it some other way,” I assured him, although I felt like I needed to reassure myself more.

“There is no other way, Zeno. You’ve exhausted all avenues.”

Hell no, there had to be another way. I preferred clean arrangements. Women in my bed, not at my table.

Nico, who we’d all but forgotten about, folded his arms and cleared his throat, as though testing the waters.

“I heard she stabbed a senator’s son.”

I looked at him.

“What the fuck?”

“He touched her.”