Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
“Crazy good,” he corrected. “I said crazy good.”
“I do okay,” Frankie said about herself. Never too prideful, his daughter. Only if she had to make a point. “Do you wanna kick a ball around? I can put some pylon cones up for a makeshift net. I mean, I have a big net in the backyard but...”
Her voice trailed off. Salvatore bit his inner cheek, knowing why.
“Well, he’s clearly informed her of your new rules,” Carina intoned seriously.
“Before I even could,” Salvatore replied, grumbling.
“I mean, she wouldn’t talk to you, so...”
Like he needed the reminder.
“And she would need to know he’s not allowed past the driveway at the moment,” Carina added as if Salvatore required the information.
He fully believed, because Nico showed back up at the estate with his little sister, that the only reason Frankie had yet to leave for her penthouse as she’d promised was down in the courtyard. She packed up her bedroom, other than a few things she planned to leave behind, and loaded her vehicle with the items to take.
Yet, she hadn’t left. Now, he knew why. They couldn’t play soccer at the penthouse.
He turned to check the time on the clock. It neared seven-thirty in the evening, and Nico had brought her home edging on two. He had dinner with his father, came out of it relatively unscathed, and made it back to the Gallo estate with his little sister in tow.
“I guess his dinner with Giorgio went well,” Salvatore said aloud.
“You could go down and ask him about it.”
“I don’t think that’s a great idea.”
“Why not?”
“Because I told him to keep my daughter as far away from his father as possible, and then he shows up five hours later with his little sister,” Salvatore said, sighing after it all. “How do you think that’ll play with Giorgio when Carmen goes back talking about Frankie, and soccer, and her brother. It’s like feeding live mice to caged snakes, for fuck’s sake.”
“Sal.”
He sighed even louder.
“Sal.”
He didn’t look at Carina anymore, instead going back to the scene below. Now, Frankie had found those big orange cones from the garage, and three soccer balls. She carried two and kicked a third all the way to the two waiting across the courtyard. Nico helped Carmen get the cones set up as Frankie arrived with the balls.
“Nico plays goalie,” Frankie said.
“Hey, that’s unfair.”
“You’re not a kicker, and she’s gotta practice.”
“Go easy on me,” Nico muttered back, shedding his staple black hoodie.
“Oh, we’ll be so easy. Don’t worry.”
“Lies,” Nico threw back. “All lies.”
Even the little one laughed at that.
It also didn’t escape his notice how to the two spoke to one another while a child remained nearby. No babe or obvious flirting that suggested they were more than friends. Nico had yet to hug Frankie. A feat, considering he couldn’t keep his hands off her on any other day of the week.
And the swearing. That was another thing. He’d yet to hear a single cuss.
“Maybe they should have Carmen between them every time they’re together,” he said to himself.
Carina scoffed, and her fingernails bit into the side of his jaw to turn his face so she could properly look at him again. “Do you hear yourself? You just went on about how him bringing Carmen here would practically bring Giorgio to our doorstep, Sal. I don’t think you know how you feel right now.”
Oh, no. He did. “Pissed,” he said.
Carina rolled her eyes. “Because she did stupid things with him? Because she won’t speak to you? Because, what? What else?”
All of that, and maybe more.
“Terrified,” he admitted, then.
Carina’s shoulders dropped. His hand found her stomach again, willing the baby growing and thriving there to give him some sense of comfort he couldn’t find on his own. All it really reminded him about, unfortunately, was just how much he now had to lose.
“I’ve felt like a dead man walking for so many years I forgot what it was like to truly live,” he confessed.
“Hey,” Carina whispered.
Salvatore couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t look away from his daughter; couldn’t take his hand off his unborn child. If he did, they might both be gone. That’s how it felt.
“Hey,” Carina told him, sharper the second time with fingernails hurting him that time to bring him back as she said, “tell me what you don’t want to say, Sal. Tell me.”
So, he did. He let it all out. If he kept it in, it might kill him long before Giorgio ever got the opportunity.
“He made me with a gun to my head and blood on my hands, Carina.” His words trembled but his body stayed stone. Locking up into a place and time he could barely make sense of all those many, many years later. “My father’s blood. It might as well have been. It took half of his to make mine. I signed and sealed his execution because what the fuck was I going to do?”