Page 31 of Mafia Billionaire's Surprise Baby

But I can’t let it be more than that.

The rest of the vodka burns in my throat. The pain is good, though.

It reminds me that all good things come at a price. The price of getting drunk off of good vodka? A little burn.

The price of achieving my dreams and leading the Rossi family?

Sal.

* * *

When he comes back downstairs, I’m more than a little buzzed from the vodka. I notice first that he’s wearing the same soft clothes, which look, for all the world, like linen pajamas. They give him the illusion of like… a cult leader. A tame tiger.

The fabric is so thin, however, that I can see tattoos where it stretches across his chest…

And his thighs.

“Good shower?” I ask.

Immediately I want to take it back. First of all, who asks that? Second, it makes me think about how I’ve been thinking about Sal in the shower.

Naked.

So very, very naked.

“We need a plan,” he rumbles. “We need to figure out what happened back there, why it was that meeting, and those who were invited, who were targeted.”

“I mean was it the Russians? Or was it us?”

He shrugs. “That’s what we need to find out.”

I nod. It makes sense.

Now, the bigger question. “What are we going to tell Elio?”

Sal frowns. “What do you mean.”

“He’ll hear about it. He needs to know.”

“Sure,” he agrees. “But aren’t you acting head of the family while he’s doing paternity leave?”

“Yes,” I say automatically. It’s the truth; I am.

“So why does he need to know all the details? Is it enough to know that we’re alive and handling it?”

I freeze. “I think it is,” I say slowly.

He has a point. Elio would handle this with consultation, but he’d handle it on his own.

He would send me to get intel. He’d ask Nico, which I guess is Sal now, to handle some of the muscle.

He wouldn’t report back to either of us what his decision is.

“We should tell him about the meeting. We can tell him about the attack. But I’m not telling him about Marco yet.”

Sal nods. “How can we explain staying in Europe after that?”

“We want to find out who did it. Get to the bottom of it,” I say. “We’re here to find the motherfucker who tried to kill us, Sal. That makes sense to me.”