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)
It didn’t sound like he cared about them, though. Not one bit.
3. — the prodigal problem...
Staten Island, New York
Nico Russo, Gallo Estate
“All right, princess, rise and shine,” rang a deep baritone that woke Nico straight out of a dead sleep. He opened his eyes and promptly squeezed them shut again. Maybe if he ignored the sudden pain in his ass, then it, like its noise, would go away. The clapping didn’t help. “Up and at ‘em. Let’s go.”
Nico groaned through the piercing headache. “The fuck did you just call me?”
“I didn’t stutter. Move.”
“What time is it?”
“You ask too many questions for someone in your position. Think about that a little and get up. Last warning.”
Nico cracked one eye open and seriously considered homicide. It felt early for those types of thoughts, although he didn’t have a clock to tell him so. “What time is it?”
“Seven-thirty. Plenty of time to get you up to the house if you would move.”
“Who rolls their ass out of bed before ten?”
“Most of us,” the bald man replied. “Weren’t you just at university or something? Pretty sure a requirement there is you getting up and going to classes.”
“If that’s what you want to call that shithole down in Florida.” Nico had plenty of other names for the UoM, too. None of them nice. “Only idiots take classes before eleven in the morning. Not even professors want to be there that early.”
“Funny,” Larkin deadpanned. “Next step is an ice bath in bed and trust me when I say, I already have the bucket waiting.”
The guy’s voice droned on while Nico stared at the ceiling of the guest home’s master bedroom and wondered if he could get away with killing the consigliere’s head of security. His old therapist called those thoughts intrusive, but Nico didn’t mind them so much anymore. It wouldn’t feel normal if he didn’t have a constant stream of snarky, internal dialogue telling him how the world would be a better place with one less dumbass in it.
“The boss wants to see you at eight sharp this morning, and you’re not making me look bad again, shithead.”
“Do you give everybody stupid nicknames or am I a special case?”
“You earn it, I’ll use it. It’s a call-it-how-I-see-it type of thing.” Larkin flung the curtains open, and warm light spilled across the bed and pillows. “After what you pulled on me last night, you know you earned it.”
Shithead, he could handle.
Princess? Not so much.
Nico had been called worse on a good day, but disrespect never settled well with him. It had a way of lingering with him until he properly answered back. Those doing the disrespecting felt more inclined to do it again when left unchecked. Being called princess sounded a lot like disrespect first thing in the morning before he had a coffee or taken a proper piss.
“Which boss?” Nico asked after clearing his throat of morning grogginess.
“The only boss I answer to. Now move. I’m serious, enough with the back and forth. I’m not here to work on your conversational skills, and I really don’t care to talk with you at all.”
“Ow,” Nico replied, pouting for the act of it all, “that hurts my feelings.”
Larkin barked out a laugh. “What feelings?”
Well, he had one question answered about Salvatore’s head of security. It made the thoughts of killing him even easier to entertain if only because getting away with it would be minutely simpler given his non-affiliation to the mob.
“So, you’re not a made man,” he said, finally sitting up in bed.
Larkin paused in the doorway; his back turned to Nico. “Did Sal introduce me as a friend of his yesterday evening when you arrived?”
“He wouldn’t tell me anyway,” Nico said of Salvatore Gallo. “I’m not made, either.”
Some of them still followed the rules. Like Sal.
“Look at you, answering your own questions.” The man eyed Nico a moment longer. “And I hope you know that you ain’t gonna make one, what with the way you’re going lately, kid. A Don’s son or not.”
As if people hadn’t said that kind of thing to him for his whole life. That wasn’t even a new insult. Nico wished the comment stung.
“Be dressed and at the front door in fifteen minutes, do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Nico replied blithely, but he didn’t care. Therein lay the difference between the two of them. One would get his ass chewed off when he showed up late and feel some kind of way about it. The other? Didn’t make a wave in his day. “And hey.”
It wasn’t a question. Larkin still turned around like it was. “Yeah?”
The crystal dish from the bedside table smashed into a thousand tiny, glittering pieces from where it landed against the doorframe. Mere inches from Larkin’s bald head. Nico outright smirked as the other man glowered. Glass shards tinkled onto the cream-colored carpet like raindrops on a rooftop.