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)
“Okay.”
Salvatore cleared his throat and checked the rearview mirror, seeing nothing on the stretch of road. Twenty more minutes, and they’d be home. “Now, the rest. I know you didn’t want a party for your eighteenth or graduation, but we don’t really have a choice. People, important people, expect that there’ll be one. They’re waiting for invitations.”
She pulled a face. “For real?”
“Listen, I’m making this as painless as possible for the both of us. One party for both things closer to graduation, and Carina is handling all of it. Do you know what that means?”
Frankie’s lip curled. “That she’ll be bothering me constantly for things I don’t care about?”
“That’ll be hard to do while she’s in the city for the next month getting things ready.”
“What?” Her head swung his way, making him laugh hard. “You’re serious?”
“Yeah. I mean, she’ll be back at the estate occasionally for a few things, but even she would rather stay at our suite in The Plaza. And she likes the planning stuff, so can we just let her do it?”
Frankie dismissively hummed under her breath. “She likes showing off, but sure, I don’t care.”
“The other thing...”
“Yeah?”
“You turn eighteen in a month. You still have a month to go after that for graduation. It would be hard, but doable, for you to stay at the new penthouse after your birthday if you want to get a start on freedom earlier than you planned.”
“No, I’ll stay with you until graduation. That’s our deal, right?”
“Yeah, that’s the deal, Sunshine. You know I’m going to show up there every chance I get, right? Point out what’s clean and what’s not.”
“Maybe I should take Sissy with me, then you won’t have anything to complain about.”
“Maybe you should learn to clean a fucking toilet because I pay her salary,” Salvatore joked.
“I can clean things.”
“When? How? At what point ever in your life have you done such a thing?”
Before his daughter could reply, a movement in the rearview mirror caught Salvatore’s eye. He barely caught a proper view of the large vehicle coming right up on his bumper, so close that he could make out the shadowy shape behind lightly tinted glass, but he recognized that lifted, blacked-out Jeep. He knew it well enough to already be trying to order through Bluetooth for his car’s system to call Giorgio and deal with his biggest problem.
The vehicle roared behind them and gained Frankie’s notice at the same time the driver swerved around them. It just happened to be that a car was coming in the opposite direction while the Jeep came alongside them, close enough to swap paint.
“What the fuck?” Salvatore hissed.
He hit the brakes but the Jeep’s passenger side on the rear clipped the front of the Mercedes. It took Salvatore too long to realize he couldn’t correct the spin, and he only understood their vehicle had hit the curb and started rolling when Francesca’s screams echoed all around him.
He had two thoughts while glass shattered, metal crunched, and just before he blacked out.
Why had Frankie stopped screaming?
And why the hell did Marco Russo just drive them off the fucking road?
5. — unsafe people...
Staten Island, New York
Frankie, SIU Hospital
“Your father is fine, so tone down the attitude and get some rest,” Sissy told her for the fifth time in the last hour.
“I want to see him.”
“It’s after nine. The ICU is not letting you walk these halls. Some people are actually sick here, Frankie. Sick and dying.”
She tried hard not to glare and failed. “I didn’t ask to be put in the ICU, okay.”
“Your father has connections. As for this hospital? There are people here who know those connections very well and must respond as expected, or they pay a price.”
That stopped further argument from Frankie, if only because it made her think.
Sissy took the quiet opportunity between them to tut around her ward with gentle hands that roved the surface scrapes on the underside of Frankie’s jaw and the stiches along the upper line of her eyebrow.
“Is that why when I told the EMT my name, he asked someone to make a call?”
She didn’t get an answer.
The moments after the crash were still somewhat fuzzy. She thought Larkin had been there, but the adrenaline kick from it all caught up to her. Did he show up right after it happened? Someone always tailed them.
“Belle fille. Je t’aime. Cela vous tuerait de le perdre. But that would undo us all, too.” The soft whispers of French turned to English at the same time Sissy knelt beside the hospital bed to make Frankie meet her eyes. A sternness stared back, but the fact she bent down put the two on level ground. She softened a bit, trying to let the attitude bleed away. “He’s got a minor concussion and a few scrapes and bruises. The worst was the glass they pulled out of his hand. He’s walked, talked, and they are going to let him eat in the morning. You can have breakfast with him before they discharge you.”