Long Live the King (An Italian Mafia Romance Duet #2) by Ws Greer

it approaches my home, and I feel a weight on top of me.
    It’s been a rough couple of days, definitely the stressful of my tenure as boss of the Giordano family, and I feel like I may have taken the good days for granted. I may have let them go by without fully appreciating them, without cherishing them enough, because what I feel now makes me yearn for the good days. There was a part of me that hoped we could transcend the older generations of gangsters. I was hoping we could avoid the backstabbing and power grabbing that has always plagued Our Thing, but the past couple of days have made me second-guess all of it. I should’ve known better. This is La Cosa Nostra. You can’t trust anybody.
    The doors open and I find Alannah sitting in the living room on the couch reading a book—a novel called The Secrets That We Keep , by Isabel Lucero, and I can’t help but laugh at the irony of the title as I sit down next to her.
    She looks beautiful as always, wearing a long t-shirt that goes all the way down to her knees, and some sexy little shorts that are basically underwear. Her brown hair is tied in a ponytail and her supple lips call out to me, so I don’t resist the urge to distract her from her book with a soft kiss.
    “Welcome home,” she says after the kiss. “I haven’t heard from you in a while. How’d it go with Tommy?”
    I let out a frustrated sigh as I lean back on the couch. “The conversation with Tommy went as expected, but before I could drive away, I got a call from Frankie, informing me that Jimmy’s crew found the truck with all of the money still inside. That’s why I’m so late coming home. I had to go back to the Lumiere and talk to them about it.”
    Sensing my predicament, Alannah puts the book down on the wood coffee table and turns to face me with one leg up on the couch.
    “Wait,” she begins, frowning. “Jimmy’s crew found the truck?”
    “Yeah.”
    “But Jimmy’s crew lost the truck.”
    “Yeah.”
    “And all the money was still inside?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “And this happens on the night you’re giving Tommy the contract to kill Jimmy?”
    “That’s right,” I whisper behind another exhausted exhale. “Nothing suspicious about that at all, right?”
    Alannah doesn’t answer. She takes a second to think about all the information before speaking again.
    “Wow, quite the story,” she says, looking me in the eye so I can see the shock in hers.
    “Yeah, I’ll say.”
    “So, what now?”
    “I have them taking the truck back tonight, so that’s step one. Once that’s done, I’ll put all my effort into finding out who took it to begin with, and when I find out, it’s over for them, whether they’re made or not. I’m tired of playing games. I don’t even give a fuck if the Commission approves it. I won’t let shit like this slide.”
    “Who do you think took it?” she asks, her eyes boring into mine.
    “I think it was Jimmy,” I admit. “I just don’t know why he’d take it and then give it back.”
    “Maybe he thought he could get away with it, then realized he’d end up dead if he didn’t back track. If I had to guess, I’d say he took it on impulse, then his brain kicked in and realized how dumb and dangerous it was, so he decided to give it back.”
    “He’d have to be a complete idiot to think he could do that and get away with it. I’d like to think he knows me better than that.”
    “I don’t know,” Alannah replies. “But you look stressed out, babe.”
    “Nah, I ain’t stressed out, I just wanna show these motherfuckers you can’t get away with shit like this. I don’t know what the Commission is gonna wanna do after this, but I wanna make an example out of him.”
    “Come here,” Alannah says as she places her hand on the back of my neck and pulls me forward, forcing me to lay on my back with my head in her lap. She looks down on me, rubbing the top of my head, staring into my eyes, and I feel like the tension in my body is instantly