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“Hai ancora un sapore così delizioso.”

I’m incapable of speech as he curls an arm around my back and guides me toward the Bentley parked a few feet ahead.

Adagio steps in front and pulls the rear door open for us to slide inside. Maurizio moves to the driver’s side to get behind the wheel.

As if the night couldn’t become any more surreal.

I ride in the back of Rafael Calderone’s luxury car through the twinkling Newport streets like we’ve just enjoyed the dinner date he had originally asked me out on.

In some warped way, we sort of have.

Less than two hours later, I lay in the dark of my bedroom and stare out the window, still in disbelief. Jayla was all over me asking a million questions about the shooting at the Newport Plaza. Mom and Dad left a dozen messages begging to know if I was okay (to which I responded in a brief call).

Even Baron and Finkle reached out tonight to know what had happened.

Yet none of it registers.

The only thing I’m able to think about in the final minutes before I drift off to sleep is Rafael Calderone and the night we spent together.

Unexpected and unplanned but enough to chink my armor.

I swore him off the moment he stood me up and then ghosted me like I never existed. But is it time I get over it and give him another chance?

It’s a question I’m still internally debating when my phone pings with a new text message. At first I almost ignore it, assuming it must be another message from Dad fussing over me or Finkle pressing for more insider details.

I’m wrong on both accounts.

It’s an unknown number texting me a piece of information that I’m immediately grateful for.

Next shipment comes in next wednesday 11pm, east newport station

12

RAFAEL

“We got them.Care to see their heads?” Maurizio asks.

They’re the first words he speaks when I answer the phone. A split second later, my phone vibrates in my hand as he sends through the photo describing what he speaks of.

Two severed heads of the men who shot up the Newport Plaza the other night. Their bodies must already be disposed of and fed to the strays on the street.

“Excellent,” I say. “They’ve never looked better. Their employer?”

“As suspected. But associates.”

“Explains the amateur job. I don’t believe they even realized who I was when they started shooting. Otherwise, they may have gone for a kill shot. Just for the notoriety.”

“Will there be retaliation?”

Leave it to Maurizio to be so bloodthirsty. He’s one of two right hands I have working for me. The other being Adagio. But while Adagio serves more as a sounding board and confidant, Maurizio functions as my stone cold assassin I can assign any job to. No matter how bloody and gruesome.

“There will be some,” I answer. “Soon. You’ll be first to know.”

I hang up and pocket my phone.

Adagio has walked into my office clutching the two Campari sodas I sent him off to make. He keeps one for himself and hands me the other.

“Heads?” he asks.