Page 18 of His Wicked Wants (West Coast Mobsters #6)

CHAPTER 16

GAbrIEL

I make it around the first corner of the hedge maze before I have to stop and breathe for a moment. And when I move again, hurrying back to the center, I can feel my heart beating much faster than it should be.

“That was a close call,” Julian Castellani says as I arrive back in the middle, his voice as cold and high as always. He’s lounging across one of the seats in the gazebo, glacial eyes fixed on a few butterflies still fluttering around here and there. “If the man is harassing you?—”

“No,” I say quickly. “I think he’s just, you know…”

“Working any angle he can?” Julian suggests.

I give a half smile and look away. “I have no idea what you mean, Mr. Castellani. But I think it goes to show that we really should close the maze off while we are undertaking these?—”

“No.” Julian’s response is immediate and flat. “I’ve already told you a thousand times, it will only draw more attention if we close off the maze entirely. Better to work openly. No one would think twice about you coming in and out of here, but as soon as we put up a sign, it will draw the lookie-loos and make my brother ask awkward questions about exactly what kind of renovations are needed. No, Gabriel. We just need to keep Nero occupied. We’re almost done now anyway, so leave it to me. I shall draw Nero’s attention away.”

I’m surprised by the retort that rises up in me, ugly and sharp, at his final sentence. But I can hardly argue with Julian Castellani. “Whatever you say, sir,” I say, and I get back to work.

The day passes on until I’m unfortunate enough to be summoned to the house once more on the arrival of Roxanne Rochford.

Darian has shown her into the grand salon, but I don’t want to get my dirty work boots all over the inside of the house. I ask if he can get her to meet me in the mudroom adjoining the kitchen instead.

This does not please Roxanne Rochford. She stomps into the small room with a foul expression on her beautiful face, and folds her arms. “For future reference,” she snaps, “I don’t appreciate being summoned to the servants’ quarters.”

I’m so taken aback by her phrasing that I can’t say anything for a moment, and when I try to explain I didn’t want to keep her too long by removing my boots, she’s not in the mood to hear it. She waves a hand. “I looked over your list of flowers. These are the ones I’ve approved.” She thrusts a crumpled piece of paper at me. “Where’s Nero? I need to talk to him.”

Only then does it occur to me, based on the shadow cast across the floor just outside the mudroom, that Roxy has a bodyguard with her today.

“He’s not here,” I tell her stiffly, and then a thought strikes me. Nero is always so eager to annoy me. Why not annoy him right back? “But we’re due to have a meeting tomorrow about the wedding preparations. Perhaps you could join us for lunch at one?”

“Fine,” she sniffs, tossing her hair. And then she turns and leaves, and while I’m relieved that she’s gone for now, my heart sinks as I think of the time I’ll have to spend with her tomorrow.

It’s not just that she’s so rude. I’ve dealt with plenty of unpleasant characters in my time, but this is something more. I chase down the feeling, and surprise myself when I realize what it is. It’s the thought of having her there at lunch, when it could have been just Nero and me. Just the two of us… But I only have myself to blame for that, and anyway, it was the smart play.

It’s just that—well, he surprised me the other night, the night of the GreenSpace mission. I fully expected him to march me back to his car and bodily shove me in it before driving me home and reporting me to the Castellanis. And when I asked him to help, I really didn’t think he would.

But he did.

Not only did he help, he saved the whole job. Without his labor, Yvonne and I would have been screwed. The cops had already started taking notice of our guerrilla gardening around that neighborhood, and there have been official notifications published around the place that urban landscaping, while it might seem innocuous, is still illegal since it uses council property without permission.

The other reason I wasn’t willing to wait around for Nero Andretti tonight was because I need to get over to GreenSpace to help out again. It’s not a guerrilla gardening job tonight, though; it’s the volunteer work that I do with the community there. Once a month, Yvonne hosts an open night of demonstrations and talks for anyone who wants to attend, and over time it’s turned into a popular event. Tonight, I’m supposed to be talking about planting and tending tomatoes.

So I brush aside all thoughts of Nero and go about my day.

But when I get to GreenSpace early in the evening to help set up, Yvonne looks so scared and upset, even though the shop is already filling up with people for the open night, that I stop dead.

“What’s wrong?” I ask her.

“I thought you were going to talk to your Italian buddies about laying off of GreenSpace,” she mutters back, and then breaks off to smile brightly at two kids asking if we have a Venus flytrap. Once she’s satisfactorily answered their curiosity and they’re gone, I pull her aside.

“What do you mean, my Italian buddies ?”

“You know,” she says, dropping her voice to a whisper. “That guy Nero. I thought he was going to lay off.”

It takes a moment to click what she means. “Are you telling me someone came in here demanding protection money?” I ask in horror.

“I think that’s what they were working up to. They asked me if I knew who the Castellanis were, and I said yes, of course. And then they told me I should be careful, that I should watch who I’m associating with. That there was a fire last night at the Chinese restaurant, and it could happen anywhere in this neighborhood. And there was a fire, Gabriel—I went around to check on Mr. Chang, and he was really upset, even though it didn’t do all that much damage.”

Arson? That doesn’t sound like Castellanis. “And you’re telling me Nero himself came in here threatening you?”

“Not him personally, but there were two of them, and they were dressed in suits like your boyfriend?—”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“—and they were definitely heavies, if you know what I mean. Like in the movies.”

I do know what she means. “You need to tell me exactly what they said.”

“I just did,” she says, giving me an exasperated look. “Gabe, I understand how things work, and if I have to pay to keep them off my back, I will. I was just kind of hoping that having friends in high places, like you , a rich white guy, would?—”

“I’m not in any high places,” I tell her, “and I’m definitely not rich. But if there’s one thing I can do, it’s get heavies off your back. Let’s just get tonight over with, and I’ll deal with this tomorrow. There must be some kind of mistake.”

And yet, I can’t help wondering if there’s no mistake at all. Nero Andretti seems determined to make my life difficult, and threatening GreenSpace is one way to do that.

But I don’t want to deploy a nuclear weapon to take care of a mosquito. That is, I don’t want to tell Julian Castellani, have him overreact, and make things worse.

No. I’ll speak to Nero myself.