Page 8 of His Wicked Wants (West Coast Mobsters #6)
CHAPTER 7
GAbrIEL
“What an unexpected pleasure,” Nero says softly. He takes a few steps toward me, gaze traveling over me to take in my dirty jeans, the earth-stained work shirt, and my hands encased in gardening gloves of the same brand—though not color—that his buddy just bought.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, taking a few steps forward of my own. I want to draw him away from the counter. Yvonne looks like she’s about to lose it, and I don’t know what Nero Andretti’s purpose was in coming in here.
But it can’t be good.
“I might ask the same question.” Nero smiles at me, and I want to sink my dirty gloved fist into those perfect teeth. “All this time telling me you weren’t a gardener, and yet—” He gestures at me with mock concern. “Do the Castellani brothers pay so little for your talents that you need a second job?”
“I volunteer here in my time off,” I tell him coldly. “To give back to the community.” A concept he wouldn’t understand. Nero Andretti’s life purpose is to suck others dry.
“That’s right,” Yvonne pipes up. “We have a whole range of, uh, social programs that are free to attend. Although…” She looks Nero up and down again, taking in his impeccably tailored suit. “You don’t look like the gardening type.”
“He’s not. And he’s leaving.”
Nero and I haven’t taken our eyes off of each other. And I think there will be more back and forth, more arguing, maybe I’ll have to threaten to call someone at Redwood?—
But then he just shrugs, though he keeps his gaze on me. “As you say, you have insurance. You don’t need ours. And my friend has a gift for his wife, so we’ll be on our way.” Nero flicks his head at the man with him, who heads speedily for the door like a well-trained dog. “Good evening, Gabriel.” He turns to Yvonne at last. “Good evening, bella signorina . It was lovely to meet you.”
Yvonne actually dimples back at him, even though she’s hopelessly enamored of her current girlfriend. “Have a good night!” she chirps.
At the door, Nero pauses, looks back at me, and nods. But his eyes have a dark message.
This isn’t over.
“Who was he ?” Yvonne says, sprawling all over the counter in a fainting parody and disturbing a stack of precariously-balanced flyers. “And how come he looked at you like he wanted to completely devour you?”
“Same answer to both,” I tell her, moving to re-stack the flyers. “He’s a predator. And you were about to get shaken down for protection money, dumbass—couldn’t you tell?”
Her eyes go round. “Oh. Ohhh . Is that what he meant by ‘insurance’?” She grins. “Maybe my dumbassery convinced him I wasn’t worth sending in the heavy he brought with him.”
“Or maybe he’ll come back when I’m not here,” I snap, and she looks quelled. “If he does, you call me. Immediately. And for God’s sake, learn to lock the damn door when you’re doing illegal shit.”
Yvonne tilts her head to one side and watches me march over to the door to lock it myself. “Sir, yes, sir,” she barks. “But honestly, Gabe, I don’t think he noticed anything. It would’ve just looked like a bunch of plants to him. It is just a bunch of plants.”
“It wasn’t the plants giving it away, it was you . You broke out in a cold sweat the second he walked in the door.”
“I thought they were, you know—” She drops her voice to a dramatic whisper. “— the Fuzz .” She bites her lip. “You really think he’ll be back?”
I think Nero Andretti has a desire to make me sweat, too, and if he had any idea that what we were doing here wasn’t on the up-and-up, he’d exploit that knowledge. “He has a job to do. But I can swing things so GreenSpace is, uh. Off his radar.” I’m pretty sure I can, anyway. Julian Castellani always likes to tell me he can do me any favor I name. I haven’t taken him up on that yet, because I know no favor comes for free when you’re dealing with the Family. But for Yvonne and for GreenSpace, I’ll pay that price.
Yvonne is still looking at the now-locked door. “You have to admit,” she says, “he clearly had a thing for you. Maybe he’s stalking you,” she gasps, “like in that romance I just read.” Yvonne is a big romance reader, which has led to her trying to set me up a few times in attempts to bring those romance novels to life, since she’s so settled with her girlfriend. “Although I guess then he wouldn’t vamoose as soon as you showed up,” she goes on thoughtfully. She looks almost disappointed.
“Forget about that asshole. Show me what you got.” I gesture at the plants on the countertop, and Yvonne, blessedly, goes back into work mode.
“Okay, we’ve got some yarrow,” she says, fingers trailing over delicate white flowers, “some native sage, and I thought maybe some coral bells?”
“Yarrow and sage will work, but I think the soil’s too acidic for coral bells. But we could try, and switch them out later if we need to.”
“No point killing something just to test a theory,” she says, the beads in her braids clicking as she shakes her head. “We’ll leave it out. Help me load up the van.”
I make her wait while I check the delivery entry, just to make sure Nero and his friend aren’t hanging around there, waiting to see what we’re doing. But we seem to have gotten away with it. There’s no one in the delivery zone, and when I check the street, there are no suspicious cars.
“What time are we meeting?” I ask after the van is loaded.
“Two should be fine.”
“We gonna get it done in that time?” The sun is rising too early these days—not to mention the people of LA.
“That’s the aim. Should be a quick in-and-out. See you there?”
“You will.”
For now, I head back to Redwood Manor via an Uber and get the driver to drop me at the main gate. The guards nod at me. “You want me to call down a cart?” one asks. There are a few golf carts used to transport people from the gate to their destination on the grounds if they don’t arrive by private transport, because the grounds are so extensive, and taxis and Ubers aren’t allowed past the gates. But I shake my head.
“I like the walk.” The moon is waxing, giving a decent amount of light, but I know the way by heart these days anyway. And I do like to walk the grounds at night. The eerie moonlight makes the estate seem like an otherworldly place. Once or twice during the full moon on my night walks I’ve run into Julian Castellani—though more often, I think he’s slipped away before I get close, based on a faint rustle of leaves and the feeling of eyes on me.
Julian’s reasons for wandering the grounds at night are different than mine, I assume, but I still feel a kinship there.
I walk up part of the winding, mile-long driveway before cutting across lawns and through various gardens to get to my cottage. I’m still on edge from Nero’s visit to GreenSpace, and the solitary walk has me thinking it over again. Because what if Yvonne was right? What if he’s stalking me? He seemed surprised to see me, though he covered it quickly. But still…that could have been a ruse. The idea that he just happened to show up where I was working is too coincidental, surely?
Because if not, it suggests fate. And I definitely don’t want to think I’m fated to run into Nero Andretti everywhere I turn. And unfortunately for me, despite the size of Redwood’s grounds, Nero’s guesthouse is somehow the closest building to my own cottage. I can actually see the roof of it from my side windows.
I get myself so worked up that it’s anticlimactic to arrive at my home and find no charmingly sinister Italian waiting for me in the shadows. I should feel relieved, but it only makes me wonder more. My employers do know about my volunteer work at GreenSpace, so if Nero tries to go behind my back again about that, he’ll hit a dead end.
Still, life would be much easier if he had no idea about my connection to GreenSpace at all.
I hit the shower and have a quick supper of stuff-on-toast, a favorite from my childhood. My British nanny used to make it for me, adding a can of heated whatever to toasted and thickly buttered white bread. And though Chef Laurent is as talented as our chef was back in those days, and always leaves something in the fridge up at the Manor for late-night snacks, I prefer a simple supper now, just as I did then.
I carefully set my alarm for one a.m. before settling on the couch for a nap. I want to make sure I’m well-rested for tonight’s job. God knows it’ll be tight. But we’ll get it done—as long as we have no further unwelcome interruptions. And as I lie there, I try not to think about dark, searching eyes that see too much. He couldn’t know, I reassure myself. Would never even guess, not in a million years.
I hope I’m right. Because we’re used to dodging the law, but the Mob is another matter entirely.