Page 27 of Sins of the Orchid

I’ll turn eighteen this weekend, but I still wouldn’t be old enough for him, yet my heart couldn’t care less. It was fixated on him and only him. There was no rhyme or reason to my infatuation over him. I have seen plenty of other handsome boys, but none of them mattered to me.

Maybe I needed to meet more boys in order to forget Santino. I didn’t hang out with anyone except my brothers and the Russo boys. Scratch that, the Russo boy, namely Adriano. Santi I barely saw, but I was always painfully aware of his presence around the city. Though I suspected he was busy dealing with the same issues as my father and brothers.

Uncle Vincent dropped me off at the front door of the Russo residence and promptly my heart jittered.

“Want me to walk you in?” he offered.

After Elena had purposely given him the wrong times to get me from school and left a window open for anyone to hurt me, he took it upon himself to be extra diligent about my drop-offs and pick-ups. He even went on my extra-curricular trips with me. The latter wasn’t really welcome, but thankfully, the high school years were coming to an end in just a few weeks.

“No, that’s okay,” I told him, smiling.

“One of these days, these Russo boys will break your heart,” he muttered. He didn’t like me hanging out with them. He marveled at the fact that Dad allowed it. Of course, any other boy would have been dead, but he allowed me freedom to hang out with Adriano. “And then I’ll have to break their knee caps.”

I chuckled at the image that generated in my mind. He could never succeed in winning against Santi. He was ruthless and strong, and nobody could touch him. Adriano was strong too, and even if he succeeded with Adriano, Santi would go after Vincent.

“I won’t let them break my heart,” I promised with a grin. I pressed a kiss to his cheek, then reached for my door handle. “And I like you alive better than dead. So please don’t even try to break their knee caps, then I don’t have to worry about Santi coming for your poor knees.”

He grinned and pressed his hand over his heart. “Ahhh, she likes me.”

I pulled on the door handle. “I have always liked you,” I said. “Don’t wait for my text. Adriano will bring me home.”

“I figured, but if something changes, you call me.”

“You have a hot date tonight,” I teased him. “Enjoy it.”

Uncle Vincent was a famous bachelor. He looked good, at least ten years younger than his fifty-six, with streaks of silver through his black hair. Women in their mid-twenties chased him. He was always put together, wearing a wrinkle-free suit and behaved like a gentleman, but he never hesitated to carry out Dad’s orders. All the men in this world were brutal, some more than others. Considering what I witnessed when I was thirteen, you’d think knowledge of their brutality would terrify me. But it made me feel safer. I was certain the more brutality these men had, the safer I would be. As long as I didn’t see them pull out guns on each other.

Did it make sense? No, it absolutely didn’t.

I shut the car door and waved him off, then turned around to face the narrow building in front of me. While we lived in a quiet, spacious community on Long Island, the Russo family lived in the middle of Brooklyn. When I first met them, they lived in the Bronx. Well, Adriano and Mr. Russo did. Santi lived in Brooklyn. He bought himself a house his last year of college, and a few years ago, he bought his papà a place in Brooklyn too. I guess it was too much driving back and forth between neighborhoods when they worked so closely together. I heard while Mrs. Russo was alive, they lived on Long Island too, but I didn’t know where. Adriano told me she was killed on the street by a rival family. Santi and his father eliminated that family from existence. He didn’t elaborate further, and I didn’t want to ask, the wounds of a dead mother still fresh for me.

Though it made me want to be like Santi and hunt down all those men that killed Mom and George.

One day. Very soon.

DeAngelo said I was ready. The years of training had paid off. We had started to gather information about Venezuela, working off my memories.

The door opened even before I rang the bell, and Maria, Mr. Russo’s housekeeper, held the door for me.

“Amore.” She beamed. “So good to see you. Where were you last week? I needed our womanly interaction.”

I laughed at her calling me a woman. Santi certainly didn’t see me as one. He didn’t even see me as a girl. I was convinced he thought of me as his younger sibling, or something close to it.

“I was at Grandma’s.” She rolled her eyes as she nudged me inside. “Ah, Amore. You’ll be a wonderful heiress one day. A perfect Regalè.”

“Don’t let Grandma hear you,” I retorted. “It will make her head even bigger.”

We both laughed as we walked into the living room. Mr. Russo and Adriano were both there, the former reading the paper and the latter on his iPhone. Mr. Russo and my father were similar in so many ways that I couldn’t understand why they didn’t get along before. I often wondered what made them quarrel, rather than be best friends. They were the same age, went to the same school, had the same interests, and their fathers were members of the Cosa Nostra and ran the mafia of New York together. Together they were stronger.

“Hello, Mr. Russo.” He sat in his rocking chair. He was the only human besides my own father that still read the actual paper.

“Ahhh, Amore.” His dark eyes lit up. “I was wondering when you’d come around again. It’s been a few days. A week to be exact.”

I grinned. “I had to work my free time at Regalè Corp, but I’m back now.”

Adriano came up to me and lifted me off the ground. “And we missed you.”

A giggle escaped me. “Really? You weren’t too busy?”