Episode Three
I ’m supposed to be retired. Why the fuck am I still getting calls from everyone?
I’ve just hung up with one of my middle sons, Matteo. He wants me to have a little sit down with his youngest child. I laughed and told him to deal with Aurora’s crazy ass himself.
Apparently, he found a box in her room full of fake IDs and credit cards. When he asked her about them, her response was and, I quote: They’re precautionary, in case I ever need them.
When I heard that, I laughed even harder.
I’m not sure why the fuck he thinks me having a sit down with her will do any good now. That girl is set in her ways. And, honestly, she’s not fucking wrong. It doesn’t hurt to be prepared. I’ve had passports, cash, bank accounts, new identities for my entire family locked in a safe in my office since I first found Holly. I have the documents updated annually.
I love all my grandchildren equally—okay, maybe Tilly a little more than the others. But she’s the only one whose first word was Nonno . The others are all traitors in that department.
Aurora, though? I see myself in that girl more than anyone else.
She fights hard and loves even harder. I know she comes across as reckless. And believe me, she’s scared the fuck out of me with her antics a few times over the years. But she’s a Valentino through and through. The problem with her is she inherited her mother’s looks.
Add beauty and crazy together and you end up with a lethal fucking weapon. It’s true that a beautiful woman can get shit done. Take Angelica, for example. There is no hitman I’ve ever encountered who’s better at the job of taking someone out than my sister. Why? Because people underestimate beautiful women.
They don’t expect the cold-blooded killer instincts that run through the Valentino bloodline to live within the females too. If it were up to me, I’d lock all the girls away. Somewhere this cruel fucking world can’t reach them. Of course, if I even attempted to do that, my wife would have my balls in a glass jar.
Against my better judgement, I pick up my phone and dial my granddaughter. I know I told Matteo to deal with his own demon offspring, but I can’t sit back and not do something when one of my boys asks for help. Same goes for any of my grandchildren.
“Nonno, hey.” My granddaughter’s sweet sugary voice fills the room through the speaker on my phone.
“Aurora, how are you?”
“Good, you?”
“Good. You got time to meet me for dinner tonight?”
“Are you bored already, Nonno? You haven’t been retired that long. Can we make it tomorrow?” she asks.
“Let me rephrase that, Aurora. You are meeting me for dinner tonight. I’ll pick you up at six,” I tell her.
She huffs out a breath before groaning. “Okay, can’t wait. I was actually going to call you today to see if you wanted to meet up this week anyway.”
She wasn’t, but I don’t call her out on that. “I’ll see you at six, sweetheart. Ti amo.”
“Ti amo, Nonno,” she says before hanging up.
“Why are you having dinner with Aurora? What has she done now?” Holly asks.
I spin around from the sofa to see my wife leaning against the doorframe. She’s wearing a black floor-length gown. Her hair twisted in an updo and a teardrop pink diamond pendant hanging around her neck that matches her earrings.
Fuck, she’s beautiful.
“Dolcezza, you look fucking breathtakingly gorgeous.” I push up from the sofa and slowly approach my wife as my eyes rake up and down every perfect inch of her.
No matter how our bodies have changed with age over the years, she is still hands down the most beautiful fucking woman in any room.
“Thank you. What’s going on with Aurora?” Holly repeats. She is the epitome of a mother lioness.
“Matteo found fake IDs in her room. He asked me to have a little chat with her.” I shrug.
“Fake IDs? That seems a bit tame for Aurora. What was she doing with them?”
I wrap my arms around my wife’s waist, pulling her flush against me.
Holly’s hands land flat on my chest. “Don’t get any ideas, T. I have to leave in ten minutes.”
“To go where, exactly?” I let her step back and my eyes do another once-over.
“I have that charity gala with the girls tonight.” The girls she’s referring to are our daughters-in-law. The women each of our sons married.
“I remember. Now, tell me again why I’m not invited?”
“Because it’s girls’ night,” Holly says firmly.
“How about I pick you up afterwards, then?” I suggest. I hate when she goes anywhere without me.
“ Or you can go enjoy your dinner with Aurora and then come home and wait for me. I won’t be late.” Holly leans in and briefly presses her lips to mine. “Have fun,” she says before spinning around and walking away.
“This is a fancy place,” Aurora says, looking around the restaurant like she hasn’t been here a million times before. Which I know she has because we own it.
I raise an eyebrow at her and wait. I don’t need to say anything. She’ll be squirming in her seat within minutes. Hopefully. I’d be certain of that fact if it were any of my other grandchildren. Aurora, though? Yeah, I’m not so sure.
“Guess it helps to know the owners, huh?” she replies while looking me dead in the eye. “How was everyone down under when you visited Sydney?”
“Good. Lorenzo and Kyla seem to have settled into Melbourne life,” I tell her.
I watch as Aurora picks up her menu and starts reading it. “I think I’m going to have the lobster,” she hums, then snaps it closed. “What would you like, Nonno? Maybe you can even let me pay this time? It could be an early birthday gift?”
“And what card would you be using to pay for it, Aurora? One with your legal name or one of those many fakes I hear you have in your possession?”
“Actually, I was going to use my dad’s.” She shrugs without breaking eye contact. “He said I don’t need fake cards because I can use his,” she adds.
“Why exactly do you have fake cards and fake IDs?” I ask her. Clearly, my granddaughter can’t be intimidated using the usual tactics.
The waiter comes over before she can answer. After we’ve given him our orders, Aurora looks at me and smiles. “Nonno, I know you have fake IDs for all of us in your safe.”
I school my surprise. How the fuck does she know that?
Aurora smirks like she knows I’m shocked, despite my cool demeanor.
“Aurora, why do you have them?” I ask, this time my tone firmer.
She huffs before rolling her eyes. “They’re just for emergencies. Like what if some other family comes through and takes over the city and we all have to go on the run? What if the FBI finds something and I have to go into hiding? Anything could happen, Nonno. You need to be prepared for everything in life. You taught me that, remember? So, really, I haven’t done anything that I didn’t learn from you when you think about it.”
“Are you done?” I ask after her long-winded spiel.
“Umm… yep, pretty much,” she says.
“Aurora, you’re smart. If you’re going to do shit that worries your parents, do a better job at fucking hiding it,” I tell her.
“You’re not mad?”
“That you take precautionary measures? No. But if your parents ask, I scared you straight.” I pick up my knife from the table and aim it her way. “Got it?”
Aurora snorts. “I don’t think they’d believe that, Nonno. I mean, you’re scary and all, but not scary enough to send me on the straight and narrow.”
“You’re going to give your parents a heart attack, Aurora Valentino. Take it easy on them. At least until you graduate.”
“That’s this year.” She smiles.
“College. Not high school,” I groan.
“ That I can’t promise, Nonno. It’s a really long time,” she tells me.
“Speaking of colleges, did you get a letter from NYU?” I ask her.
“Mhmm. But I’ve applied to others. I’m keeping my options open.”
“You want to leave the city?”
“I don’t know yet. Depends.” She looks away. That’s the only sign that tells me she’s nervous.
Why the fuck is she more nervous talking about college than she was talking about getting caught with fraudulent bank cards?
“Aurora? What does it depend on?”
“Where my friends go,” she says.
“Okay.” I nod, taking a mental note to revisit this conversation at a later date. “You should come over this weekend. We can go to the range.”
“You’re going to let me play with the guns?” she asks with a newfound excitement.
“I’m going to teach you how to shoot. It’s not playing, Aurora,” I remind her.
“Oh my god! You’re the best grandfather ever! Thank you!” She beams.
“If you’re gonna be going off to college in another city, you’re going to need to know how to use a gun.”
“Oh, I already know how. Lorenzo and Enzo have been teaching me since I was ten,” she says with a huge-ass smile on her face.
I almost choke on my glass of water. “They what?”
Her older brothers were strictly forbidden from letting Aurora anywhere near guns.
“They wanted me to be able to protect myself. Just because I’m a girl, it doesn’t mean I’m useless.” She scowls at me.
“No, it doesn’t. It means you’re more lethal than anyone else. You have a secret weapon your brothers—hell, all the men in our family—don’t have. But that weapon could also be what causes your downfall if you’re not careful.”
“What weapon?”
“Your beauty, bella . That alone could bring a man to his knees. People look at you and underestimate what you can do. You already know that. Nobody would ever expect you to strike if you had to.”
“People at school don’t underestimate me.”
“That’s because you’ve shown them what you’re capable of. Until the world knows that, you are practically a ghost, a hidden assassin,” I explain. “It’s in your best interests to stay that way too. Don’t let people know exactly what you can do when you put your mind to it, Aurora. Always keep ?em guessing.”
“Oh, I plan to. I learned from the best, you know.” She winks.
“You sure did, kid. Tell me something… How exactly did you end up with all those fakes?”
“I know a guy who knows a guy,” she says.
“You know a guy who knows a guy?” I shake my head. “Aurora, who’s the guy?”
“If I tell you, I’m breaking my word, Nonno. Valentinos don’t go back on their word, now do we?”
Fuck me. Why does she have to throw my own sayings back at me?
“No, we don’t.” I make a note to have someone tail Aurora for a while. Something isn’t sitting right. She’s always a little cagey with information, but this whole not being sure about college and then not wanting to give up the name of a source doesn’t sit right with me.