10.
R IN
“You’d be a much better roommate if you’d figure out how to feed yourself,” I muttered as I pulled a vacuum-sealed package out of the freezer to thaw for this evening’s dinner. I glanced over at the table and asked, “What? No sarcastic reply?”
Grim blinked before he looked at the plate in my hand and then back at my face. He didn’t have to speak, because his face expressed his emotions perfectly.
He looked bored, as if my company made him wish he’d have kept roaming instead of choosing my back yard to camp out in during a snowstorm last year. Right now, he looked impatient because I wasn’t moving quickly enough to suit him, which was a regular occurrence when food was involved.
Once I finished preparing our breakfast, I carried everything to the table and then went back into the kitchen to refill my coffee.
When I finally sat down, Grim was still waiting patiently in his chair across from mine, but showed his displeasure at how long it had taken me to settle down when he narrowed his eyes and yowled loudly.
“Man, fuck you. I just woke up. Give me some grace. Damn.” I picked up a slice of bacon and took a bite without dropping my gaze from Grim’s.
Finally, the little asshole sniffed and took a bite of breakfast. I muttered, “That’s what I thought,” without even a moment’s consideration of how weird it was to have a conversation with a cat.
I wasn’t the least bit shocked when my front door opened and my sister walked in wearing a robe with her hair wrapped in a towel. She was carrying a mug of coffee and had a scowl that told me she hadn’t had nearly enough yet to make this morning’s conversation pleasant.
“How much do you think it costs to hire a hitman?”
I stared at her in surprise while I took a second to process what she’d asked and saw by the look on her face that she was serious.
“Depending on what the person has done to you, we may be able to farm it out to a family member. And if that’s the case, it will be absolutely free.”
“Hmm,” Tana said as she sat down in the chair next to Grim.
She took a sip of her coffee before she leaned over and kissed him and then rubbed her cheek on top of his head.
As always, he purred so loudly that it sounded like someone had just cranked a pull-start lawnmower.
The sound continued until Tana sat up and let Grim get back to his breakfast.
“Who is on today’s hit list?” I asked.
“Ashton has pissed me off for the last time.”
“I thought he did that last week. And the week before. And then there was the week before that,” I said drolly before I took another bite of eggs. “What did he do this time?”
“This is it! He fucked up in a way that there’s no coming back from. I spent half the night trying to come up with a fitting punishment for him.”
“Cheated?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“What angle do you want me to come at this from?”
“Supportive, but understanding.”
“Damn. I was hoping you’d choose violence.”
“That’s not completely off the table, but right now, I’d rather have a good cry.” Tana seemed to think about it for a second before she said, “Then I’ll go burn his house down.”
“That sounds like a perfectly reasonable plan to me.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me how you’ve always known I was too good for him, never trusted him, and wondered what in the hell I saw in him in the first place?”
“No need. You took the words right out of my mouth.”
“But you never said anything like that to me!”
“It didn’t give you any indication when I made sure I was never around at the same time he was?”
Tana winced before she said, “Maybe.”
“Dad nicknaming him Aumingi didn’t give you a tiny hint that you were the only one in the family that liked him?
Do you even remember what that means? I know there’s more than one translation, but when I compared what I know of the language to what I think of the guy, I came up with a loose translation of ‘slow-witted useless person.’ In English, we’d call him a dumbass.
” When Tana narrowed her eyes at me, I cheerfully said, “Oh! Here’s another one!
When Papa Smokey insisted on calling him by the last name he constantly mispronounced, didn't that give you a clue?”
“For a while, I thought Papa Smokey really didn’t know how to pronounce it,” Tana argued.
“There’s a town near Rojo called Dumas, Tana. Papa Smokey doesn’t have a problem saying that town’s name, but insisted on calling Ashton ‘dumbass.’”
“I get the point, Rin.”
“I feel like I should give you more examples that were fucking obvious, but went right over your head. I can keep going.”
“Please refrain.”
“Even the girls couldn’t stand him, and most of them were so busy checking out his biceps that they couldn’t speak in full sentences when he was around.”
“Okay! Okay! I get it. No one’s going to miss him.”
“No one but you, sis,” I said as I pushed my plate toward her.
She smiled when she saw that I’d left half of my breakfast for her, and then her eyes filled with tears when I reached out and took her hand.
“You’re worth more, Tana. We can see it, and it hurts to think that you can’t.
Don’t settle. Find a man who makes you see fireworks every time he kisses you and make sure that he feels them too. ”
“I will.”
“When you’re officially finished with him, and I mean in definitive terms, I may call him up to see if he’d like to go hiking.”
Tana burst out laughing and said, “You can’t leave him in the woods to get eaten.”
“As if the wildlife would eat that piece of shit. I bet they would appreciate a new chew toy, though. I was thinking it might be nice to watch him trip and fall off a cliff or something equally painful.”
“I don’t want him dead, but I do want him to live miserably without me for the rest of his life.”
“As sad as that missed opportunity makes me, he can do that all by himself.”
“Now that my problem is out of the way, let’s talk about you.”
I started to pull my plate back and said, “Nope.”
Tana smacked my knuckles with the fork before she waved it around and said, “Constance, huh? Who'da thunk it?”
“She is not my type at all, which is sort of invigorating.”
“Is that the draw?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is that the only reason you’re interested?
I know you’re a good man, and I’m sure you treat the women you’re .
. . fond of nicely.” Tana gagged before her whole body shuddered.
She continued, “So I know you’ll be good to Stan, but you’re not exactly known for your long attention span when it comes to relationships, Rin. ”
“Because most of them bore me to tears after a while.”
“What if that happens with her? When you break things off, what will that mean for our friendship? We had a deal, Rin.”
“That deal was made when we were dumb teenagers, Tana. It doesn’t apply to what we’ve become now that we’re grown.”
“Should it?”
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s off the table.”
“So, you wouldn’t have a problem with me dating one of your friends?”
“Obviously, I would.”
“How is that fair?” Tana asked loudly.
“Considering that I have very few friends who aren’t directly related to us, I’m probably not the only one who would think it’s weird.”
“Don’t twist this to fit your narrative, Rin.”
“I’m not! I’m just saying that if you find a man you’re interested in who isn’t in our family tree, I will wish you all the best and kill him if he doesn’t treat you right.”
In an abrupt change of subject, Tana asked, “What do you know about Constance?”
“Besides having a quick wit and a great sense of humor, beauty like hers is what artists and sculptors have tried to capture since the beginning of time.”
“What do you know about her personal life?”
“I know that Bella is the one that introduced her to all of you and that she’s a family friend of Bella’s old man.”
“And?”
“That means she’s probably connected to the mafia.”
“There’s no probably about it.” That piqued my interest, as did the fact that my sister dropped her last bite of bacon so she could pick up her phone.
She typed something in and scrolled for a second before she put the phone on the table and slid it in my direction.
I looked down and saw a family picture taken at a wedding.
There was a gorgeous bride standing in the middle of a group of people, one of which was Constance.
When I read the caption, I looked up at Tana and cleared my throat before I said, “That’s more than a little connection.”
“I’d say. It doesn’t make any difference to me since we’re just friends, but if you start dating her, it will be a major part of your relationship, among other things.”
“Like what? There’s something else about her that’s as significant as being a mafia princess whose father is the head of a major crime family?”
“Possibly. I guess it depends on how you look at it. None of us even blinked twice when she told us, but we also aren’t dating her.”
“You mean that one of her past relationships was a throuple?”
“Try her most recent relationship.”
“She’s not in it now, though, so what does it matter?”
“I’m not sure I completely understand it myself, so I’ll let her explain it to you if it comes to that. If not, then no harm, no foul, right?”
“I guess so.”
Grim, who had been silent during this entire exchange, reminded us that he was still sitting there by knocking his plate off the table so that it clattered and clanged on the tile.
When I just stared at him, he swished his fluffy tail and then hopped onto the floor before he slowly sauntered toward the patio door.
I knew that if I didn’t hurry my ass up and do his bidding, he’d start yowling, and I was still on my first cup of coffee for the day, so that wouldn’t be pleasant at all.
And my mind was reeling at the information I’d seen on Tana’s phone.
What exactly was a mafia princess doing in Colorado Springs?
I couldn’t wait to find out.
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STAN