Page 48 of The Gangster King

Sending a team over there now. What’s the address?

I reply with their address.

“A security team is headed over now, Dad. They will announce they’re there and then remain outside. Just ignore them unless you need them.”

“Can we leave the house?” he asks, and I can hear the worry in his voice.

I blink, trying to think, my heart pounding.

“Yeah, of course,” I reply, not wanting to scare him anymore. Or make them feel like prisoners in their home.

But the truth is, I don’t know.

I need more information.

“Okay. Mom wants to come for dinner still,” Dad says.

That motherfucker.

I know who it was. Dante Baldassare.

Gianna’s brother.

“We want you here, too. The security team will shadow you on the way over, but it’s just a precaution,” I tell him.

Then, as I calm down, I ask for more details. “Did they say anything? What happened? Tell me from the start.”

Dad is quiet for a moment as my chest rises and falls rapidly.

Stay calm. They’re alive.

What the hell is Dante up to? First, he didn’t kill me. Then he visits my parents to fuck with me.

Perhaps he likes the game.

No one knows who this man really is. As the son of the mobster, Frank “The Fire” Baldassare and now the new boss, he has yet to show who he is as head gangster.

The man I met seemed intelligent, controlled, and, if my instincts were right, hiding his true feelings about a few things.

What those feelings are, I don’t know.

But he didn’t shoot me that night when shit began to go down, and I’ve lain awake night after night asking why.

“When a man does that—a gangster—you know he’s going to expect a big fucking favor,” Decker said a few nights ago.

“Word has it, Dante’s back at the house, but I can’t get confirmation of that. It’s a rumor, no sighting,” Nathan added.

So he’s come out of hiding.

He’s figured out the feds can’t touch him.

One thing is for certain, I need to marry Gianna fast. So it’s lucky I’m doing just that in an hour.

“He was looking for you. Wanted to know where you lived. Said you had his sister,” Dad replies.

Shit.

“What did you say?”