Hold Him Like Gravity (Lombardi Family #4)

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

Rico

When the fuck did meat get so goddamn expensive?

Here I was, trying to give the neighborhood a break since life had been beating ‘em all down for decades now, and the fucking suppliers raised their prices by twenty-seven percent over the past year.

And, shit, I got it. The cost of feed had gone up for them. These weren’t massive factory farms making millions a year. I got my meat from smaller farms that gave a shit about their animals and fed ‘em good food, so the end product was higher quality.

It just sucked that a small portion of that increase had to be meted out to the consumer when I’d been trying to keep costs down since I took over the meat shop.

The thing was, we didn’t even need the money. The shop was, obviously, a front. A way to wash our money. Keep the IRS man off our backs. That kinda shit. But we had to seem like we were making a profit on paper, so I had to increase prices.

And the increase just so happened to coincide with some renovations that were about to go into effect, so customers were naturally going to assume the increase was to pay for them.

I sighed, pushing the keyboard away from me then leaning back in my chair, staring up at some stain on the ceiling that had been there since I’d started running this place.

Another thing to bring up to the contractors who should be showing up at any moment.

“That bad, huh?” a voice said, making me turn toward the doorway to find one of my employees standing there.

She was the newest addition, hired by the guy I had in charge of that kind of thing. No one working at the meat shop was in the family because we were trying as hard as possible to make the place seem legitimate.

I wondered on more than one occasion if this chick had been hired because of all the pretty she had to throw around.

The meat shop was, well, a sausage fest most of the time. Apparently, there was some antiquated, sexist rule that men only wanted to buy meat from other men or some shit like that.

Working for a mafia family that had female mafia capos that were every bit as capable—if not more—than many of their male counterparts, that shit was whacked to me.

But we had to keep business coming in, so I let it slide that this girl was the only woman working in the entire building. And that, in general, they mostly had her stocking the cases or making sandwiches.

The irony wasn’t lost on me.

But, yeah, she was a fucking knockout.

I won’t lie, it was nice to see some pretty walking around the shop. And she had that in spades.

She was short, even for a chick, with a little soft around the hip, ass, and tits, but pretty compact otherwise. It was the face that really got your attention, though. Sleepy-looking hazel eyes, long hair dyed a deep burgundy color, pouty lips, and if you were up close enough, you could see a smattering of freckles over her nose and cheeks.

And, I shit you not, the woman always smelled like blueberry jam. Fucking blueberry jam. Even after a long shift.

I could smell her even then, clear across the room.

She had her long hair pulled back into a ponytail and her eye makeup had smudged a bit under her eyes.

She’d been here since opening but had stayed behind to do some of the deep cleaning I’d demanded be done before the construction started.

“Think people would object to turning the place into a beans and rice shop?” I asked, getting a bemused smile and a head tilt out of her. “Would be cheaper,” I added.

“Pretty sure a black bean parm wouldn’t be a popular sandwich,” she said.

“Prolly right. You heading out?”

“Yeah. Everything is done. Well, no. I have to take the trash to the dumpster.”

“No. Leave it. I’ll do it.”

“Is this a ‘little women shouldn’t be going into dark alleys at night’ thing?” she asked, brows raising.

Sometimes, she would say some shit that reminded me of the female capos I worked with. I once heard her threaten to put a man’s hand through a meat grinder, then make him a sandwich with it, and make him eat it. He’d grabbed her ass with that hand, so he had it coming.

But I liked the sass.

More than I probably should, given that I was her boss.

“Fuck yeah, it is,” I said, nodding, just wanting to get a rise out of her.

If anyone was hanging out in my alley, they’d get their asses handed to ‘em and they knew it. It was safe enough for her to be out there.

“I worked at an all-night bodega in the Bronx before this,” she told me, chin lifting defiantly. “Nothing in that alley could scare me.”

“Maybe not, but I’m pretty sure we don’t got a step stool out there to help you reach the dumpster,” I said, getting a little laugh out of her.

“That’s… fair. But I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be having my boss do my job for me.”

“Pretty sure you should listen to your boss when he tells you to do something,” I shot back as I got to my feet and made my way across the room. “Go home, Kick. It’s late.”

Up close, the blueberry scent was almost overwhelming. I was so distracted by that that I almost missed the way her eyelids went heavier and her lips parted at the sound of her name on my lips.

Fuck.

Yeah, I didn’t need my only female employee having the hots for me. No matter how much I wanted to drag her into my office, shut the door, bend her over the desk, yank down her pants, and…

Damnit.

Nope.

Couldn’t even let my mind go there. It was an HR nightmare.

True, I was HR in this case. But still.

“Alright,” she agreed, giving me a tight nod and scurrying back a few feet, leaving her blueberry scent in her wake as she moved out of the back room, into the shop, and, I assumed, out the front door.

“Eye-fucking the employees, Rico?” a voice asked, making me turn to find one of those female capos I’d been thinking about standing there.

Saff was younger than a lot of us, but had the ambition and balls to make her seem older. You wouldn’t know by looking at her that she went toe-to-toe with some of the nastiest men on the planet and won.

She was short as fuck with these comically small feet, a deceptively delicate-looking heart-shaped face with big light brown eyes, freckles, and a Cupid’s bow mouth. The only things giving all that soft and sweet an edge were her nose ring and the fact that she had electric blue hair. She had it pulled back in fucking bubble braids right then. Likely pulled back so it didn’t get all bloodied like her knuckles and the corner of her shirt.

“Someone catcall you again?” I asked, looking her over.

“Someone didn’t have my money. Again,” she said, rolling her eyes.

We all had issues over the years with fuckers trying to stiff us. But Saff got more than her fair share. Likely because of her aforementioned smallness.

Those guys learned real quick, though, that Saff had an almost psychotic kind of anger. With a goddamn hair trigger.

“Something that needs to be looked into?”

“I can handle my own shit,” Saff said, chin jutting out.

“Know that. But last time there was a trend of people not paying, it turned out it was something serious.”

“It’s not like that. Apparently, he owed his baby mama, like, thousands in back child support. But he’d been working off the books so nothing could get garnished.”

“Real fucking prince.”

“Yeah, I know,” Saff said, shaking her head. “But that woman knew his game, broke into his place, and stole his cash. I may or may not have beat the shit out of him for myself and her. His deadbeat ass can work five jobs for all I care to start paying what he owes her and us. I gave him a week. And a face so ugly that he won’t be knocking anyone else up for a while.”

“Good. So whatcha doing here?”

“Renz said you are starting construction here tonight. Figured you might want a set of eyes around. You know, make sure they’re behaving themselves.”

One of the members of a former rival family, the Costas, had started up a construction business. To wash their money, sure, but also to have a company that could be trusted to do work on all their own homes.

It was always a risk to bring anyone into your home or business. The cops were sneaky as fuck. They brought down some big dons back in the day by posing as cable repairmen, sneaking in, and placing bugs.

And that was back when bugs were bigger and harder to hide and with shitty battery lives.

Now? Those things were damn near invisible and could go on forever.

Hiring anyone on the outside to do anything was taking a big chance. Especially at a place like the meat shop, where we frequently engaged in family business and, even more often, talked about it.

So, when I told Renzo, the boss, that I wanted to spruce the place up, and that I didn’t exactly want to do all the work myself, his wife, Lore—a former Costa herself—had suggested we outsource to the Costas.

I’ll admit, I wasn’t exactly a supporter of Renzo’s plan to use a marriage to a Costa woman to bring an end to the feud that had existed between our families since Lorenzo Costa had taken over for his father a while back.

Sure, I liked Lore. And I was happy our boss was in love with her and shit. But I have to say that the distrust of the Costas did still simmer inside of me a lot of the time.

Clearly, Saff felt the same way.

Though, to be fair, Saff was always looking for an enemy to rail against.

“Dunno if it’ll look good if we babysit ‘em,” I said, going to the front to grab the money out of the safe. Not because the Costas would steal from us—the fuckers had enough money—but because men would be in and out and someone desperate might decide to sneak in and grab something that didn’t belong to them.

“Who cares what it looks like?” Saff said, rolling her eyes.

“Renzo, I imagine. They’re his in-laws.”

“I mean… if I remember their family tree, Anthony is only a cousin or something like that. Not one of Lore’s many brothers.”

“Still,” I said, shoving the cash into a bag to drop at the bank machine on the way home.

“Did you at least put some cameras up?”

“For what?”

“To make sure they don’t bug the place.”

“No more cameras than usual,” I said, going back into my office to grab anything I didn’t want getting covered in paint or dust. “They don’t have their sights set on Brooklyn. They have no reason to bug the place.”

“When did you get so soft?” Saff asked, following me as I piled the shit I was taking on a prep table, then grabbed the trash bags I’d told Kick to leave for me to handle.

Saff didn’t grab one.

I refuse to make any man’s life easier , she’d once said when someone asked why she hadn’t helped Elian clean up at a gathering at Renzo’s place.

And, hey, you had to respect that.

“Don’t think it’s soft to accept the wishes of our boss, kid,” I said, just to fuck with her. She hated being reminded that she was younger than the rest of us.

“Fine. Get bugged, stolen from, and arrested,” she said, leaning back against the wall in the alley, watching me walk back and forth to get rid of the garbage.

“Your concern for me is touching,” I said, shooting her a smirk as we moved back into the building.

“I am not above visiting you in the pen to tell you I told you so ,” she said, eyes twinkling.

“Know you won’t. Go on, get home. Clean up those knuckles. Don’t wanna get infected,” I said, hearing the knock at the front door at that exact moment.

“Alright,” she agreed, but followed me out to the front of the shop, then waited for me to open the door to let the contractors in, only to step in their way.

“Are you going to move or what?” she asked, making me snort as Anthony Costa stepped too far to the side and whacked himself against the frame in the process.

“She’s charming, right, guys?” I asked, getting some chuckles from them and two middle fingers from Saff as she walked backward out of the door, shooting me a smile.

“Ready for us to get to work?” Anthony asked as he moved inside.

Some part of me was concerned about being closed down for a week to get this place redone. Worried that I would lose business. Like it fucking mattered.

The thing was… it kind of did.

And for someone who’d been a ‘family’ man for his whole life, it was weird as fuck to care about anything else.

“Yep,” I agreed.