Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
“What are you thinking—total, I mean,” Andino clarified.
On the speaker of the call, John cleared his throat. “A third of a million. There’s a shipment coming in off a boat next month, so long as it clears customs, that’ll get business there back up and running like nothing.”
“The only good part of counterfeiting, really.”
John chuckled. “Hmm, tell me about it. A low-grade crime.”
“Still frustrating.”
“And a handful of people spending their Christmas in a jail cell, too,” John added.
Yes, that couldn’t be forgotten.
Except Andino didn’t really care.
After all, it wasn’t him in jail. And honestly, that was really the only thing he cared about at the end of the day. Selfish? Oh, certainly.
And?
Because he didn’t see the problem with it.
Maybe that wast he bigger issue. Andino wasn’t really interested in looking too deep into his psyche or what made him ... well, him. He’d learned long ago that he was fine with the way he was—it was everyone else who had the issue.
That seemed like a them problem. And they should probably deal with it.
“Well,” John started to say on the call, “Nature of the business, isn’t it?”
“Unfortunately.”
The giggling from the hallway had Andino looking away from his laptop. John said something else in reply, but Andino was a little distracted by the sight of his blonde-haired daughter peeking her head into the doorway of his office.
All of five-years-old and little Lynn Marcello was the entire light of Andino’s fucking life. The only thing he ever needed to do to smile was look at his children or wife. In an instant, they could turn a shitty day around or make his bad moods disappear in a blink.
Lynn’s curly head bobbed and her big eyes twinkled with mischief. Marcello mischief, he liked to say.
“Go,” he heard her say to something—or someone—out in the hallway.
“I’ll call you back,” Andino told John.
“Okay, man. Have a good night. We doing Christmas Eve again this year together? Siena wanted to know so she could get everything ready. You know how she is.”
“Of course.”
“All right, good to know. See you then.”
“You, too.”
“Come on, Snappy.”
Snappy.
It didn’t matter how many times they told Lynn the dog’s name was Snaps, she called him Snappy from the moment she could say his name. And he answered to it.
Her Snappy.
“Baby Lynn,” Andino said, grinning when she popped her head into the doorway again, “what are you up to out there?”
“Nothing, Daddy.” Then, lower, she said to the dog in the hallway, “Pleaseeeeee, Snappy?”
Andino swore he heard the dog sigh. It was a real thing Snaps did, but especially when he was just about done with his human counterparts. The click-click of the dog’s fingernails hitting hardwood announced his presence before he even showed himself in Andino’s doorway.
It took everything—every single ounce of patience and self-control—he had inside not to laugh when his dog strolled into the office wearing a pair of antlers that lit up like Christmas lights, with a little Santa hat right in the middle. His big, muscular head tipped side to side as he walked across the office, the antlers following the action. Baby Lynn’s giggles followed him the whole way.
“It’s Snappy the Reindeer!” his daughter introduced the pup.
Andino pressed his lips together to keep from laughing as Snaps came to sit beside his master’s desk. The dog looked up at him, half amused and entirely over it at the same time.
“You look ridiculous,” Andino told him under his breath.
Snaps blew out a snort.
Like he was saying, I know.
In the hallway, Baby Lynn’s peeling laughter followed her as she ran away from her father’s office. “Snappy the Reindeer says Merry Christmas!”
Little G.
“Hey.”
Haven’s head lifted from her work at the kitchen’s island. Those blue eyes of hers nailed into Andino where he stood in the arched entryway of the room, half in the process of shrugging on his favorite navy blazer.
“Are you seriously going to sneak out of here without even a proper good morning?” his wife asked.
He at least had the decency to look ashamed of himself, but Andino couldn’t say much more about it. “I’m already running late, babe.”
Haven arched a brow. “Seriously?”
“You let me sleep in—didn’t even get me up to get the girls off to school.”
Not that he didn’t appreciate it, because he did—as many kids as they had, every morning could be a goddamn nightmare. Somehow, though, Haven managed to wrangle all their daughters off to school without waking him up. Instead, the small knee of his son that landed a little too close to the family jewels became his alarm clock. Probably not long after Haven got back from getting the girls off to school.
That also meant he was late.
Well ...
A boss was never late.
Everyone else was always early.
Except Andino had a lot of business happening in the city—an uptick in certain areas of la famiglias dealings that required more of his immediate attention. The shit had been dragging him away from home earlier and earlier, and keeping him away later and later.