Chapter 21
JESSE
She even tastes like the rain.
Her flavor is better than any f*****g cigar, any superficial addiction I’d dabbled with in the past.
This is what I needed. What I craved the most… Her.
I was a fiend before. An unemotionally unavailable asshole looking for the next fix, whether it was work, a f**k or a smoke.
The brandy, the women, the damned dating apps.
They were all temporary Band-Aids to hold off the curse that was floating in my Italian veins.
With a father as a felon, a runaway mother and a penchant for causing pain, it wasn’t hard for me to end up in jail before the edge of seventeen, the juvenile detention just another nail in my already-prepared coffin.
It was Giani that had shown me another way. Taken me under his wing. Given me a job.
He called me “the r
