by Beth Bolden
But Sean?
He couldn’t seem to dismiss his own bad mood. Instead of working, he was just standing here, stewing in it.
Finally he decided that he’d go outside, take a picture of the new sign and post it on Instagram, hoping to drum up some interest in his followers for the new dish.
He was getting the shot framed just right when he heard a voice literally growl behind him. Except this was Los Angeles, and as far as Sean knew there weren’t actual bears running around.
Sean turned, and there was a man standing there, staring at his truck. Specifically at the name written along the top of the menu, the red letters bright and cheerful against the white background.
“Can I help you?” Sean asked, even though he really didn’t want to. He was already in a bad mood and he could tell this guy was just going to piss him off more.
“I think you sure as fuck should,” the guy growled again.
There was something so familiar about him, Sean thought as he took a step closer. The dark hair, with the threads of gray already beginning at the temples, and the handsome face, with the dark, intense eyes. He looked so painfully similar to someone, Sean knew he should know, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
“Excuse me?” Sean retorted. He’d been nice before, but he wasn’t sure how long he could keep up the facade.
“You stole my brother’s name,” he said bluntly, pointing first at Gabe’s truck, and then at Sean’s.
It was only then it hit Sean who this was. This was one of Gabriel’s brothers. This had to be Luca, the eldest. The one that Tate had mentioned visiting last summer, the one that made things hard for Gabriel.
Taking a second look, it was obvious. The facial structure was the same. That was Gabriel’s hair, just less shaggy, and more precisely cut, and with the gray. And that attitude? Definitely explained the gray. Also explained why the guy’s arrogance had felt so familiar. The antagonism radiating out of Luca reminded him so much of how Gabriel had used to be, back at the beginning.
He’d had to learn it from somewhere.
“I didn’t steal anyone’s name,” Sean said in a measured, surprisingly calm voice. “We both ended up with it, kind of by accident.”
Luca’s brows slammed together. “Then you should have changed yours.”
The resemblance was so staggering now, that Sean couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it right away. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Yeah, I don’t think so. And while you’re at it, maybe you should actually talk to your brother about what’s going on, because we’re dealing with this.”
“If you were dealing with it, you would have already fixed it,” Luca said inflexibly. And that, Sean thought with frustration, was really an adjective that could describe all Morettis. Even Gabriel.
“You mean I would have changed my name, right?” Sean said. “Because that’s what you’re really saying.”
“Gabriel has paperwork. He could sue you for copyright infringement. He should have sued you for copyright infringement.”
Why was Sean not surprised that the very first thing Luca had done was drag out the threat of lawyers?
He sighed. “You’re really just embarrassing yourself now. Go talk to Gabe. He’ll explain the whole thing.”
Luca looked absolutely apoplectic, and it filled Sean with a lot more satisfaction than he had any right to. “He will. He will explain the whole thing, and then we will come back here, and you will agree to change your name.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Sean said stiffly, annoyed, “I’m not changing it. We’ve talked about this.”
“With Gabriel?” Luca had the nerve to sound shocked at this.
“Yes,” Sean said.
“But if you had talked about it, then this would all be fixed.”
Sean ground his teeth together, deciding it was just about time for him to lose his temper. “Maybe you should talk to him,” Sean said, giving him a little wave that had the desired reaction of making Luca’s jaw clench visibly. “Go on! I hope you have a good brotherly talk!”
Luca looked like he wanted to say something else—well, more like he wanted to say a lot more things—but he shot Sean one more searing glare, and stormed off in the direction of Gabriel’s truck.
Maybe Sean should have felt a little bit guilty about sending Luca over to his brother, all primed for an argument, but he didn’t. It was cowardly, and he definitely should have felt ashamed, but Sean felt like he needed some space and some time to think. Things were changing between them, both as slow as molasses and so quick it felt like he’d just blinked and they were different.
If Luca wanted to go over to Gabe’s and distract him for a morning, or even for a whole day—and while he was at it, let Gabe inform him of what was really going on, then Sean wasn’t going to stand in their way.
———
“It’s the most beautiful fucking day,” Gabriel half said, half sang as he sank, wrist-deep, into an enormous bowl of meatball mixture.
“You’re absolutely disgusting,” Ren muttered.
“Yep!” Gabriel wasn’t denying it. He couldn’t. He was too happy. Maybe he hadn’t quite told Sean the whole truth, but he had a feeling that when he did, Sean wouldn’t run. He’d give Gabe one of those sweet, slightly crooked smiles, like of course Gabe had fallen in love with him and of course he’d fallen in love with Gabriel back, and tell him to get over here, so they could kiss.
Their first kiss as a real couple. The first kiss when Sean knew Gabe loved him, and Gabe knew Sean loved him in return.
He could already taste it, could feel Sean’s passion when he took him to bed that first time.
“Should I leave you alone with those meatballs?” Ren asked, raising an eyebrow. “’Cause you keep mixing them that way much longer and they’re going to get jealous of Sean.”
Maybe he had been kneading the mixture a bit suggestively. Gabe shot his cousin a sheepish look. “Maybe Sean should be jealous of them.”
“You have a real problem,” Ren announced as Gabe removed his hands and went over to the sink to wash.
“Actually I’ve got the opposite of a problem,” Gabe said. “Sean’s crazy about me, and we both know, despite your insistence that it’s a mistake, that I’m crazy about him.”
“No,” Ren said firmly, “you have a real problem.”
“I really don’t,” Gabriel argued, certain to his core that Ren could only be talking about his epic love with Sean. He finished scrubbing his hands, and flipped the water off, grabbing a paper towel before turning to find the meatball scoop.
They had a ton of meatballs to bake off today, even more because he needed to send Ren over with a bunch for their new Thai wrap.
But before he could find the scoop in the clutter of tools scattered across the counter, he saw Ren’s face out of the corner of his eye.
He was staring out the front window. At the real problem, rapidly approaching.
Luca was here.
“Well, shit,” Gabriel said.
“I said you had a real problem.” Ren shook his head. “Like you and Sean could ever constitute a real problem. On the other hand . . .”
“Luca is a massive pain in the ass?”
“A massive pain in your ass,” Ren said with a succinct nod. “I think I’m gonna take my break now, if you don’t mind.”
“Hey, wait,” Gabriel called out, but Ren had already shed his apron and was vanishing out the back door.
Just in time for Luca to stop in front of the truck, and eye him through the front window. He looked pissed—okay, he usually looked a bit pissed, but he looked way more pissed than normal. And it occurred to Gabriel then that the last time Luca had graced them with his presence had been last summer. Before the food truck lot had opened. Which meant that he’d never met Sean, and he’d never seen his truck. The truck that had the exact same fucking name as Gabriel’s.
Knowing how Luca felt about intellectual property—it was nearing a fanaticism with
him, he’d once camped out in a neighboring restaurant’s dining room, arguing for hours that they had stolen Nonna’s red sauce recipe.
Having tasted both, Gabriel had been pretty sure they had too, but the only one who had really, truly cared was Luca.
He had probably seen Sean’s truck, and now he was going to lose his shit.
Gabriel sighed, and pulled his apron off. So much for a really good day.
By the time he made it around the truck to stand face to face with Luca, it was clear that he had already lost his shit.
His jaw was tight, his arms crossed over his chest, wearing one of those ridiculously tight t-shirts that showed off the biceps and pectorals that he’d worked so hard for. Personally, Gabriel thought he looked stupid, showing off like that, but that was Luca for you. Always in your face. Never surrendering.
Gabriel had told Sean that he’d left Napa and the family businesses because it had felt like he was lost in the midst of so many people who all wanted to tell him what he should do, but mostly, he’d left because of Luca.
Luca didn’t want to just interfere in that friendly, familial way that so many of his brothers and sisters and various family members did. He wanted to tell Gabriel what to do, and exactly how to do it.
“Gabriel,” Luca said, inclining his head a fraction. A hug was out of the question; they were much more likely to start brawling than embracing. Gabe wasn’t proud of how bad the relationship with his brother had gotten, but he also refused to take any responsibility for it. If Luca wanted them to be friends, then he’d need to be a lot less Luca-like.
It seemed, from the way he’d shown up today, without announcing he was coming, that kind of change was not forthcoming.
“Luca,” Gabe responded tightly. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
“I wanted to surprise you,” Luca said.
Except they both knew that Luca showing up, out of the blue, was hardly a good surprise. It was much more likely that he’d decided not to tell Gabriel because he hadn’t wanted to be talked out of coming.
“We’re busy this week,” Gabe said, which was not a lie, because they were busy every week.
“I’m only here for the day,” Luca said. “And I’m glad I came, because this”—he thrust out a hand, gesturing in the direction of Sean’s truck—“is what I’ve found.”
Gabriel did not even try to explain, because the explanation wasn’t something that Luca would ever accept.
Luca had come out on his eighteenth birthday, almost belligerently, like he’d halfway expected the family to kick him out, even though he’d spent the prior eighteen years being an absolutely model Italian son. But even after that, Gabe had never heard even a whiff of him dating anyone. Luca was too contained to fall in love. He would drive whoever he fell in love with absolutely insane within the first week.
And none of that would even matter anyway, because Luca would never make time for a relationship in the first place. He’d dedicated his whole life to running the family restaurants. He worked from dawn to midnight, nearly every day, without a single complaint, acting like that was normal.
Gabe knew he could never comprehend him putting business aside, or not changing the name because he’d been afraid of losing Sean.
“You’re not even going to try to explain this?” Luca challenged, the edge of his steely tone growing impossibly harder. “I cannot believe you have let this go, for at least six months.”
“Two years,” Gabriel said, because the problem was that he’d always enjoyed waving the red flag in front of Luca’s face. Maybe that might be why they didn’t get along. That was definitely why Ren had seen his brother and then run. He’d grown up with them; he knew the kind of damage they inflicted on each other.
“Two years?” Luca stared at him in disbelief. “Are you insane?”
“It’s not a big deal,” Gabriel said, even though it was impossible now to downplay it. It had been impossible from the moment Luca had spotted Sean’s truck. “We’re working it out.”
“That was what he said,” Luca said. “But I couldn’t believe you would be that stupid to not immediately take action to deal with the situation. To deal with him.”
“I did take action. I threw a meatball at him.”
Luca stared at him, unbelievably stunned into at least a momentary silence. “You threw a meatball at him. What are you? Ten years old? This is a business, Gabriel, which I have tried very hard to remind you of, over and over again. You have to take it seriously. Morettis don’t play around.”
Whenever Luca said that—and he said it often—Gabriel wanted to punch him in the face. They were not all the same. Just because they had the same last name did not make them identical. He was not, thank God, the same as Luca. Every single time Luca assumed he was, he wanted to kill his older brother slowly. Painfully. Or maybe just so spectacularly that Luca never made the same mistake again.
“I wasn’t playing around,” Gabriel said, hating the defensive tone he heard in his own voice. “I was serious. I took it seriously. I even came up with a new name. Registered it and everything. But it’s complicated. I couldn’t just . . . I couldn’t just do it, not like that.”
“Not like what?” Luca said in a hard voice. “Not like the smart, intelligent businessman I know you’re capable of being?”
It hurt. It always hurt. The biggest reason that Gabriel had left Napa was that there was never any wiggle room. You were either a clone of Luca—and his brother Marco was on his way there—or you were nothing.
Gabriel had been so sick of being nothing.
But even being nothing didn’t hurt as much as Sean’s voice, breaking through the red haze in his head. “You had a new name?”
Gabriel looked up and wanted to punch his brother more than he’d ever wanted to in his whole life. Because the betrayal on Sean’s face cut deep. “You had a new name,” he repeated, “and you didn’t bother changing it? Not all this time?”
It was the last thing that Gabe had ever wanted Sean to find out. That he could have circumvented this whole problem, almost from the very beginning.
But without the problem, he’d always reasoned, what purpose would there be for Sean to talk to him? To bicker with him? They’d go back to being passing acquaintances, and Gabriel had never known how to face that. Which was why, instead of doing something about it, he’d let the situation fester for so long. Why the paperwork had sat, unused, in his desk drawer.
“I . . .” Gabriel didn’t know what to say. How to say it. He’d imagined this going so differently. He’d imagined telling Sean that he loved him, that he wanted to be with him, and that, hey, by the way, on a completely unrelated note, he’d decided to rebrand his own truck.
But now Sean was staring at him, anger blooming in his expression, and Luca was staring aghast at both of them.
It was terrible.
“I was right all along,” Sean said unsteadily, “you were just . . . you’re just the selfish asshole I always thought you were.” He turned and stalked off, almost certainly satisfied that his parting bomb had hit Gabriel with as much destructive force as possible.
Because Sean knew him now, and he had to know that the thing he dreaded most, the person he tried so hard not to be, was the selfish asshole. Was Luca.
“Good,” Luca said, straightening. “Then you will change your name and put all this behind you.”
Gabriel just gaped at him. “No,” he said. “This conversation is over. I don’t care where you came from, hell maybe, but I’m done talking to you about this.”
Luca’s brow furrowed. “What? You can’t . . .”
“I can.” Through the hurt, Gabriel at least felt a strength of purpose. He’d messed up with Sean, maybe forever. But he could still tell Luca to fuck off. Save a tiny fraction of self-respect.
“I still . . .”
Gabriel didn’t let him finish. “I’ve got the money in the bank to pay your investment off. I’ll write you a check today.”
“
But I don’t . . .” Luca trailed off. For a moment, for only a split second, he actually looked human. Like he might care. Like he might actually give a shit about Gabriel, the person, his brother, and not just what Gabriel might bring to the family name. But then that all disappeared, and that cold, hard asshole mask was back in place. “Fine,” he said. “Fine, if that will make you happy, I will take the money and go. I was just trying to protect the family. You know that.”
Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Someday,” he said, “you’re going to wake up and it’s gonna be a real bad day for you, because you’ll realize that the only one who’s ever failed to protect the family is you.”
Chapter Thirteen
Gabriel waited all day to go find Sean.
It helped, a little, that they were crazy busy, just as he’d told Luca they would be.
It had helped, a little more, to give Luca that check and send him on his way with a very final fuck off.
It had helped, even more, that Luca had clearly been unhappy about it.
But even still, Gabriel had spent the day barely able to keep from staring across the way, at Sean’s truck. He’d had a line more than once, and Gabriel had hoped he was selling as many of the new wraps as they were.
Ren had had to make another batch of glaze, and by the end of the day, they were running low on both the prepped vegetables that Sean had sent over, and the nuts that they’d finished together last night.
“Well,” Ren said, stretching his back with a little moan. “That was hardly your beautiful day.”
“I don’t know, telling Luca to fuck off felt pretty beautiful to me,” Gabriel said, even though he didn’t feel quite as confident about it as he sounded.
Luca might be mean and more than a little controlling, but he was undeniably great at this. What if all the success Gabriel had experienced over the years was because of him?
“I wish I could’ve seen it,” Ren said.
“If you hadn’t run away, you would have,” Gabriel teased him.
“I just didn’t want to get caught up in the crossfire of your Moretti bullshit,” Ren said practically. “It’s always safer to be far away when the two of you face off.”
