by Eden Butler
There was no eager son waiting in the wings to take over for me. There never would be and I knew why.
This business. This life, there was no place in it for a family or connections that could be used against me.
My father could protect my mother and siblings better than I could. He’d been doing it longer.
I could protect myself. I could give myself up if I needed to.
But anyone else would only get in the way. On my own, I had nothing to lose. On my own, there were no liabilities.
The thought had me slipping, dropping my guard. Sometimes, I couldn’t help myself.
The folder was in an app marked Calculator. Anyone with half a brain would know about it, but probably wouldn’t guess what I had stored in mine. I thumbed through the folder, hunched in my chair, elbows on my knees as I stared down at dozens and dozens of pictures I’d sneaked of Maggie when she slept next to me. Dozens more of the kid laughing, playing with his mama. More of Maggie grinning up at me or making faces that made her look like a kid.
“Fuck.”
It was no good. No point in getting myself lost in this bullshit. Not when it would go nowhere. Not when I’d told her there could never be anything between us. She knew this. She’d known it from that first night we were together. I’d offered her the only thing I could.
“I can’t promise to be your man, but I can have your back and look out for you. You need that. You need a friend and I got you. You understand me?”
She had.
We both had.
Still… we kept coming back.
But sex blurred everything.
Maybe she was tired of those blurred lines.
Maybe that’s what she’d meant last night.
“We can’t…we have to stop this.”
I hadn’t listened.
I never did when the truth was stuffed behind the bullshit I pretended was real.
Maggie had refused my mother’s gift tonight.
She tried to refuse me last night.
Maybe she was trying to tell me something deep down I knew I wasn’t ready to hear.
Problem was, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready to hear that from her.
3
Smoke
Brunch hadn’t always been a tradition.
Families get busy. Schedules don’t mesh, but since Dante came back from Pistoia, where our folks had sent him when Dario willingly took the sentence for his drug charge, and since the man himself had gotten out of Riker’s, my ma had made something of a big deal about a sit down for brunch whenever we could manage it.
But it was always a damn madhouse.
“Maria!” my mother screamed to her sister. “How many times do I have to say it? Get the orange juice. I swear…you don’t listen…”
My ma and her sister, Maria, still bickered like they were ten and twelve and not sixty-two and sixty. I’d learned it was best to stay out of their way, which is what I did as I moved through the back entrance of my folks’ large apartment.
“I told you already! It’s on the table!” The older woman cursed under her breath, saying something about my mother she choked on when she caught me watching her as I stopped in the hallway and nodded to her, shooting my aunt a grin. “Dimitri? You’re late. You brought the jam?”
“It’s here.” I moved into the kitchen, a massive industrial-looking room with concrete counter tops and a metal top island that was covered with trays of food—bacon, eggs, fette biscottate and croissants. So much of it my stomach growled just as the scent hit my sinuses. “How late am I?”
“Santino has already said prayers…and you know how your father loves to go on with those… and Dante is telling Maggie about you and that loose little girl you took to Junior prom, so I’d say two mimosas in.”
“Maggie’s here?”
Maria’s grin was slow to move over her face, but when it did, I got the feeling there’d be a shit-ton of questions flying out of her mouth I had no intention of answering. She took the jam out of my hands, hugging the brown paper bag to her chest. “Is that a problem?” Her small head bobbed as she inched a look over my shoulder, toward the dining room, before she glanced up at me. “I thought you two were…ya know…” The woman made a sharp whistling sound with her teeth while waggling her eyebrows and I decided that was all the nosey ass questioning I could take from my aunt.
“Dimitri,” she tried when I turned away from her, heading into the dining room.
“Son,” my father said, slapping my shoulder when I reached down to kiss the top of his head. “You’re late.”
“Had to get the jam.”
My father waved me off, motioning to the coffee pot in front of him as I sat at the only empty seat left at the table. Predictably, it was next to Maggie who seemed to be half-listening to Dante, mostly watching as my kid brother feed Mateo small bites of buttery croissants.
“Morning,” I told her, leaning close enough to catch a hint of her perfume, not so close that it would linger on my suit when I walked away from the table.
“Hola, Smoke,” she said, that sweet, low murmur of a greeting doing more to work me up than the peak of her cleavage I caught when Mateo reached toward her and pulled down the front of her shirt.
“What was that girl’s name,” my youngest brother blurted, leaning across the table. He snapped his fingers like whatever name he was trying to come up with was on the tip of his tongue and irritating me was gonna help him along with it. “You know the one with the big…”
“Dante,” our mother said, calling across the table, over the noise of her sister and brother-in-law and Dario who screamed into his cell like he was a trader on Wall Street. “Don’t bother your brother with such things.” To me, Ma pointed at a dish of some casserole brimming with eggs and cheese. “Eat before it’s cold, Dimitri.”
“It’s always like this, si?” Maggie adjusted the kid, her smile easy, amused as she shifted him onto her lap. Anytime she came around my family, she seemed to get caught in the middle of some chaos, and every time she did, Maggie’s eyes got wide and wild, like she’d never seen anything like us before.
“Like what?” I shot a frown at Dario when his voice got too loud, clearing my throat to get his attention. He glanced around the table, waving at our father in apology.
“Loud.”
“Bella,” I started, shooting her a smile. “You’ve been around us six months now. You’re not used to this bullshit yet?”
“It’s not…bullshit…” Even cursing, the woman was beautiful, and hearing it, seeing how her cheeks flushed, how she glanced toward my mother, like she thought saying something crude in front of her would be disrespectful, did nothing to harden the soft spots the woman had made of my heart.
Fuck. I sounded like some moony punk writing Hallmark cards.
Downing my coffee, I tried to ignore the way she smelled and that sweet, lingering smile she gave me. It was stupid, thinking I could forget anything about her, but things were starting to get to me. She was getting to me.
“Maggie,” Dante said, his voice a little high, like he’d had more than the two mimosas Maria thought, “you should make plans to come with us to the lake house for the Fourth next month.”
“Oh, that’s a wonderful idea,” Ma said, clapping her hands. Despite how she’d reacted last night when Maggie had refused her bag, the woman seemed to light up at my kid brother’s suggestion. “He’d love it there and God knows you could do with a break.”
“Oh…I don’t know.” Next to me, Maggie shifted in her seat, moving the kid to stand when he wiggled. He balanced on her lap, grinning around the table like he knew he had everyone’s attention.
“You can’t say no,” Dante told her, polishing off the last of his mimosa. “It’ll be fun and I’m sure Smoke will take you to Bradford’s cliff. You’ll like that most of all.”
The asshole’s stupid smirk didn’t lower when I glared at him. I wiped my mouth, gaze on my little brother until he finally had the good sense to
stop grinning at me.
“What’s…Bradford’s cliff?” Maggie said, holding onto the kid’s hands as he balanced on her lap.
“It’s where Smoke always took his…”
“It’s where Dante will end up if he doesn’t keep his mouth shut,” I interrupted my kid brother.
“Still,” Ma said, waving to get us quiet. “Maggie, you should come. You and the baby. We always try to get out of town for the Fourth, and last year, well, there was too much going on.” My mother shook her head, refusing to look at Dario or Dante. Last year was the first we’d spent together since those two assholes came home. The lake house would have been a bad idea. Too many cliffs. Too much water. Way too many places to hide a body if they pissed each other off.
“I…well, thank you for the invitation, Mrs. Carelli…” At my ma’s frown, Maggie gave her a smile, then stood, likely figuring the offer of handing the kid over would make up for still refusing to call Ma, “Mrs. Carelli” and not “mama.”
“Let’s see you,” Ma said, reaching for Mateo when Maggie held him out to her. “Oh…you’re getting more and more handsome every time I see you.”
“You saw him two days ago,” Pop said, smiling.
My folks had taken to the kid as if he was their grandson and the thought should have bothered me. But as Maggie helped Maria clear away the dishes, ignoring whatever bullshit Dante said to her, and my folks played with the baby, taking turns talking to him like idiots, I couldn’t find it in me to be pissed. Fact was, he was the closest thing they had to a grandson. The thought twisted something in my chest.
“Hey,” she said to me, that pretty smile widening as she leaned over me to grab my empty plate. “I need a favor, but you gotta promise not to laugh at me.”
“Bella, would I laugh at you?”
“Yes, he would,” Dante cut in, howling when I flipped him the bird.
“Name it,” I told Maggie, taking the plates in her hands from her before I made her sit next to me.
“My Outback—”
“That tank!” Dante said, laughing when Maggie shook her head.
No matter what my kid brother said, Maggie was proud of her car. She’d learned her lesson since I’d convinced her to ditch the shit bucket she’d landed here in. It had given out on her a couple months back. The tires on the Subaru were new, the back windshield and paint job I had replaced, without her knowing, before she picked it up. She made the note every month with no one’s help, something I knew she was proud of.
“What about it?” I asked.
“It needs an oil change.”
“I’ll have Dino bring it into the shop and…”
“No, I don’t want to do that,” she said, the smile lowering. “Toni said you used to work at your cousin’s garage when you were in high school.”
“He mopped the floor. They wouldn’t let him near an engine.” Dante’s laugh died on his lips when me and Maggie both looked at him and I nodded toward the other side of the table, dismissing him with one jerk of my head.
“I can change the oil for you if you don’t trust a shop…”
“It’s not that.” Maggie shrugged, scratching the underside of her chin, and I folded my arms, trying to keep myself from touching her face when her cheeks brightened. “I can remember, when I was a kid, all my aunties and Grandma knowing how to take care of their vehicles. They were proud, actually, that they didn’t have to get any of their boyfriends or brothers to do it for them.” She fiddled with one of the wrinkled napkins on the table, not looking at me. Maggie hadn’t given much away about herself. There wasn’t much I knew about the childhood she had, except that it had been rough and lonely.
“So you want to learn, like them,” I said, filling in the blanks when she didn’t elaborate. She shot her gaze to me, her smile slow to come, but then the woman I knew seemed to jump to the surface, and she nodded, brushing the hair from her shoulder.
“Yeah. Can you teach me? When you get a chance?”
Nodding once, I winked at Maggie, already rearranging my schedule in my head. “I’ll come by this afternoon and bring you to O’Bryant’s. They’ve got all the filters you need for the Outback.”
“Good,” she said, standing again, grabbing the empty plates. “Thanks, Smoke. I appreciate it.”
“Anything for you, bella,” I told her, not missing how her grin slid up higher and higher as she walked away from me.
“You should let me teach her,” Dante said, slumping in the chair next to me.
“And you, little brother,” I said through a sigh, “should learn to keep your mouth shut.”
To my left, I caught sight of Dino’s large shape and stood, nodding at my man when he met me at the back of the dining room. His face was shadowed, eyes sunken, so I moved quicker, that twisting in my chest churning now for a reason that had nothing to do with Maggie or her kid.
“Boss,” he said, moving his head down, facing away from the front of the room where my family sat.
“Tell me.” I grabbed the man by the shoulder, turning him toward the balcony at the front of the den, my gaze still on the table and on Maggie as she looked from my parents, still playing with her boy, to me.
Dino scrubbed his stubbled chin, letting out a sigh. “Nobody knows where Kat is.”
I stepped back, dropping my hand off his shoulder. “What do you mean nobody knows?”
“I’m saying. I called Alphie and Mickey. All the guys from Pfizer who worked with her before she went independent.” He rubbed a knuckle into his eye, then shrugged. “I’m telling you, she’s a ghost. There’s zero chatter. Last anyone heard is that she worked some gig for a tech company in the city, but that was only a two-week job and then…nothing.”
“You contacted the…”
“All the dummy numbers and the email addresses with the draft folders. All empty.”
Kat Harrel had been my go-to tech whiz anytime I needed anything handled that went beyond muscle and street smarts. The woman could bypass any program, any security protocol. She was a genius, and she was tough. I liked her. She knew that. She also knew I had her back. Kat would never take off without at least dropping hints that she had to leave.
“I don’t like this,” I told Dino, moving to the window, my face away from the dining room, my gaze unfocused as the lunch crowd started to make their way into the restaurant.
“Didn’t think you would, boss.” He folded his arms, the muscles around his mouth twitching. “Don’t much like this shit either.”
One glance at Dino and I got that this bothered the man more than he’d ever admit. He was tough. He did his job but that didn’t mean he was a robot.
“I know you don’t.”
“Dimitri,” I heard, frowning when my mother called me. I turned, dropping the expression from my face. She moved toward me, Mateo squirming in her arms. “That Paris girl is gonna be late again. Maggie is going to get the lunch shift started and I’ve got to clean up. Take the baby, yeah?”
I didn’t hesitate. Didn’t blink. Mateo came to me. Ma left, patting Dino on the shoulder once in greeting before she moved back toward the table and I held the kid to my side, letting him mess with the crucifix on my chain, something that always seemed to make him happy.
“Call Benny,” I told Dino, picking up the conversation like we hadn’t been interrupted. “He’s got a few guys in the city that know what they’re doing. If Benny can’t find Kat, then no one can. I’ll put some calls in with Wilson. He owes me more than a few favors and that tap on the bakery is not gonna lead anywhere.” Mateo yawned, rubbing his face against my shoulder before he leaned his head down and I took the hint, settling the kid against my chest with my hand on his back. When he was tired, he like to be held, wanted a little comfort, and I could respect that. Sometimes a man needs a little reassurance. Didn’t bother me, so I patted the kid’s back, still trying to think of where Kat could have gotten off to before I noticed Dino’s cocked eyebrow and how the man glanced at my hand on Mateo’s back and
then the slow, soft snores coming from his nose.
“What?”
Dino didn’t answer me. Instead, my man looked away, glancing to the kid, then over my head, toward the dining room where Dario and Dante stood, their attention on me. Dante grinned like an idiot and I doubted that look was just about the mimosas he’d downed at brunch. Dario, though, held his cell in his hand, his thumb hovering over the screen, but his gaze was locked on me as Mateo stirred and I rocked the kid up my shoulder to be more comfortable.
“What?” I mouthed, not appreciating the stares those assholes gave me.
It wasn’t until I caught my father’s narrowed eyes and my mother’s smug, satisfied smile that I realized what an idiot I was and how this shit probably looked to all of them.
“Oh, look how cute,” I heard, my attention shooting to the three women moving through the dining room. Two of them I knew—Mrs. Lulling, the librarian and her sister-in-law Mrs. Williams, the other one, a good twenty years younger than them, I’d never seen before.
“Ladies,” I greeted, stilling my hand on Mateo’s back.
“Mr. Carelli,” Mrs. Williams said, resting a hand on her chest. “How are you today…and the baby?”
“We’re good,” I started, eyes squinting when the woman I didn’t know moved to my side and smiled at the kid.
“Your son is so beautiful,” she said, jerking her gaze back to the older, laughing women behind her. “What?”
“Nothing, my dear,” Mrs. Lulling said. “Let’s leave Mr. Carelli to his business and get a table.”
My son.
I stretched my neck, not looking at Dino when I spoke, trying to ignore the sensation that crested in my gut. “Call Benny. Find Kat.”
“I’ll get on it,” he said, hesitating before he turned. “I…wanna check the West dock. There was nothing off in White Plains like I told you when I called last night, but I sent Will this morning to the West dock and still haven’t heard from him. I’m…kinda getting worried.”
