by Bethany-Kris
His uncle looked upward. “Her.”
Andino stilled. “We can’t let them take her—she belongs with John.”
Lucian nodded once. “I know.”
“So, then she stays.”
“And what, we get into a gun fight with a half of a dozen men? We let them storm the house? We—and John—dies? That’s not going to work, Andino.”
Yeah, fuck.
All he could think to say again was, “But she belongs with John.”
After all Siena had done for his cousin, wasn’t that fair to her?
She loved him. The same way Andino loved Haven. He knew it was true; he saw it every time Siena risked herself for John.
The only difference was … Siena and John deserved each other. Andino wasn’t sure he deserved someone like Haven at all.
“She does belong with him, you’re right.” Lucian shrugged. “So, we’ll have to get her back for him, won’t we?”
That sounded simple.
It wouldn’t be.
It took another two days before Lucian had been able to convince his son to voluntarily check in to a facility that would help stabilize John, and get him back on track. Andino stayed back, leaning against the side of his car, as he watched his uncle say goodbye to a very despondent John on the walkway of Clearview Oaks.
At least, the place didn’t scream psychiatric ward.
It looked normal.
Because it was.
“This is killing Lucian,” Andino’s father muttered at his side.
“I can tell,” Andino replied.
“John has to go in, and check in alone—of his own free will,” Dante said as he came to stand on the other side of Andino. “Something Lucian needs to learn, I think. Let the man do this on his own.”
Andino shook his head. “Lucian knows.”
His boss shot him a look. “What’s that supposed to mean, nipote?”
“It means, you don’t need to keep stepping in on people’s lives, and making choices for them when they already know what has to be done, and how to do it.”
Giovanni cleared his throat.
Dante only arched a brow. “Is that so?”
“It is.”
He wished his uncle would put the advice to use.
“Let’s start with you, then,” Dante murmured.
Andino stiffened. “That’s not what I—”
“Oh, well. It’s what you said.”
“I meant in general, not that we had to get in to specifics.”
Dante shrugged. “Since you’re all about letting others make their choices when they know what they have to do, and how to do it … I think it’s best we do start with you.”
Of course, he did.
His uncle continued on even when Andino stayed quiet next to him. “We have to make choices, now. All of us. What we’re going to do from here, and how we’re going to do it. John killed a rival boss, and the family of that boss is now in an uproar. Threatening war with our family—it’s only a matter of time before the first person dies.”
“I don’t think he meant for that to happen,” Andino muttered.
“Maybe not, but now we have to act. We have to protect our family.”
“I know—”
“Do you?” Dante asked sharply.
“I do.”
“And what would your call be, then?”
“Answer them with whatever they throw at us,” Andino said. “Nothing that wouldn’t be worth it, anyway. We can handle this. The Calabrese only want power from us—they’re snakes in the grass, and nothing more. I wouldn’t give them anything.”
Dante scoffed. “Of course. You’re so willing to rush into a violent street war with a rival family just because you know we can win it? What will be the cost, then? How many of our men will need to die because pride won’t allow you to do what would probably be the best, even if it didn’t feel right? My wife, or daughter? One of Lucian’s children, perhaps? Your mother?”
Giovanni made a sound in the back of his throat, but stayed quiet on the other side of Andino. In fact, his father never even looked away from where Lucian was still saying goodbye to John on the walkway.
“That’s the thing about wars,” Dante said, “not that I expect you to understand, Andino, as we’ve kept the peace in this city for your entire life so that you never had to live through a street war with another family. But in war, someone always has to lose. And that loss doesn’t necessarily mean in the grand scheme of someone coming out on top, or on the bottom. It means, each side will lose something and someone because that is inevitable.”
Guilt compounded hard in Andino’s chest. That duty—the responsibility of protecting his family, their life, and name—that he had been ignoring for so long was suddenly heavy and present on his head again, weighing down his shoulders.
He said nothing.
His uncle didn’t seem to need him to.
“Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” Dante murmured. “And it’s always the man who wears the crown that sacrifices the most, Andino, so the rest of the people around him never have to. What are you willing to sacrifice? I asked you once … when push comes to shove, would you step up, or step back? Time’s up, nipote. Step up with me, or step back.”
In a way, it pissed Andino off that his uncle thought he wouldn’t do what needed to be done. That he would think about himself before ever thinking about their family, and how to protect them. Andino had been protecting his family in one way or another his whole fucking life.
He didn’t expect Dante to understand, though.
Andino knew what he had to do—even if it was to the detriment of himself, and his heart. Even if it would kill him, and someone else, too.
He knew how to make peace.
For now, anyway.
“You’re doing that again,” Andino said, “where you’re trying to tell me to do something I already know I have to do, and how to do it.”
“And what is it you have to do?” Dante asked.
“Make peace with the Calabrese.”
By any means necessary.
There was really only one way to do that in their world when something like this happened. There was only one way to appease the rage and violence before it spun out of control. There was one single thing he could give to feed the snakes so that they didn’t come back to bite them.
Because even if Andino hated that he was in this position, he was really the only Marcello man who could possibly offer something good enough to a rival family that they would hold off on starting a war. He was the only one with any sort of position that still had an open spot at his side in his public and private life that needed to be filled—the next boss, still without a wife, and now, stuck between a rock and a hard place.
No one was going to be happy.
At least, not the Marcellos.
Not Andino.
Not Haven.
Duty called.
It waited on no one.
TWENTY-TWO
Noon—meet me on the trails.
Haven hadn’t even needed to ask which trails Andino meant. The same jogging trails where they had first crossed paths.
It felt foreboding.
Something bad was on the way.
She didn’t have any particular reason to feel like that, but in her heart … it was there that she knew. Like they were coming back to this place where they first said hello so that they could maybe say a goodbye, too.
It was his first text in days, so maybe that was why she was left with this dreadful feeling making her throat tight, and her heart ache.
Haven’s phone still burned a hole in her pocket long after she’d gotten that text from Andino earlier that morning. She’d responded confirmatively, but he’d not said anything more.
Here it was, five minutes to twelve, and he still hadn’t shown his face. Haven was trying not to let that bother her. Just like she’d been trying ever since she returned home from Florida to get back to some semblance of normal in her
life.
Jog.
Work.
Home.
It might seem boring to someone else, but it was comforting to her. Like this, she knew that no matter what happened, she could still maintain the normalcy of what had once become her life before the hurricane that was Andino Marcello rushed into it without any kind of warning.
“Haven.”
She looked up from the white snow blanketing the ground to find Andino was only ten feet away. He didn’t move to sit beside her on the bench. There was no Snaps by his side with a stick in his mouth like usual. No latte in his hand for her. He didn’t even take his hands out of his pockets, or even really look at her. He was too busy staring down the trail as though he were waiting for someone to stroll down to their spot.
Oh, yeah.
She knew.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, never turning to look at her entirely. “Sorry that I did a lot of things wrong, and I’m sorry that there’s a lot of things I can’t do differently. I’m most sorry that I can’t be what and who you deserve.”
Haven blinked.
Was that what he thought?
She’d just wanted to be something.
Something more than nothing to him.
“I knew you were going to break my heart,” Haven said.
Andino looked at her then—all forest green eyes blazing, and his face passive. “Did you?”
“I just … felt it.”
And she didn’t want to sit around, and let him keep breaking it, either. If this was done, then she figured, they needed to let it be done. There was no reason to linger, and allow it to hurt them even more.
Or … her.
She didn’t want to hurt more.
Haven stood from the bench, and brushed the few snowflakes off her coat with shaking hands that she tried to hide by shoving in her pockets. Despite what she knew she should do—leave, and let it be done—her soul screamed for her to stay right there.
It was such a fucking contradiction.
She hated it.
“What changed?” she asked. “A couple of days ago, you told me you loved me. You didn’t even give me the chance to say it back, Andino.”
His gaze met hers again. “Would you—say it back, I mean?”
“Of course, I would. That’s why the first thing I did when I came back was to call you. I know we could have done things differently, or that things could be different on both our sides if we just figured it out. But it didn’t matter to me, either. I just wanted to feel like I was something important to you, and not an afterthought in your life. Not something you used, and discarded.”
Like he was doing right now.
That killed her.
Haven wasn’t even sure Andino knew that, and if he did, she wasn’t sure he cared. Andino’s stiff posture, and blank expression remained. It was like nothing she said made any impact, and Haven wasn’t sure what to do with that.
“We’re never going to be together,” he said, the words barely a murmur carrying through the wind. “Not now; not after everything. You’re not appropriate for my position in my family, and I can’t keep being selfish.”
Ouch.
A slap might have felt better.
Haven refused to let him take another shot at her, although really, she wondered if his words were simply meant to send her running. Not that he actually meant them. Either way, he achieved his goal.
Giving him one last look, Haven said, “It was good, though, wasn’t it?”
Andino smiled faintly. “While it lasted, sure. Have a good life, Haven. It’s what you deserve.”
Haven was all the way to the mouth of the trail that would lead her back home when she finally looked over her shoulder again. Still holding back tears she refused to let anyone see fall because she was not weak; a man would not make her weak.
Still, she looked back.
She had to know.
Just to see … to know if he was still there, or already gone.
She expected one thing.
She found another.
Andino was still staring at her, but he’d lost that blank slate of nothingness that had been his expression before; pain stared back now.
Loss.
Haven recognized it if only because she was sure that was the same thing reflecting back from her, too.
He didn’t want her to go. He still let her leave.
Why is he such a good liar?
Why?
VOW
ANDINO + HAVEN, BOOK 2
ONE
The cold grip of a late February wind clutched at Andino Marcello’s throat even as he tried to flip the collar of his jacket higher to keep it out. Nothing worked—nothing ever worked to keep out that kind of cold in this fucking city.
They still had another month of this shit to go, too. Winter wasn’t going to let up until it had ravaged New York with one cold blast after another, even if it was the last day of February.
Usually, he didn’t mind the weather as much as he did this winter. He could ignore the cold, and get lost in work, or something else. This year was not shaking out to be quite the same. So was his fucking life lately.
A giant dumpster fire.
A lot like his mood, too.
Andino grunted at the enforcer who held open the restaurant door for him to slip inside. On another day, he might have given the man a nod or thanks. Not to-fucking-day. All he wanted to do was get this goddamn meeting over with, and go home.
He wasn’t even planning to work.
Andino was acutely aware of the eyes that fell on him as he entered the business. Men from his family, and men from another neighboring New York Cosa Nostra. Although, where the Marcello family hated the Calabrese organization, they tolerated the Donati crime family.
It probably helped that Dante had finally accepted the fact his daughter was going to be with Cross Donati whether her father liked it or not. Andino gave it less than six months before his cousin married the cocky Donati fucker—everybody got to have their happily ever after.
Except him, apparently.
He was still alone.
Haven still wasn’t his.
And all for what?
Andino glanced around the restaurant, and the men waiting on him to come in and take a seat, so they could begin this meeting. Apparently, he gave her up for this.
This life.
His family.
The legacy.
Duty.
He didn’t want to be bitter about it, but that was difficult. Harder than he expected it to be, frankly. The problem was—nobody gave a damn, and he couldn’t find it in himself to let them know how he felt.
Not yet, anyway.
No man in this life wanted the people around him to know he was struggling emotionally, or with something silly like love. Or the loss of it, for that matter. It was a simple weakness for someone to pick at, or hone in on. Andino wasn’t in the business of showcasing his weaknesses like badges of honor for someone else to use as fucking target practice. He was still intended to be the boss.
The boss couldn’t be emotional.
Or so he was told.
Besides, they had bigger problems to deal with at the moment than his feelings. Too many issues to name. Every single one started and ended with the fucking Calabrese family, and the fact John had killed their boss.
Surprise, surprise.
It was a mess waiting to happen.
Why was anyone shocked?
“The roads are terrible,” Andino grumbled under his breath as he took a seat beside his quiet uncle. Dante hadn’t asked, but the quirking of the man’s eyebrow was enough for him to silently ask, Where the fuck were you? “The storm picked up.”
“Should make for a fun drive home,” his father said across the table.
Andino shrugged. “That’s February for you.”
He didn’t miss the look that passed between his father, and his other uncle, Lucian. Andino had been in a mood for days, and it wasn’t about to
change anytime soon. He couldn’t fucking shake it, no matter how hard he tried. He was grateful that, for the most part, the men around him who knew him well chose not to ask.
That made shit easier.
On him, at least.
“Shall we get started?” Dante asked.
Andino nodded. “Yeah, let’s start.”
“We need to figure out a way to handle the Calabrese,” his uncle said. “We all need to come to some agreement that will clean up this mess—preferably in a peaceful manner.”
“Their violence is escalating,” Giovanni added.
“They’re directly targeting Capos, or their crews,” Lucian said.
Andino sighed, and scrubbed a hand down his face. They all offered this information as though he didn’t know it to begin with. Like he’d had his fucking head shoved under sand for the last while, and pretended that he didn’t know what was happening out on the streets.
He was the underboss.
He got the calls.
He handled the Capos.
“I know what’s going on,” Andino snapped. “And I’m aware that we need to figure something out to handle the fucking Calabrese.”
Dante shifted in his chair, and said, “Other people in this restaurant are not aware.” With that statement, his uncle gave a nod in Cross Donati’s direction, adding, “Or at least, he doesn’t know the latest details. He’s the boss of another organization in this city—this growing war between our family and the Calabrese could indirectly disrupt his business and organization.”
Shit.
Yeah.
Andino needed to get back on his game, and fast. “All attempts to reach out to the Calabrese, and settle this by less violent means has been shut down at every turn.”
“Then, what do they want?” Cross Donati asked.
Wasn’t it obvious?
“A problem.”
Dante chuckled dryly. “That, and to one-up the Marcellos. They’ve always had a hard nut for that, yeah?”
A quiet agreement passed over the men sitting at various tables. There were more Marcello men in the business than Donati men. It looked like Cross had only brought a select few to the meeting.
“Do you have an opinion?” Dante asked the man. “Anything you would like to add?”
