by Bethany-Kris
She found herself rolled over on the bed in a single breath, and John hovered above her. The hard lines of his body were like a canvas of art for her—unblemished and mostly unmarked. She could stare at him all day, and never be bored.
His fingers tangled with hers, and pressed them into the pillow above her head. He fit perfectly between her widened thighs, and she could feel his erection growing harder against her naked thigh with every shift of their bodies.
John dropped a kiss to her nose.
One to each eyelid.
A path across her jaw.
Dotted kisses to her cheeks.
It was so sweet, that all she could do was smile when he finally came back to her lips. For the moment, the two could pretend like a war wasn’t raging outside their small bubble. That nothing was wrong in their life.
They could be normal.
“I missed you,” he said quietly.
His words grazed her lips like his kiss had. A soft-spoken promise that only brushed along her surface, but somehow managed to reach deep into her heart, and grab tight. An assurance that would never let her go.
She couldn’t let it go.
“I missed you, too,” she said.
John grinned. “I figured I had the chance to come over, so I might as well take it.”
“Not complaining.”
“Didn’t think you would.”
All over again, she was struck by how at ease John seemed compared to the last time. “You look a lot better—headspace-wise, I mean.”
“Do I?”
“Mmhmm.”
John’s lips curved a bit at the edges. “Choosing stability means being honest when I’m having trouble. Not to everyone, mind you. It’s not about them—this is all about me, and my mental health.”
“Absolutely.”
“Leonard—the new therapist—dropped the mood stabilizer for a bit and changed it to an antidepressant until I level out again. Might take a couple weeks. Might be a month. All depends.”
But …
John had gone and done that.
Asked for something different.
Acknowledged something was offset.
Knew he needed a change.
It was huge.
“It’s not a big deal,” he said at the sight of her growing grin.
“You know it kind of is, John.”
“It’s a good thing, yes.”
“That, too.” Siena looked over at the clock again. “I’ve got a little while before Jason will be knocking on my door again.”
John’s happiness was soon gone with those words. “Mmm.”
“Kev’s funeral,” she explained.
“Ah. Shame.”
“It is. I would rather stay in bed than go and put on yet another farce for him, even if the bastard is dead.”
John stilled and quieted as his gaze traveled over Siena. She could hear his silent questions without actually needing him to ask them. She could feel the unspoken words burning between the two of them.
They hadn’t talked about what she did.
Not really.
Seemed that silence was over.
“You don’t regret it at all, do you?” John asked.
Siena didn’t flinch. “Not when it’s for you—for us.”
“He was still your—”
“Nothing. He meant nothing.”
John cleared his throat. “Jesus, woman, don’t be so cold. I don’t like you cold.”
Siena smiled, unable to stop herself. “Never cold to you, John.”
“Better not be.”
He let go of her hands, and Siena used that freedom to cup his jaw, and pull him in for another lingering, burning kiss. That flame he created was now a devastating inferno, ravaging her insides in the best way.
“Do you ever think about the future?” she asked.
John—so close she could see the flakes of gold in his hazel eyes—smiled. “I do when I feel like punishing myself. Nothing is ever really guaranteed, you know.”
She did know.
“Doesn’t matter to me,” Siena told him. “I still think about it. I need to. It helps.”
“What do you think about, then?”
“Us.”
John’s smile deepened. “Be specific.”
“Everything. A wedding. I’d go for ivory, likely. In a church, maybe, but I wouldn’t be offended if it wasn’t, too. I wouldn’t want to walk alone, though.”
“No?”
“You could walk with me. Be different.”
John laughed. “I would absolutely walk with you, donna. You never have to be alone.”
“And I think about what comes after all of that, too. Life, kids—”
Siena’s words trailed off when she felt John stiffen above her. She met his gaze, but could plainly see the way he tried to hide his discomfort.
“What?” she asked.
“Kids is kind of touchy topic for me,” he said, shrugging.
John dropped to the bed beside her. He used a hand to rest his head on as he stared at her, waiting for a reply. Siena didn’t really know how to reply.
“Why?”
“It isn’t obvious?” he asked.
“No.”
John waved a hand toward his own body. “This, Siena.”
“I’m lost.”
“I didn’t wake up one day with bipolar—I didn’t catch it like a sickness, babe. I’ve had it in my genetics from the day I was born, and puberty was the switch turning it on for me. There’s no cure for it, either. You learn to manage it, and to stay at relatively stable levels that still fluctuate no matter what you do. There’s a genetic component. Something in my DNA that was there from someone else in my family. Passed on, you know?”
“John—”
“Having kids means continuing this on—or possibly. You don’t know for sure, right? My parents had four kids, and I was the one that found the barrel of the gun in the game of genetic roulette, so to speak. I’m not sure I want to do this to one of my kids. I know what it felt like to be confused for more than half my life, and to constantly feel like I was drowning.”
“But there’s nothing wrong with you.”
John gave her a look.
Siena only gave it right back.
“Siena,” he said, a little too patronizing for her liking. “I didn’t say something was wrong. There is something different, though.”
“You don’t want kids at all?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You’re not saying differently, either.”
John frowned, and scrubbed a hand down his jaw. Rolling to his back, he stared at the ceiling. “I never gave it a lot of thought—settled myself on the idea it just wasn’t going to be something I moved forward with.”
“See, that kind of sounds like a strong no.”
He looked over at her. The intensity of his gaze made her still in place.
Siena still managed to speak. “This is a hard line for me, John. I want children. I have always wanted children.”
He nodded. “I never did.”
Ouch.
“Until this, and you,” he added in a murmur.
Relief so sweet it was almost poisonous swept through Siena’s insides. “Oh?”
“Mmm.” John sighed, and went back to staring at the ceiling. “Like everything in my life, I can’t go into something like that without planning for it. It’s a huge change, and—”
“I get it.”
Quickly, Siena crossed the space between them, and crawled back on top of him. She straddled his waist, tangled their fingers together, and looked down at him.
“But there isn’t, by the way,” she said.
John cocked a brow. “What?”
“Something wrong with you. There isn’t.”
“It took me a long time to figure that out, though, Siena. I’m thirty-one now. I still wake up some mornings and think, why can’t my brain work like everybody else’s? I wonder why I have to struggle with emotions, and pr
ocessing them, not to mention everything else that comes along with being bipolar. It took a long time to figure out nothing was wrong. It was hell.”
“But you did. That’s what matters most today.”
John didn’t deny it.
Siena felt like that was a battle won for him.
• • •
Siena’s attention drifted between her brother saying one last goodbye to the closed casket keeping Kev’s body hidden from view, and the sunlight streaming in through the colorful stained glass windows. She should have been more present, or at least, made the effort to seem like she gave some kind of damn.
She couldn’t do it.
At least, she had managed to put on a proper black dress, sweep her hair into a simple chignon, and brush her face with a bit of makeup. It wasn’t the effort she would usually put into getting ready for church or a funeral, but it was the best she could do for today. Anything more, and it might seem like she cared.
She didn’t.
Darren nodded to one of his men when the guy came closer. It seemed like her brother had more of those—men to do his bidding—than she cared to count, now. Unlike Kev who only worked with a couple of people, and kept Darren the closest, her other brother was entirely different. He kept many men at his side, and handed out orders like a tyrant who was unwilling to be questioned or challenged.
The change had happened instantly.
Practically overnight.
Siena supposed she now understood what her father had meant when he once told her that while many bosses came into the position by chance, far more bosses in this life were simply made that way. Men born to be in a position of power because they had the temperament, control, and mindset to do the job.
Her brother was not the man born to do the job, but rather, one who had come into the seat by chance, and was making the best of what he had to work with. Sometimes, it was a fascinating show to watch, and other times, it was incredibly disconcerting to Siena.
Darren was a chameleon—able to change the exterior he offered to someone depending on the situation at hand. He might not be a boss on the inside, but he was fully capable of presenting the image of a boss on the outside when he needed to.
Unlike John.
A man who Siena thought would suit a position like a boss’s seat far better than Darren. John, who commanded attention without needing to change his image to suit the needs of others in order to make his position and demands clear.
John was who John was.
Darren, on the other hand, wasn’t quite sure who he was at the moment, but rather, only knew who he needed to be.
“Get up.”
Siena glanced over at her mother’s sharp order. “What?”
Coraline waved at the aisle. “Come on, we have to follow behind the casket. Stop acting like a daydreaming, foolish girl, Siena.”
Jesus.
She pushed out of the pew to quickly follow behind the casket carrying her brother. Darren was one of the pallbearers, along with a few other men he had chosen to do the job with him. She kept her head down as she walked toward the entrance of the church, entirely uninterested in meeting the gazes of those who had come to say goodbye to Kev. The scent of the priest’s incense clung heavily all around them.
Almost over.
She would soon be able to take off her mask again.
Be free again.
Siena’s mother slid in beside her as they continued their trek behind the casket and procession. Coraline’s mask of grief was all but gone in that moment, and instead, a cold, expressionless, and unfeeling one took its place.
For a second, it took Siena by surprise.
Her mother didn’t give her the time to question it before she started talking. And when she did talk, it scared Siena to death.
“You should have been more careful with your business,” her mother murmured. “And by business, I mean Johnathan Marcello.”
Siena swallowed hard, and looked forward. She kept her gaze locked on the back of the shined, gleaming black casket with its gold-plated bars and details. “I have no idea what you’re—”
“Don’t play stupid with me,” Coraline hissed low. All the while, her mother’s face remained impassive. Her voice stayed too low for someone else to overhear, and her expression gave nothing away as to their conversation. Siena could not say her face looked the same. “I will not allow you to ruin what your brother is working so hard for simply because you cannot control your stupid little heart.”
Her mother said the word with so much disgust, that Siena flinched.
“You think this little issue with the Marcello and Calabrese families is new?” Coraline scoffed low, and shook her head subtly. “No, Siena, it is far from new. Years—decades—in the making, really. It started with your grandfather, and then was passed onto your father. He passed it onto your brothers, and finally … Jesus, finally, we have the chance to finish this. To either take a controlling portion, or ruin the Marcello family for good. Except here you are, getting in the goddamn way with that man.”
Coraline sneered, but quickly replaced it with a sad smile when she waved to someone who reached out to touch her arm as she passed. Out of the corner of her mouth, her mother said, “Darren has the Marcellos where he needs them to be—soft, and pliable. Backed into a corner, so to speak. I love you, Siena, and that is the only reason I was willing to turn my cheek about what I knew you were doing, but if you don’t stop, I won’t be able to pretend anymore.”
Siena’s throat tightened more.
Her mother nodded. “And you do know what your brother would do to Johnathan should he find out you have been entertaining the man behind his back, don’t you? I am sure you would hate for your crazy boyfriend—if you could even call him that—to die because of your stupidity.”
“Ma—”
“Shut up,” Coraline hissed.
The two walked out into the sunlight, and quieted for the moment. Siena took the second she had where her mother wasn’t talking to suck in a deep gulp of air. It felt like the breath had been ripped right out of her lungs, and her chest was crushed.
How did her mother know she was still with John?
How had she known anything?
Siena was careful—she had to be. She made sure not to leave anything lying around where someone could find it. She was back at her own place which meant she didn’t have to worry about someone listening through the walls, or just outside the door.
She didn’t take risks.
She didn’t dare.
Except …
She had.
Once, or twice.
Kev’s casket was pushed into the back of the hearse by the pallbearers. The men all slapped the back of the casket with their palm—a final goodbye.
Siena’s mother turned to her once more. “You are my daughter, Siena, and I do not want to see you become fodder to a man’s games or plans. Play this right with me, and you could have far more than you ever dreamed of. Johnathan—is he really your highest bar to reach? He is what you really want? Why? You could have much more, darling.”
She didn’t reply.
Her mother apparently wasn’t looking for one.
“The Marcellos have called a meeting with your brother. Darren expects it will either lead them into a peaceful resolution that puts the Calabrese higher, or it will dissolve into more violence that will lead them into a longer war. Either way, it will be happening soon. Should you do anything to cause your brother to call off that meeting—say, get caught with Johnathan—you will not like what I do.”
It was always men who planned.
Men who played games.
Men who manipulated.
Siena learned in that moment that men often forgot women were the flies on the wall. Women were the ones who needed to be watched because they held more information than anyone possibly knew.
Women were the dangerous ones.
Women like her mother.
“How did you know?” Siena asked.<
br />
“About you and the Marcello man?”
Siena only nodded.
Coraline turned to face Siena with a cold smile. “I was coming to visit you a while back, but you rushed out of your place like a bat out of hell. Your enforcer didn’t trail behind, so I thought I should. I saw where you went, and I saw you leave his place. I thought … maybe I should keep a closer eye on you. I am glad I did.”
Fuck.
Nothing was ever safe.
Not in their life.
“You see,” Coraline said, “your brothers are a lot like your father—or was, for Kev. They’re stupid in the way they believe that their word is law, and because they have said it, us women will automatically follow it. I know better. Do you think I stumbled upon my marriage with your father because I loved him, and wanted to marry him?”
“I don’t know why you married Daddy, no.”
“Because I was told to, but not because I wanted to. I have learned over the years to make sure the men in my life take everything I give them at face value and never feel the need to dig deeper. I loved Matteo, I did—it took years, but I loved him. And I will not see everything he worked for ruined because one of his children cannot manage to step in line with the rest.”
“I will stay in line, Ma.”
Only long enough to watch the Marcellos ruin this family.
After that, it was fair game.
“You better, but should you think to do something to force my hand,” her mother warned, “you will not like what I do. I will make my arranged marriage and carefully sheltered life look like a cake walk compared to your future after this, darling. I do not want to hurt you, but I absolutely will.”
What could she possibly say to that? Nothing.
So she didn’t.
Coraline moved down the stairs, calling over her shoulder, “Keep it in mind, Siena.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE CONVERSATION filtered down the main hall of the large Amityville home as John strolled through the front door, and closed it behind him softly. He took quiet strides, following the conversation until muffled voices were much clearer.
“It’ll take time,” he heard his mother say.
