by Sam Mariano
Gio is in his chair, but he rears back when he sees I have his child on my chest.
“Moonlighting as a nanny now?” he asks.
“Seems that way,” I reply, shifting Skylar on my chest so I can reach into my jacket and draw out the envelopes I have for him. “I have to stop by Giordano’s later and have a little chat with him, but everything else is there.”
Gio reaches over to take the envelopes. “He giving you trouble again?”
“Not on purpose, but yeah. The business isn’t doing much lately. Good pizza. Too bad. Anyway, I’ll handle it, make sure he’s not late again next month.”
“I appreciate that,” he says, placing the envelopes down on the desk and leaning back in his chair. “You always do good work for us, Sin. Always have. I don’t want you to think no one notices. I notice everything.”
Unnoticed is not the thing I’ve been feeling lately. Unappreciated, sure, but it’s not like I don’t know why.
Anyway, I don’t thank him for appreciating me. It’s my job and I do it, simple as that.
I nod, looking at Skylar. She was ready to play a minute ago, but now she’s snuggled up on my chest, content as a kitten. “If that’s all, I should probably go find Lydia and give her back your kid.”
“No, no, stay,” he says, gesturing with his hand for me to take a seat. “There’s something else I want to talk to you about. Not unrelated, but... something else, still. How are you feeling about things lately? With the business? Are you happy?”
Shuttering myself off as suspicion creeps in, I give him a blank look, but I take a seat anyway. “Happy as a fucking clam. Why? Someone say otherwise?”
“No, no, of course not.” This is what Gio does when he’s uncomfortable—repeating certain shit twice. It’s always, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be there,” or “No, no, sit down.”
“Let’s talk like adults,” I tell him, not in the mood to waste time. “What’s on your mind, Gio?”
Clasping his hands together, he ponders for a moment. “I want to ask you some things, but I’m worried you might not trust them, all right? And I want you to trust me, but I know you’ve been more Rafe’s guy in the past, and I understand that. The problem is, I get the feeling that maybe Rafe isn’t utilizing all your potential. I think you could do more for us than you do now, and I think maybe your personal issues with Laurel… I worry Rafe is letting his own personal issues get in the way of doing right by you when it comes to business matters, and that’s not right. It crossed my mind you might not be too happy about that.”
I don’t say whether or not I’m happy. I don’t trust shit like this—one of my bosses asking me if I’m unhappy with another of my bosses. Particularly when Rafe might be looking for a reason to get rid of me, so asking Gio to feel me out would be a good way to find a reason he could get by the whole family for taking me out. No, of course he didn’t kill me for fucking around with Laurel—he killed me because I was turning on him, just ask Gio. Because that makes all the fucking sense in the world. I risk my position in this family, risk my whole life to get his ass on the throne, so why wouldn’t I turn on him? Makes perfect fucking sense.
Then there’s the flipside of the coin, that Gio is older than Rafe and the rightful boss after Vince, only Rafe decided to skip the line. We let Gio live because he rolled right over—didn’t even roll over, exactly, just made like he was never interested in the boss position to start with, and he’d be happy for Rafe to have it in his place. Some of the best snakes pretend to be on your side though, that’s one of the first things you learn in any kind of business. The true betrayals come from the people closest to you.
Since I’m not saying shit, Gio nods and takes a few seconds to modify his approach. Clearing his throat like he’s about to say something delicate, he tells me, “Sin, in the interest of treating you with all the respect I think you’re owed, I want to put my cards down on the table. I want to be straight with you. I know about you and Laurel. I know you two had some kind of…” He waves a hand, not giving a fuck about my romantic dealings. “I know you still want her, that’s the point I’m trying to make. I don’t want you to get angry, and I don’t want you to think this was intentional because it wasn’t—I had no way of even guessing you would be at Rafe’s house that night—but…” He pauses to clear his throat again. “I do have footage of you and Laurel together on Rafe’s couch the night she watched Skylar.”
My heart stops beating, then roars back to life, so loud I hear it pounding in my ears. I still have one hand on Skylar to keep her supported on my chest, but my free hand clenches into a fist. My knuckles are already fucking sore, and now I want to jam them into this motherfucker’s face. Holding his baby right now is about to get inconvenient.
“Footage?” I ask, my voice carefully controlled. It’s so fucking hard not to fly off the handle. Not only is this asshole spying on me—or Laurel?—but what is this now? A fucking threat? He thinks he can blackmail me with some fucking footage of…
Well, depending on what he has footage of, he can. There’s no way in hell Rafe can ever see me and Laurel on that couch together. Fuck, why did I let that happen? I always get carried away with her and lose my damn head.
“Now, now, Sin, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Gio says, eyebrows rising as he holds a hand to try to placate me. “This is not me threatening you. I am not trying to disrespect you. I told you about this in the interest of being forthright, so you understand where I’m coming from. Why I know the things I know. It was purely by accident. Lydia has a nanny cam in the teddy bear. She likes to make sure the babysitters aren’t up to anything—it’s dumb, but it’s just one of those things, you know? Your wife wants to spend hundreds of fucking dollars on a teddy bear with a camera in its eyeball, you just say ‘yes dear’ and move on. Anyway, in this case, it worked out a lot better than expected because… well, obviously, you were there. The point is, you don’t have to deny it, because that would be pointless. I was not intentionally spying on you, but I did end up with this information falling into my lap.”
“And of course you had to watch it. Despite all this trust you supposedly have in me, all this respect, when you saw what you saw, instead of turning the damn thing off, you kept watching.”
He starts to smirk and I can almost see Laurel in her flimsy robe, her bra and panties. New rage surges through me at this philandering motherfucker even thinking about Laurel that way. He must see it on my face, because he pulls himself out of it, clearing his stray thoughts off his face and holds up his hand again. “I know, and I’m sorry about that. My curiosity got the better of me. I should have respected your privacy, and I apologize. The point is, I know you want her, I know she wants you, and I know there’s only one thing standing in the way of you having her.”
Aw, fuck.
I was hoping this wasn’t where this was going.
Then again, if it went the other way, that would also be bad. Basically, I’ve been fucked from the moment I sat down in this goddamned seat.
“I want you to have her,” Gio tells me. “I think you deserve to have her. And she definitely wants you—I don’t have to tell you that.”
“Don’t,” I say, not liking the way his tone is relapsing back into making it sleazy. There’s nothing sleazy about what’s between me and Laurel, and a guy like him could never understand it.
He holds up a hand and nods one more apology. “I’ll be blunt, Sin. I know you’re loyal. But I know something Rafe has let himself forget. Hungry dogs can’t afford to be loyal. I think you’re hungry, Sin. I think under Rafe’s leadership, you’re left wanting, and I don’t see that changing now that what you want is Laurel. Here’s what you deserve.” He ticks off fingers. “You deserve to be treated with respect by the man you’re working for. You deserve a seat at the table, not a spot guarding the door outside while everybody else gets rich. And you deserve to have the girl, if that’s what you want. I want to give you more respect, a better position, a seat at the table, more mo
ney… and I want to give you Laurel. I want to make you whole again, Sin. I want you to have your girl, your family, your job—I want to do right by you in all areas. I think Rafe’s a fool for not giving you what you need, after everything you’ve done for him. He doesn’t even fucking like that girl. You know he’s fucking around with that waitress he hired.”
Rage explodes in my chest, pours through my veins like molten lava from an erupting volcano. Breath rushes in and out of my body, so fucking overcome with adrenaline and heat, I feel like I might actually combust. Suddenly this baby on my chest is like a space heater; my suit may as well be a garbage bag, keeping in all the heat. I’m burning with rage.
Consequences be damned, I want to find that motherfucker and plant my fist in his face. That’s not even good enough. I want to beat the shit out of him in his driveway, the same one where he first made Laurel cry, and then I want to bash his fucking head in with the nearest blunt object.
That stupid fucking asshole has Laurel at home, keeps Laurel from me, and he’s out fucking some worthless whore who doesn’t hold a candle to her?
I am so fucking livid, I can’t see straight. Thoughts of all the nights I could’ve had with her that she’s spent with him instead run through my head, along with a sleazy imagining of Rafe showing up on Marlena’s fucking doorstep, sneaking around behind Laurel’s back. Maybe he wasn’t even at the club that night. Maybe he left her home alone with a baby to go spend time with that skank. Maybe that’s the future he plans to give her. He keeps everything I want for himself, and the fucker doesn’t even appreciate what he has.
My jaw is clenched so tightly my fucking teeth hurt. Gio is quiet, letting me simmer in my rage. It takes a while before it occurs to me—looking up at the Morelli sitting on the other side of his desk right now—that he strongly suspected this would be my reaction.
If I wanted to piss off someone like me, it wouldn’t take a whole hell of a lot of brain power to guess lying about something like this would get the desired response. Gio knows I have feelings for Laurel, he knows I’m currently coveting what Rafe has, but he does not know I’ve been keeping an eye on Marlena myself. If Rafe is fucking her, why not do it at the apartment he is paying for her to stay in? I’ve reviewed the goings-on at her apartment every single night, and I haven’t heard her even talking to Rafe on the phone, let alone fucking him—and I planted a bug in her bedroom specifically for that reason.
I don’t like being lied to. I don’t like being manipulated. If Gio is manipulating me, he’s making a big-ass mistake.
Then again, Gio comes with Laurel. If I’m being honest, even without the family to back it up, I’ve had fantasies about turning on Rafe so I could have Laurel. If this is going down with or without me, if all I have to give up is Rafe to get Laurel… well, shit, that’s tempting.
I don’t know if I want to work for Gio, but that he’s calling me in like this means he is planning a coup either way, and he’s planning to clean house when he does it—but he doesn’t want me swept up with the rest of them. He wants me on his side. He wants me to be his guy instead of Rafe’s.
“How solid is this?” I ask him.
“Rock solid,” he tells me, with confidence.
“Who have we got?”
Smiling faintly, he says, “You know I can’t tell you that unless you’ve made a decision, Sin.” Holding up that goddamn hand again, he adds, “There is something more. I wasn’t planning to make a move just yet, but when I discovered Rafe’s plans, I pushed up my own. You’re an integral part of my operations—or, I want you to be—and much as I hate to be the one to tell you this, Rafe’s been talking to Theo about taking your spot. Naturally he has kept this quiet, it’s strictly need to know, but…”
I nod my understanding. I know exactly what that means. If Rafe’s talking to my replacement—the only guy half as good as me—that means my time’s up. Rafe’s planning to take me out. If Gio is to be believed, anyway.
I wait to feel surprised, but I don’t. I guess in the back of my head I knew this was coming. It had to. The first time I fisted my hand in Laurel’s hair and guided her mouth toward my cock, I opened the door to this eventuality.
“Who all knows?” I ask, calmly.
“Rafe, me, and Theo. That’s it. For obvious reasons, he didn’t want this getting around.”
Oh, the reasons are obvious, all right. It’s not good business to kill the man who helped you get to the top. Conveniently, the only people who can verify this story are the one telling it, the one who might want to kill me, and the one who would replace me.
Well, now I have one more fucking thing on my to-do list today.
“Who is he sending? Freelancer?”
“Theo. It’s his tryout.”
“Huh.” That’s a little more convincing. Theo does good work. If Gio is sitting here telling me this, he knows I have to kill him now before he kills me. Why feed me one of our better guys when he could have easily convinced me he was hiring a freelancer? It’s not the way things are always done, but Mateo sent a freelancer to kill Ben, and now that he and Rafe are chummy, I would have believed he decided to go the same route. It’s cleaner, and this is personal, not business. You send your own guys when it’s business, but when it’s personal and you have as much money as these fuckers have, you can afford to hire your own cleaning service.
Since I’ve heard all I need to hear, I brace my other hand on Skylar’s back and stand. She coos at me like a little fucking angel, and I wish I didn’t have to give her back.
Of course, if I take Gio up on this offer, I’ll have Laurel and a baby I won’t have to give back. I won’t even have to share. Rafe will be dead, Laurel will be mine, and there will be zero threats to my happiness. After we have that baby, I’ll put another one in her. I’ll have her in my bed every single night. I can have it all.
All I have to do is turn on Rafe, and since he turned on me first… well, it’s worth considering.
Eyeing me as he takes the baby, Gio asks, “So, what do you say?”
“I need a day or so to think on it. Run through it. I need to know who’s on board and who I’ll have to deal with. I’m gonna have to replace Theo. There’s a lot of work to do. I’ve done it once, but it wasn’t easy. We do it this time, we need to do it better. We need to clean house so shit like this doesn’t happen again.”
“I think you’ll be surprised how many men are on our side,” he tells me, with confidence. “It won’t be as big a job as you’re imagining.”
I straighten, glancing down at the baby on his chest. He doesn’t hold her right. She’s still little, but he should know how to hold her by now.
“Let me tell you, Gio, I appreciate everything you’ve said to me today, but you need to know, I don’t go for the Morelli bag of tricks. I don’t like being lied to and manipulated. Me and Rafe have never had a problem before Laurel because he didn’t pull shit like that with me, and I would hate for you and me to start out on that foot. If anything you’ve said to me today wasn’t exactly the truth, just a little bending of the facts to piss me off at Rafe, now is the time to tell me. Once I walk out that door, it’s too late.”
Gio shakes his head firmly. “No lies, Sinclair. I know how you like to be treated. When you’re working for me, you’ll know you’re working for someone who respects what you bring to the table, and you’ll damn sure be treated as such. There are no hungry dogs on my crew, and you? You’ll be leading the pack.”
29
Sin
I’m pretty fucking tired by the time I load the last trash bag full of Theo into my trunk. I don’t like to leave bodies back there longer than necessary, but damn, I’m considering parking the car in the garage tonight and dealing with this shit tomorrow. Not sure it’s worth the smell though. I’m probably gonna have to deal with it and just get by tomorrow on two hours of sleep again.
He put up a hell of a fucking fight, that Theo. Made me feel even worse about having to kill him. Thankfully, he was young and
single, so at least he won’t have a family mourning him. Probably a mom out there somewhere, but she should have raised him to have better judgment.
Nah, I’m not being fair. This isn’t Theo’s fault, it’s Rafe’s. I’m misplacing blame, getting pissed off about shit that isn’t worth getting pissed off over. The problem is, Theo verified what Gio said, and that means a man I considered a friend a couple weeks ago really was planning to have me killed. If he knew about the night I mauled Laurel on his couch, I’d probably understand, but since he doesn’t, I’m pretty fucking salty about it.
It also probably means Rafe is fucking Marlena, and I don’t know how I missed that. I’m tempted to follow him tonight and check, but I have bigger fish to fry.
Tonight, I follow Gio. He’s more watchful about that shit, more paranoid, but if I’m going to jump ship and turn my back on Rafe, I need to make sure the ship I’m transferring over to is solid, especially if I’m bringing Laurel and a baby with me. Laurel might be pissed at me for killing Rafe, too, and that’s going to be annoying to deal with. I can already hear her bitching at me that I didn’t have to do it, that I could have just moved to Chicago with her. She’s so fucking sure Mateo’s wife is the Underground Railroad that would bring us to fucking sanctuary, like Mateo and Rafe aren’t cousins, like they aren’t friends, like he’d ever take my side against his own family. I don’t know much about Mateo’s wife, but I do know Mateo, and I have a hard time believing any woman has that ruthless asshole under her thumb. Especially some tiny blonde who looks like she popped out of a fucking Disney movie.
Sorry, Laurel, Chicago isn’t a solid plan.
Gio might be, though.
I’m not going to have long to make a decision. Now that Gio has shown me his hand, there’s only a brief window before I can get on board with any kind of credibility.
I’m in fucking luck though, because Gio heads to Rafe’s restaurant for a meeting with a few men. I text Virginia to let her know I need her to pay extra attention to Gio’s table tonight, tell me what they talk about. While I wait for her to text back, I set up my little mobile surveillance center. An iPad with Marlena’s apartment pulled up on the screen, a second one with the map open, my tracker on Cassandra’s car moving across the screen as she heads to wherever she’s heading tonight.
