AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And the thing was… that didn’t sound like a lie.
After a lifetime with one another, we could always tell when someone else was lying. And Sofia wasn’t. Unless she’d suddenly gotten a really good poker face.
So… was this guy someone she worked for?
Sure, when she started her business, she only worked for the guys in the Family. But as a lot of them got married and had wives to manage their own households, her work had needed to expand to random people. Last I heard, half of her work was clients outside of our bloodline.
It could be one of them.
Which would make tracking them down easier.
From inside the house, a loud wail came drifting toward us.
“That’s my cue,” Lucky said, rushing past us and back into the house to see what the problem was.
“You guys letting Mom rag on Elisa?” she asked. “Last I checked, the two of you haven’t exactly been beating the women away with sticks.”
“Should we sic her on you instead?” Milo asked. “Or you got something to tell us?”
“Nope. Nothing,” she said. Too quick. That little lift in her voice. Now that was a lie. “Go ahead and send her my way,” she added. “I’m used to it.”
When it came to temperaments, Sofia was always a bit more able to take the heat than the rest of us when it came to our mom.
Adrian Grassi could be a battering ram.
But Sofia Grassi was a steel-reinforced door.
It was a toss-up on any given day which of the two would win. But one thing was for certain, both would be exhausted from it and not want to try again for a while.
Mothers and daughters could be like that, I guess.
While us sons tiptoed around our ma, the girls often went toe-to-toe with her.
“Heard you’re going out of town soon,” Sofia said to Milo. “I send my apologies to the women of the next town you disgrace with your presence,” she added with a little twitch of her lips.
“After dealing with that in there,” he said, nodding his head toward the house, “I think I’m gonna be celibate for a while.”
“You seriously don’t want one? Or six?” she asked, a dreamy look in her eye saying she was suddenly giving kids some serious thought too.
Who the hell was this client of hers to make our so work-obsessed sister suddenly want to slow down and have kids of her own?
“I seriously don’t,” Milo said. “At least not for another decade. Maybe two.”
“Watching you get knocked on your ass by a woman is going to be an absolute delight,” Sofia declared as the two of them made their way back into the house. But she’d needed to grab and drag him into the house as soon as the door opened, and all the chaotic noise filtered out.
I stood there with my own thoughts for a moment before I pushed them back, finished my beer, and made my way back into the house, lifting Lucky’s kid off of his waist, and chasing them around the house while they squealed and belly-laughed until dinner was ready.
And tried really hard not to be upset that I didn’t have this in my daily life.
Because it clearly wasn’t in the cards yet.
CHAPTER TWO
Claire
“Get your shoes,” a voice barked, making the smile fall from my face and my back stiffen as I turned, holding my son a little more tightly to my chest as I looked at the monster who’d fathered him.
It was hard to believe as I would sit in the rocker in his room at night, running my fingers through his silky curls, looking at his chubby cheeks, seeing how he smiled so freely in his dreams, that this angel’s father was as evil as they came.
