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Luca stared at him, completely unrepentant. “You accused me of incompetence. Doesn’t feel so good, does it?”
Conor should have seen this coming. While his brothers had been more than ready to put their stupid generations-long hatred toward the Morettis to rest, both men thinking with their dicks and hearts rather than their heads, Conor hadn’t been quite so convinced, wondering if there was simply too much water under this particular bridge.
The problem was Conor and his big mouth, offering the job on a fucking whim, after a rare, enjoyable night out. He never did that. And once the horse was out of the gate, he couldn’t call it back because Gage and Matt believed Russo Enterprises working with Moretti Brothers Restorations felt like the next logical step in cementing the peace between the two families. Which meant, he was stuck trying to sort out old-as-shit emotions regarding Luca as well as fighting back some next-level arousal…all while dealing with a ticking time bomb in his head.
His anxiety had been sky-high all day as he approached this meeting.
Luca had been handsome and charming as hell in high school, and those characteristics had only grown since then. Which was why Conor should have held the company line and gone with another construction crew. Now he was standing here, starting to feel the too-familiar pressure on his chest that told him he was in danger of suffering a panic attack, but he couldn’t walk away in the midst of this mess, couldn’t resort to his old tried and true.
Escape.
Fuck.
This… This was why he kept to himself, maintained familiar routines, avoided stressful situations.
His panic attacks had begun when he was much younger, the first hitting when he was twelve. His mom had been going through one of her dark periods, her mood sending her to bed for days. Conor hadn’t been able to concentrate enough to study for one of his tests because he hated it when Mom disappeared to her room. While she was in the house physically, mentally she had checked out, and none of them were allowed to talk about it, expected to act as if everything was normal.
Dad had read Conor the riot act for getting an F, calling him an embarrassment, reminding him that Russos didn’t fail. Then he’d sent Conor to bed without dinner. In his room, he had succumbed to a heart-thumping, chest-tightening, trembling pain that was unrelenting. He’d curled into a ball on the floor, fighting to breathe, certain he was suffocating to death.
At the time, he’d wondered how long it would take before anyone found his dead body. When he finally managed to catch his breath, he’d crawled into bed and slept for twelve hours straight. He hadn’t understood what had happened that night, but he was nothing if not resourceful.
Always a reader, he’d gone to the school library and checked out a book on mental illness, terrified that perhaps he was suffering from the same thing as his mother. It had been the first time he’d been able to attach a name to his mother’s illness.
Depression.
The library book had contained a wealth of information on not only depression but on panic attacks as well.
Conor had been too ashamed to admit his own mental illness to his mom or brothers, so whenever he felt the telltale shortness of breath or the constriction of his chest muscles, he—like his mom—took to his room, hiding there until the worst of it had passed. It worked for him because he’d always been a big reader, so his family never thought anything of it, always assuming he had his nose buried in one of his books. They’d begun to refer to him as a loner, and he preferred they believe that rather than know the truth.
In the business realm, he was a no-nonsense ball-buster, a man capable of getting exactly what he wanted as long as he held all the power, all the control. He’d never mastered the art of teamwork.
However, none of that confidence translated to his personal life. Because when emotions came into play and things got tough, Conor was very adept at disappearing.
Working with Moretti Brothers was a smart business decision, Conor knew that. The problem was it crossed into a gray area with Luca involved because the work and his fucked-up feelings were overlapping.
He rubbed his chest and tried to take a deep breath, hoping neither Luca nor Harper noticed. “This was a bad idea, Luca. I’ll admit, I had my reservations about the two of us working on this project together and this proves that it was a mistake.”
Luca rolled his eyes. “Fucking hell, Conor. That didn’t take long.”
“What didn’t?” Conor asked.
“You finding a way to avoid working with me. You’ve been pulling this shit since high school. I don’t know what the hell I did to you, but enough is enough. What is it about me that bugs you so much?”
Conor didn’t know how to reply to that. He’d always felt as invisible to Luca as he did to the rest of the world. It never occurred to him that Luca might actually recognize the distance Conor had kept between them all these years.
Before he could respond, another Moretti approached.
Aldo, Luca’s cousin, was one of the firemen fighting the blaze. “Hey, Luca, Conor. Thought I’d let you know the fire is out.”
The Moretti family was a large, tight-knit group, and Conor had come to learn that every relative seemed to know what every other relative was doing, so it was no surprise Aldo knew he and Luca both had ties to the building.
“That’s good,” Luca said.
“It was mostly contained to the kitchen in back. The fire marshal is walking through right now to determine how it started. Might take a few hours, though.”
“How bad is it?” Luca asked.
“Well, someone with a higher pay grade than me—the code inspector—will have the final say-so, but I don’t think there was a significant amount of structural damage. That’ll be a good thing in terms of moving forward with construction,” Aldo explained. “Unfortunately, the code inspector works a nine-to-five, so I wouldn’t look for any decision on that until next week…if you’re lucky.”
