My judge brain rejected the idea immediately. My body, traitorous, shifted in the seat, heat pooling somewhere low in my belly. I remembered the taste of her, the smell of her hair, the way she’d pressed her whole life into a single, desperate night.
“That’s not possible,” I whispered. “You and me and him, it’s a triangle made out of razor blades. We’ll all end up bleeding out on the floor.”
Jenna’s voice softened, went molten around the edges. “Then let’s bleed together. It’s better than doing it alone.”
I closed my eyes and let the silence stretch. “You’re really with him? Now?”
She hesitated, but not long enough to be a lie. “Yes. He’s here. He knows I’m calling.”
I could picture it. Seneca, perched on some battered couch, arms crossed, face half in shadow, letting her make the first move. That was always his way. Make the opponent come to you. Conserve energy until the critical moment.
“He wants this, too?” I didn’t want to sound hopeful, but there it was.
She laughed, rough and bitter. “He wants you. I want you. The only question is whether you want either of us enough to try.”
I opened my mouth to fire back, but nothing came. In that blank space, Jenna spoke again, softer, the way she used to sound in the middle of the night when we were both too tired to keep up the fight. “Just come, Catherine. If it doesn’t work, you can walk away, and I’ll never bother you again.”
“You’re really serious.” I wasn’t interested in being a third wheel or being stuck with someone who was.
“We can make it work, Catherine.”
"No, Jenna. And tell Seneca no."
I ended the call and turned in my seat. My father stared back. “The Bellini family is calling you back home, Catherine. You need to let go of this childish behavior.”
“You never wanted me to become a judge,” I said. “You never supported my dreams.”
“It’s time for the matriarch to step up and guide this family.” He looked straight ahead as he spoke to me.
I glanced in the mirror at the black Escalade following us, my car an eyesore to my father’s luxury. “Mother never wanted me to stay in the family,” I said. “She said escape the lifestyle, so I did. You took away every choice I had.” I jerked my chin toward the Escalade, at the rigid silhouettes visible through the tinted glass. “Except for this one.”
He sighed. It was the resigned sigh of a man who’d already buried the best parts of himself. “I protected you,” he said. “I kept the family from pulling you under. But now you’re wandering right into the undertow. Why? For a biker?” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.
“They’re not the undertow,” I said, though I wasn’t so sure. “They’re the current. I want to see where it goes.” I must’ve sounded sixteen years old, but he didn’t call me out. He just pointed at the phone, the screen now black and smudged.
“It’s just going to go the same way it always does. Blood, disappointment. Shame.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. He’d taught me that sometimes the worst thing you could do to a man was leave his questions unanswered longer than he expected.He cleared his throat, wanting to have the last word. “Don’t embarrass the family, Cat.”
“Don’t embarrass me, Dad.”
The airport came into view, and moments later, we passed through a private entrance. My father knew everyone, but not everyone knew him. I did.
“What happens when we get back to New York?” I asked.
He let the question hover, like a bad smell that wouldn’t dissipate. “You’ll be safe,” he said eventually. “You’ll bide your time. Your name will open the right doors, close the mouths that matter. Maybe you’ll sit the bench there, maybe you’ll be mayor of fucking Yonkers, I don’t care.” His hands tightened on thedoor. He never drove. Never had to. “But you’ll be alive. And you’ll be Bellini.”
I looked past him, out the window at the hangars and the waiting Gulfstream with its expensive blue stripes, the tarmac shining under airport lights. There was a kind of peace in this world, the ruthless symmetry of a family crest stitched into every briefcase and knowing you’d never truly belong anywhere else. It should have been enough. It wasn’t.
I squeezed my phone hard enough for the edges to bite. “What if I said I wanted to settle it first? The thing with Jenna and the biker.” I made it sound small, a temporary madness, which is how you survived a conversation with Anthony Bellini.
He flicked ash off the dashboard with a thumb. “You want to see them. Why?” He was genuinely curious, a man who’d long since outlived jealousy but still couldn’t comprehend defiance.
“Because it’s unfinished,” I said. “Because I need to know I can walk away on my terms.”
I pulled the car to a stop by the jet’s steps. For a moment, it was just us, no bodyguards, no perimeter, just the heavy press of family history settling in like a migraine. He watched my face, searching for the weakness he’d missed when I was a child. Finally, he said, “You ever wonder why your mother didn’t fight harder to pull you out of this life?” He turned, and his face was a cracked mask. Lines from too much sun, eyes sharp as razors. “It’s because she knew what you really were. Family. Even when you ran, you never left.”
He reached over, put a hand on my knee, and squeezed—not gently. I realized, for the first time in eighteen years, he was scared of losing me again. Maybe even more than he was scared of losing the Bellini name.
