Page 136 of Loyalty

Dante’s jaw stiffened.

Point made.

“Is it your loyalty that I have to be worried about, then?” Dante asked. “Not hers, but yours, John.”

At that statement, Gio did stand from his chair. “Dante, come on.”

John was over it. That one remark from his uncle had effectively ended the conversation for him altogether. Nothing else Dante said would make a difference to him, now.

“Nah, it’s fine.” John laughed, dark and hollow. “Fuck him.”

“John!”

Dante’s roar hit his back.

It didn’t matter.

He was already gone from the office.

John headed down the hallway, bypassing his father, grandfather, and cousin. He didn’t hear anyone following him, but he didn’t care. All he wanted to do was find Siena, and get the fuck out of there. Do something else with just her …. Anything except being in this house, with these people.

“John, wait, son.”

His father’s words came just as he rounded the second floor’s staircase. Lucian caught him by the back of his jacket, and yanked hard enough to spin him around.

“Look at me,” his father said.

John found familiarity staring at him from his father’s eyes. He also found a raised Marcello there, too. Not born, no, but raised.

“You’re all the fucking same,” John told his father. “Every single one of you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

Lucian looked upward in the direction they had come from. “Give Dante some time, John. Old habits die hard in this family and business—this is one memory for us that cannot be washed out in one run. You have to give it time.”

“Like you give a shit. You couldn’t have been clearer downstairs going on like you were with Siena at the table, Dad.”

Lucian frowned. “I feel people out differently than my brothers do, that’s all.”

“Bullshit. Like I said, you’re all the same.”

“Don’t you see—can’t you see—I’m on your side, John? There’s a reason he wouldn’t let me in that office. Are you even listening to me right now?”

He didn’t care. His perception of his father was colored heavily by his anger, distrust, and everything else that put distance between them.

Lucian said one thing, but John heard another.

It had always been this way.

Neither of them could fix it now.

• • •

“Where’s Siena?”

Catherine looked up from the tablet her boyfriend was showing her. “What?”