Page 1 of John + Siena: The Complete Duet

ONE

The black car pulled up and parked alongside of Johnathan. The sight of a dark vehicle with tinted windows was so familiar to him he almost smiled. Almost.

A good portion of his life was filled with memories of cars just like this one picking him up for one thing or another. Likely some situation he’d gotten himself in to and needed out of.

The passenger window rolled down and revealed the person who had come to pick John up this time. He did smile at the sight of Giovanni behind the wheel.

“Zio,” John greeted.

Uncle.

Truth be told, Giovanni had always been more like a friend and brother to John than just an uncle. Especially now that John was thirty and not just a kid under his uncle’s feet anymore.

Still, Giovanni was the one person in John’s family that he connected with on a level of trust that he didn’t have with anyone else. Despite the salt peppering the fifty-seven-year-old’s hair, and the lines on his face that said Giovanni was not a young man, he somehow still gave off the air of youth. Antony, John’s grandfather, always said that Giovanni had a young soul.

Whatever that meant.

“John,” his uncle replied. “Get in. We’re going to be late as it is with the drive. They told me you would be getting out at twelve, and it’s already one.”

“They had some kind of delay on the paperwork.”

Giovanni pointed at the passenger door. “Don’t care. Get in.”

Johnathan knew better than to disobey Giovanni. Pulling open the passenger door, he tossed the large brown paper bag to the floor of the car and climbed in. He hadn’t even shut the door completely before the Gio hit the gas, and the car lurched forward.

“Shit,” John said, grabbing for something to steady himself and laughing. “Slow down. I’d like to see Ma at least once more before I die, all right.”

Gio smirked. “Not your father?”

“You know how it is.”

“I don’t, actually. Lucian, like Dante, is my best friend. We’ve always been close, John. When I was younger, had no self-control and too many issues to name, I always had my brothers. When my father felt a million miles away, my brothers were still there. So, no, I don’t understand.”

“It’s like this, he’s not my brother.”

Gio hummed under his breath. “He’s your father, I know.”

John had never seen eye to eye with his father on a lot of things. Lucian was a good father, as far as that went. He’d always been good to John and his sisters. He loved his children totally. But John had always felt misplaced somehow in his life. Or even out of touch with the people around him, his father included. It made it difficult to have a connection like his younger sisters had to their mother and father.

“What is in the bag?” Gio asked, passing the brown sack John had tossed to the car floor a look.

John shrugged. “Shit I went in with. Clothes, a watch, stuff like that. Nothing important.”

“Let me see your band, John.”

“Why?”

“Let me see it.”

Sighing, John lifted his hand up to show off the leather wrist band he wore with his family’s crest embossed across the middle. “Happy?”

“Just making sure you got that back, too.”

“Everything that I took in came back out with me, Zio.”

“I don’t trust the system, John.”

Neither did John, really.