Page 231 of John + Siena: The Complete Duet

“Are you jealous that we got a good dad?” Giulia asked suddenly.

Siena looked back at the younger of the two sisters. “You mean, about Matteo?”

Beside her in the passenger seat, Greta stuck a spoonful of gelato in her mouth. The older girl looked both interested and kind of worried what Siena’s response might be.

Giuia shrugged. “Yeah, I mean, I see what your face does when we say something nice about Daddy, and stuff.”

Siena didn’t realize her face did something at all.

She wasn’t surprised, though.

“No,” she said after a moment, “I’m not jealous. Happy, if anything.”

“Happy seems strange,” Greta muttered around her spoon.

“I can’t be happy that he was a good father to you two? That you have fond memories of him, and loved him?” Siena smiled faintly, and peered back out the windshield at the playing children, and relaxing people. “I am happy that you will have good memories of him to carry you through life. I can’t say that I have the same—I wouldn’t wish my memories of him on you two at all.”

“Oh.”

Giulia’s quiet response was only echoed by silence. Really, Siena no longer had anything to say about it. Not Matteo, or her life as his daughter. She meant what she had said about her half-sisters lives with him, though.

Out of the corner of her eye, Siena saw the enforcer approaching the car.

“What?” she asked him. “Jesus, we only got here a few minutes ago.”

“We have to go,” the guy said, offering no room for argument, “right now.”

“But—”

“Now, Siena. Your brothers’ homes are burning to the fucking ground. We don’t have time to argue. Leave the Lexus here—someone will come get it later. I’ve been ordered to deliver the girls to their aunt, and take you to your mother’s place.”

Siena straightened in the driver’s seat. She heard everything that the enforcer said, but only one thing really stood out the most. “Both of their homes?”

“Guess so.”

“Burning?”

“Looks like it,” the man uttered.

Well, fuck.

Where was she supposed to live, then? Oh, was Siena supposed to care that the Marcellos finally attacked back at her brothers after what they did to them?

Because she didn’t.

Siena stood on the side of the street, and watched as workers began the process of cleaning away the mess left behind from the fire at Kev’s brownstone. Two days after the blaze, and the smoldering and smoking bits had finally been completely extinguished.

The heat hadn’t helped.

Neither had the lack of rain.

Large dumpsters had been brought in to contain the rubble and ashes covering the space between two other brownstones. It would take them a couple weeks to clean up, or so they said, and then once the investigation was finished on the fire, Kev could rebuild if he wanted.

Siena didn’t know if that was her brother’s plan, or not.

At least the fire department had been able to save the homes connected to Kev’s. They contained the blaze enough that very little damage had been done to the main walls connecting the other brownstones, and the supports needed to rebuild.

The firefighters had made it their main focus to save the other buildings once they realized the fire was containable to the one brownstone.