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“Mel? What is it?” Liam sat up on his elbow, his eyes still half shut.
“Nothing. Sorry, go back to bed,” I whispered, lifting the sheets up and sliding my feet out to the side.
I could still feel his eyes on me as I walked to the bathroom.
Closing the door behind me, I dropped the gun by the sink before reaching over and turning on the faucet.
“Breathe. Just breathe,” I whispered to my reflection as I tried to shake the images from my mind.
Liam dead.
Ethan dead.
Wyatt dead.
Dona dead.
Just me. Always just me…the thought scared me. Me, who had spent almost all of my life being alone, was scared of being alone. Just when I was feeling…like a Callahan…of course, my father would pop up in my mind to remind me I was Giovanni before everything else.
“Damn, Orlando. You’ve really fucked me up.” I smiled even though it wasn’t at all funny.
After washing my face, I stepped back out expecting to see Liam in bed. Instead, he leaned against the wall to the bathroom, his eyes shut and his arms crossed over his bare chest. Lazily, he opened his eyes and looked over to me, the corners of his mouth turned up.
“You okay?” he asked.
This. This was the reason why I was afraid to be alone…since we got married, since I came into his house, he never looked away from me, he never let me be alone. He always had my back and so I leaned on him.
I was weak for him.
“Mel?”
“Yeah.” I took his hand. “Let’s go to bed, we’ve got so much to do tomorrow.”
He groaned and followed me towards our bed before jumping on top of me forcing us both to fall.
“Love you.” He snickered when I tried to wiggle out of his arms, but he held me tighter.
Sighing, I gave up. “Love you too.”
Like always, he fell asleep with ease. I, on the other hand, just lay there brushing my hands through his hair, wide-awake and remembering the number one rule my father had always cautioned me to.
Never get comfortable because I will only know peace the day I die.
ONE
“I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent."
~ Saul Bellow
LIAM
He was somewhere in the crossroads of being scared fucking shitless and desperately anxious. I had seen a lot throughout my life, and I say that knowing damn well I was only thirty-six years old. But thirty-six in mafia years had to be the equivalent to at least sixty years for normal people, give or take a year. Nevertheless, glancing at my son, sitting quietly beside me, his hands reaching up to fix the tie around his neck every few minutes, was still strange as fuck.
“Ethan.” I didn’t bother facing him, scrolling through the email Declan had sent me, but I heard as his whole body shifted towards me.
“Yes, dad?”
“Is something wrong with your bow tie?”
