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Mamma simply stared at me as she kissed her granddaughter’s forehead.
“Shit,” I exclaimed and rushed to my office. “Paris?”
“Why are you calling her?” My mother hissed as she hurried after me.
“She’s my wife. I don’t keep secrets from her.” I took my baby out of her arms, and my mother reached for her. I tilted my body away. “No, if you love your grandchildren as you say you do, you fight for this family, not the DeLucas.”
Her face reddened, and her mouth pursed, “Oh, being with that woman made you forget who you are?”
I hugged my baby, who gratefully seemed oblivious to the building tension. “I know exactly who I am. For years I was a savage. No more.”
“What is it?” Paris hurried into the office and immediately took Safiya from my arms.
I quietly asked Mamma, “You want to tell her, or do you want me?”
“I can tell her,” Courage replied, walking in behind his mother.
Paris immediately started backing up from all of us as we suddenly became enemy number one. “No! Did something happen to my brother?”
I slowly walked toward her, my hands open, pleading with her. “No, baby, no...no. Laffy is fine.”
Her hazel eyes flitted from each of us until they settled on me. “You want to start a war with my brother,” she accused. “I knew one day that this life would get bored for you. You want back what you gave him. And you want our son to convince him.”
“Laffy will always be my brother. I’ll never fight him again. Please believe me.”
“Then what is it, Gianni?” Safiya started crying, ever attuned to her mother’s moods. Paris patted her back, her hand now shaky. “What did your mother come to tell you?”
“Enzo wants the DeLuca empire back in New Orleans,” Courage calmly responded. “He wants me in charge because he knows I can handle it.”
Paris thrust our still fussy baby back in my arms, marched right up to Courage, and slapped his face so hard that I winced. Before he could react, she hit him again with the same force. Her voice barely above a whisper warned, “You go against your uncle, and you’re no longer my son. Do you understand?”
His bruising jaw tightened, and his hazel-turned blue eyes flashed. But he didn’t utter a word.
“Gianni was only a little older than Courage when he took control of the city. He doesn’t have to go against his uncle. Wisdom can keep your father’s territory. We won’t touch it,” Mamma offered, voice surprisingly subdued. Then I remembered she’d never seen the fiery side of Paris. This woman used to call herself Diamond and ruled the streets alongside her brother.
Paris scoffed, “We? Courage is my son. He’ll fight for the Desire Crew or no one else.”
“He is also a DeLuca.”
“Do you consider your son a DeLuca or Andreas?”
Mamma jutted her chin. “DeLuca without question.”
“Yet he has Andreas's blood too.”
“But I carried him in my womb. My blood fed into his growing body.” She touched her heart. “My blood.”
“Then, using your logic, my son is a Rochon, first.” Paris smiled though it didn’t reach her eyes. She cut her eyes at her son. “And we never go against family.”
“No, ma’am,” he answered solemnly.
She arched a brow at my mother. “My son will head Desire Crew one day. It is not his time yet."
The two women I loved more than anything in the world stared each other down until my mother lowered her gaze. Paris turned her attention to me. “What do you think we should do?”
I kissed the top of Safiya’s curly head, whose cries became cooing. “We need to talk to Laffy.”
Mamma’s eyes widened. “You’re really turning your back on Enzo, the family, on me? You tell Wisdom now, and he’ll strike first.”
