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ANTONIO
“Do you need to talk about last night before the brats bust through the door?”
I press send on the group text, then place my phone back on my desk, screen down. Their presence wasn’t optional, so there is no need for any of the five of them to reply. An order is an order in this house, this family. At least three of them know better than to defy me, while another is slowly learning, and the last will need a short course on authority.
“My kids aren’t fucking brats. Don’t refer to them as such again, Giovanni.” My statement isn’t exactly true, and he knows it. The newest kid is every bit a brat. If Domenico doesn’t break her fast, I’m going to end up losing my shit on the little Russian princess. She doesn’t think her father sees her the same as I do Sienna, but she’s wrong. I know for a fact she is exactly that and more in his eyes. He’d do anything for his children the same as I would. It’s the reason she is here, and she can’t even see that.
“If you say so, boss.” Picking his coffee mug up off my desk, he takes a sip. At this point, I’m almost positive he’s drinking an entire pot all by himself, which he’ll continue doing until he switches to whiskey later this evening. Makes me wonder how he dealt with his demons in prison when he didn’t have his vices to cope. Hell, he probably did. If I were in his shoes, I’d find a way too.
“Business was handled,” I bite out, irritated that he’d bring up that bastard in the first place. What’s done is done, and there is nothing left to say. “Other than what we’re about to drop on the kids, I have nothing to say about last night.” G didn’t stick around for the gruesome part of the night. He waited in the residence next door until I’d finished. Well, finished for now anyway. My fun has only just begun.
He wants to say more and I’m about to tell him where he can shove his goddamn tongue when my office door opens and in walks Sienna, Matteo, Sasha, Ren, and lastly Dom, who closes the door behind him. My daughter mumbles something under her breath that I didn’t catch, but when Lorenzo looks to the ceiling, and Sasha flips her off behind her back, I get the idea.
For all the planning and everything I want for these kids, for the life of me, I have no idea how to get the girls to tolerate each other, much less like the other. Sienna and Sasha are two sides of the same coin, but neither sees how much alike they are. I fear something drastic will need to occur to bring them into alignment. I don’t see them bonding simply because Lorenzo made Sasha family.
“Take a seat,” I tell them as they all start to form a line behind the chair Giovanni is seated in that’s in front of my desk. They all do as they are told except Domenico. He perches himself against the bookshelves that line one wall of my office, where his front is to Giovanni’s back. It doesn’t go unnoticed by me. It isn’t that he doesn’t trust G. He’s torn because he doesn’t want to trust him, yet he recognizes that I do and he hates it.
I can’t blame him. I let everyone think I’d ended ties with Giovanni years ago, and I did for some time, but I do have forgiveness in me for a few transgressions in life. What he did just so happens to be one of them, but only because I know it wasn’t Ari that he actually wanted.
Dom will have to accept my reasons for having G here; mainly because my daughter isn’t ready for the role that I assigned to my old friend. In all honesty, it should have been his long ago and never my father’s, but back then I was still harboring hatred for thinking he wanted Ari when she was mine. Had I been thinking with my head instead of jealousy, I might have seen it for what it actually was: him trying to make her best friend jealous. But also, he deserved the punishment for being a dumb fuck.
Pulling myself back to the here and now, I look at each one of the kids. All five may be adults in their right, but in my eyes they will forever be children that I am to protect at all costs, even the ones my twins decided they wanted for their life partner. Keeping my expressionless mask in place, I laugh internally. I couldn’t have picked them out better if I’d chosen them myself.
“What’s going on, Daddy?” Sienna breaks the silence, always the one with zero patience. Brooklyn is sure to change that, and in that aspect, it’s a good thing. I hate that the child isn’t Sienna’s daughter in blood, but that’s the thing about life, it’s never perfect or cookie cutter. I wish Domenico hadn’t been the one to end Kennedy’s life either. Make no mistake, I’m glad that worthless bitch was sent to Hell, but I should have manned up months ago when I found Brooklyn outside in a bad part of town, alone. Hurting women is a weakness I’ve never been able to overcome, whereas my eldest son doesn’t bat an eye.
If it wasn’t for the tracking mechanism that I have on all of the people that matter to me, I wouldn’t have known he went to her apartment. I confirmed my suspicions when I sent the cleanup crew to make sure he and Krishna didn’t leave a speck of evidence. I was impressed when my guy reported back that it was messy but clean. Kent made it look like a burglary, which was even better. It won’t get tied back to the family, and all will be better now that I don’t have to worry about that cunt hurting Sienna or Brooklyn. It was a nice ending to one of Matteo’s biggest fuckups if you ask me.
“Salvatore and Marcel Santo,” I inform them, finally answering my daughter.
“The New Orleans sleaze duo?” Sasha speaks out, her nose wrinkling in disgust like she’s had an unfavorable run-in with the father and son. Unlike Sienna, Sasha doesn’t have a perfected mask. I like to think I taught Si well, though she does slip from time to time when she allows emotions to get the best of her. This is something Lorenzo needs to teach his bride, because if he doesn’t, Domenico will, and Ren will not like his methods. It’s something else she’ll need to learn quickly.
“Yes,” I confirm. “I caught three fish instead of one last night since your husband was so impatient for information this morning.” Her brow arches in confusion, but I’m not surprised. She wasn’t present when he asked what happened with his grandfather, and my dig wasn’t aimed at her but my son anyhow.
“You took out the Southern boss and his underboss?” Dom grates his teeth, knowing G was with me instead of him. “Why were they meeting with Rafe, without either of us knowing?” he voices without letting me answer his first question. It was more of a statement than an inquiry, so I let it go. “Better yet, why’d you take out your old man?”
“The latter isn’t important, but Sal and Mar—”
“No,” Dom cuts me off, his tone taking on an edge that challenges my authority. “I think we all have a right to know why you decided Rafe’s time was up—at least Ren and me do—seeing as Sienna already knows.”
“How do you know that?” my daughter asks, her voice defensive.
“You have guilt written all over your face, sister.” Snapping his dark gaze back to me, his brow arches in challenge, before the question spits out from his mouth. Domenico knows his siblings too well and can pick apart every expression on their faces. “Did he order a hit on my sister?”
“What?” Lorenzo jumps from the couch to his feet.
“He did,” I answer, and then blow out a long breath. I don’t want to tell them, but I also can’t keep it from the boys either, no matter how much I want to shelter them from the hard truth. “He also killed my wife.”
I hold Domenico’s stare, watching it change in the blink of an eye as his monster rears its ugly head from the depths of his soul. It’s not that I don’t care about Lorenzo’s reaction. It’s that I know this knowledge will affect Dom more. His relationship with Ari was different from the twins. They were each other’s best friend with their brother as their protector. Ari was Domenico’s world. The first person he ever loved. The first person he lost. His first heartbreak. Her death was the first time he allowed hate to seep into his skin.
“You didn’t think to tell us before you killed that motherfucker?” Domenico shouts, his face hard as stone. “We should have been there. You fucking took that from us?”
“It wasn’t your blood to shed, son.”
“Like hell it wasn’t,” Domenico yells back. “She was our mother.”
Rising from my leather chair, I bring my palm down on my desk with a bang. “She was my wife, goddammit. When you get married and find out someone hurt yours, come fucking talk to me then. When you have a kid and find out someone in your inner circle almost—” I trail off, leaving him to fill in the blank because I can’t utter that word when it comes to one of them.
“You knew?” Ren’s voice is a mixture of accusation and betrayal. Now he knows how the rest of us feel over his decision to run off and marry without his family present.
