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“Oh, shit,” Cesare said, shaking his head as he looked at the floor for a second.
“What?” I asked, stomach tensing.
“I was hoping that your first Brio encounter would be with me around,” he said. “He’s… intense.”
“By ‘intense’ do you mean ‘murderous’ by any chance?” I asked.
“Jesus Christ,” Cesare said. “What did he say?”
“He wanted to know the name of the guy who did this,” I said, waving to my face. “And I got the feeling that he was willing to m-u-r-d-e-r every Jameson in the city to make sure he got the right one.”
“Don’t think you need to worry about spelling around him yet. And you wouldn’t be wrong about that. Brio is a different breed of crazy.”
“Emilio was nice.”
“Yeah, Emilio is pretty level-headed.”
“Is that my wife sounding like an old Herbal Essence commercial upstairs?” another male voice asked, smooth and confident, as he walked into the room.
I think I pictured a mafia boss as a lot older. More like the guys in the movies.
Which was silly since I knew that Lorenzo was close to Cesare’s age.
But he was a tall, dark, handsome man with knowing eyes and a confident carriage.
“She was worried you are lying to her about her smelling.”
“I might have been,” Lorenzo admitted, smirking. “It’s nice to meet you, Mere. I’m sorry the Family has been such a pain in the ass for you,” he said, coming over to take the baby from me, and I almost immediately missed the feeling of having him in my arms.
“I’m not complaining,” I said as Cesare moved in at my side, curling me into him.
“Funny how it works out that way, huh?” he asked with a knowing smile. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I am going to go toss this to his Uncle Milo while I go talk to my wife about baby number three,” he said, disappearing.
“Wanna go back to my apartment?” Cesare asked. “We can give it a good, deep clean,” he offered.
And I swear that while I’d been teetering on the edge of it for days, I finally fell fully in love with the man right then.
Cesare - 1 week
I was actually impressed that Giana had managed to hold off the aunts, cousins, and sisters off for a full week.
One blissfully quiet week where Mere and I got to spend our days having sex, exploring the city, and learning more about each other.
But I always knew that, eventually, the whole family was going to want to meet the woman who finally made me think about settling down.
And, it seemed, today was that day.
So I almost expected to wake up alone in the early morning to find that Mere was up and scrubbing already.
It seemed that the almost compulsive need to clean and organize eased a bit when she was enjoying herself, when she was distracted by exploring the city, then falling into bed with me.
She still made sure everything was just so, but aside from the first day when she’d given the whole house a deep clean with my help, she hadn’t been going too overboard.
Hell, we’d even passed out on the bed after fucking without changing the sheets.
But now she was worried about the dinner party, so she was…scrubbing the bathroom tile grout with bleach and a toothbrush.
“Sweetheart,” I said, voice soft. “They’re going to love you.”
“What if they don’t?” she asked, not even trying to pretend that wasn’t the reason she was stress-cleaning. We were beyond that.
“They will,” I assured her. “You’ve already met a bunch of them and they liked you.”
She couldn’t argue with that.
“Okay, but they weren’t your, you know, immediate family.”
“Gavino likes you,” I told her. “I mean… as much as he can like anyone. Think he likes you more than he likes me, actually,” I said, smiling at how her eyes went a little warm.
“But what are the others like?” she asked.
“My sister, Lore, is really chill. A bit like Vega that way, honestly. And my other three brothers are all different. One is younger, boyish still, thinks he’s hot shit. The two older ones have their shit together and are more serious. And you’ll have Giana to talk to. Brio, Salvatore, and Santi’s wives are all great too.”
“None of your brothers are married?”
“Not yet,” I told her. And no one would have thought that I would be the one to reach that milestone first. Yet, that was definitely where my head was at.
Rings and vows and a couple of kids who looked like us.
Mere rose from the floor, discarding her bucket, cleaning the toothbrush, then putting it with the bucket up under the sink.
But looking no more at peace.
“Guess what?” I asked, as she glanced around, trying to find something she hadn’t already cleaned.
“What?”
“I have an entire fucking closet in the spare room that is jam-packed full of crap. I haven’t even opened the door in months. It’s all yours,” I invited, watching as a big smile tugged at her lips.
