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There was only one way into the house from here, a set of curved stone steps. When my old man designed this house, he really went all in with the Gothic look. Even the wooden door at the top of the stairs that opened into the pantry was a period piece. Its narrowly spaced slats weren’t exactly energy efficient, but you could hear a pin drop on the other side of the door.
With the coast clear, I pressed a finger to my lips. He nodded and shut the door behind us, following me down the hallway. This would be the most dangerous stretch for Cannon because there was nowhere to hide. He’d have to be careful and hope he was fast enough to retrace his steps either coming or going, if he heard someone.
The staircase leading up to the family’s private quarters had intricately carved banisters and a dark red carpet in the center. When I checked with Helene earlier, she’d confirmed that my mother’s wing of the house had remained untouched. The only person who ever went into her quarters was Helene herself, and only to clean. She’d been with us for as long as I could remember, and had cleaned up her fair share of blood, so my request that she skip this section of the manor was the least of her concerns.
My mother’s set of white double doors with the shiny silver handles looked exactly as I remembered. I hoped the saying you can go home but you can never go back was accurate because I had no desire to. She had sent me off with a babe swaddled in my arms that wasn’t my father’s, and by the time I’d returned all hell had broken loose.
When Helene said untouched, she wasn’t lying. Mother called this her sitting room. The last book she ever read was still sitting face down on the small round table by the window and one of her cardigans was thrown over the chaise next to it. Her makeup was scattered across her dressing table, the mirror tilted downward to accommodate her petite frame. There was no point in going in the adjoining bedroom, I doubted anything had changed.
“Whose room is this?”
“It was my mother’s. Nobody is using it, so this space will be yours. There’s a bathroom through there,” I said, pointing to the open door. “I’m going to run next door and see if they’ve cleaned out my father’s closet yet.”
He didn’t need to follow me through the connecting door, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt for him to know how to get to my father’s closet. My brother needed me out of the picture sooner rather than later in order to rightfully assume the reins of our father’s empire. This way, at least we would be prepared should Cannon need to stay longer.
My father’s rooms mirrored my mother’s, and I’d had enough trips down memory lane today, so I made a beeline for his walk-in closet. It seemed either my brother didn’t give a shit, or like with Father’s car, he’d forgotten all about his room. Suits in every color and style imaginable still lined the outer walls of the closet, picking up the first one I came to, I tossed it at Cannon.
“Try this on.”
He frowned. “You want me to wear a dead man’s suit?”
“My father won’t be needing them anymore, but you will. Besides, it saves me having to drop a hundred grand on clothes you’ll probably never wear again.”
“Are all made men like you?” he asked with a shake of his head.
“I wouldn’t know. I’m not a made man. You’re thinking of the Italians.”
He raised an eyebrow as he toed his boots off. “Isn’t it all the same thing? Irish, Polish, Russian, Italian. A Mafia is a Mafia.”
“Not exactly, though that is a common misconception.” I gave him my back because, frankly, my day had been shitty enough without seeing Cannon’s dick. “All of them are criminal enterprises, but the organization my family’s a part of prefers to operate in the shadows and is far more brutal than either the Italians or Irish. The Russians are of a similar mindset, but they’ve grown weaker and weaker over the years, whereas our power has only grown.”
“What’s worse than sleeping with the fishes,” he asked from behind me, the sound of a zipper being pulled up prompting me to turn around.
Cannon buttoned up the matching navy blue vest and shrugged into the suit coat. My father wasn’t as broad through the chest as I was, so the suit fit Cannon perfectly.
“Trust me, Cannon, there are far more agonizing ways for a man to die. At least with cement shoes, you would only suffer for a maximum of three minutes before you lost consciousness.”
It was just clothes, but the transformation was astonishing. He stood up straighter, and while his short blond hair was still slicked back with too much gel, it now looked stylish.
“Christ,” he muttered, watching while I dug through a drawer in the center island. “I don’t even want to know how you know that.”
“Put this on.”
“A watch?”
“That’s not just any watch. It’s aPatek Philippe.”
“And,” he said, clasping the platinum band in place on his wrist.
“When a woman offers to suck your dick, and it will happen with that suit and watch combo”—I pointed down at his fly—“do not think with that. Let her suck you off in the clubhouse bathroom or the car, I don’t give a shit, as long as you don’t come anywhere near the leather of that car. And for fuck’s sakes, do not get yourself killed by bringing a girl back here.”
No, he did not just give me a goofy grin and salute me while wearing a forty-thousand-dollar suit and a two hundred-thousand-dollar watch. Fuck me. My brother would be mailing me Cannon’s severed head before the day was out.
In the rearview mirror, the sun still played peekaboo with the cloud cover, but up ahead the sky was black, and I hoped it wouldn’t be an omen for how the rest of my day would go. Between the hulking buildings on my right, I saw a flash of lightning, the ominous crack of thunder following as I sped up.
There was no way I was spending the rest of my day looking like a drowned poodle. Cherry could embrace our natural curls all she liked, I preferred sleek and straight even though it required me to flat iron my hair to within an inch of its proverbial life.
“In one mile, take a right onto Lahaya Dr.”
