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“You won’t piss off rival gangs?” I asked.
Brody laughed. “I’ll make sure they live in fear of you.”
“Then you need the Reeds to make things right,” I said.
“Way ahead of you,” Brody said. “While we’ve been enjoying ourselves, Carlo has been hard at work getting Braden Reed to pin most of the blame on his son, Marion.”
“And why would he do that?” I asked. I knew only a little about the Reeds, and most of that was through the filter of my father, who simply viewed them as an inconvenience.
“You know that political tact goes hand in hand with a strong hand,” Brody told me. Unlike my father, Brody was incredibly brilliant, and what he told me next was incredibly surprising. “Marion isn’t Braden’s son.”
“How do you know?”
“Braden was away at the same time that Marion was conceived, and I had Carlo prove it to him,” Brody said.
“Is this the part where you tell me not to worry about the details?” I asked.
“What do you want to do?” He asked. It was the only right answer. After I gave it some thought, I told him that I wanted him to handle the issue. I had enough on my plate still learning the main tasks of managing our empire.
“Adriana, there’s still more,” Brody asked. “These people did you and your family dirty. How do you want to handle that?”
I thought about it, then discussed possible reparations with Brody that the Reed family could provide. Braden was turning against his own son, even if Marion wasn’t truly his, he had grown under Braden’s care. I didn’t trust them, so Brody and I brainstormed possible reparations the Reeds could give us. It was a complex matter, because of the issue of political tact, and keeping ourselves safe from any kind of legal interference, including whistle-blowing by the wrong people.
And then, there was the matter of telling my father about the baby.
“He won’t like it,” I said. “But we need to get this over with, and let him know now.”
“Don’t you think he’s had to deal with enough?” Brody asked.
“Maybe we could ease him into it,” I said.
“I already told him I planned on having children with you,” he said. We locked eyes and held hands. This man was everything I ever wanted, and I felt confident that we would live a good life. I still had my reservations about telling my father, but with Brody there, I knew that everything would be ok.
We chose to tell father at the Sunday mass, an event that he rarely went to. It was even rarer that I went, and Brody was the most unlikely person to be there.
So of course, Dad was surprised when we invited him.
“There’s a catch,” he said. Brody looked at me, and I looked at him knowingly.
“We’re all sinners,” Brody said. “Frank, I saved you because you’re my friend. And now, I will go with you to mass, because we’re in this life together.”
“You saved me because you love my daughter,” Dad said, and I beamed with the kind of pride a girl has when her father announces the magnitude of your lover’s love. It isn’t words that matter in love, it’s what someone does, and Brody had done everything he could do to prove his love for me now.
Even my father knew this.
Sunday mass was,f fortunately, days away, and Brody and I spent the rest of our time basking in each other’s presence. With every moment, I knew that our love was only getting stronger. He and I were true partners, and I was grateful that I had such a good man at my side.
I could tell that Brody was grateful too.
We both showed each other love in different ways, not just in the bedroom, but in how we took care of each other. Brody was never pushy about sex, and he knew just the right moment that I needed to make love to him.
It was like we were one, and we hadn’t even gotten married yet.
I wondered when he would pop the question, but we were trying to take things slowly (said the pregnant woman). I had to move my things to his place, and he made sure to make me comfortable every step of the way. There was not a single moment where I felt neglected by him.
He took me shopping, getting ready for our child together. While we did this, we enjoyed the life of being tourists in our own city. We saw live music, which was spectacular, and Brody showed me another side of him.
He was a man of many talents, and one of them was in how he danced.
