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“We’ll be right back, Ma,” he told her. And our mom, sensing Family business, gave us a curt nod. “Dante, you’ll help me,” she declared, gesturing toward the oversize pot that I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to lift herself.
“What’s up?” I asked as soon as the door closed behind us.
Santo, the fourth in the birth order, tall and lean with honey-brown eyes and lashes chicks were always commenting on, and long dark hair that he almost always had pulled up, let out a sigh. “August,” he said.
I went ahead and bit back amusement at his exasperation regarding his only younger brother. Oh, how the tables had turned.
“What about August?” I asked, brows lowering as I thought of our youngest brother.
As a whole, he was beyond his ‘starting shit for the sake of starting shit’ phase he’d been stuck in for all of his teens. He was still young, sure, a late in life baby, but he was Made. He’d shown enough maturity for that. And he was eager to prove himself, so he’d been knuckling down and busting his ass the past year or so.
“He’s gone.”
“What do you mean he’s gone?” I asked, frowning.
“He’s out of town.”
“What? Did he get sent on some kind of job?”
“Not exactly,” Santo said. “Actually, Luca doesn’t even know yet. Which is why I’m talking to you,” he added. “Figure it might be better coming from you than me.”
“Chickenshit,” I shot at him. Because we were brothers. And you never missed a chance to sling a little shit at one of your brothers. “But what am I supposed to be telling Luca? Where did he go? What’s he doing?”
“So remember when we had to go handle that shit with Mass a while back?”
“What? You mean saving Cammie?” I asked, meaning Massimo’s woman. A woman whose life he’d inadvertently fucked beyond measure when he’d put a bullet in her then-boyfriend’s head.
“Yeah, that.”
“Fuck, Santo. Spit it out. Mom keeps shooting us looks,” I said, seeing her through the window, pretending to be busy arranging big shells into baking dishes, but her gaze kept shooting up at us.
Her mom senses were tingling.
She knew something was wrong with one of her kids.
As subtle as I could, I turned to face the backyard, not putting it past her to be able to read our lips.
“Remember the coffee shop we all hung out in?” he asked.
“Yeah, run by that Traveler chick,” I said, nodding. She’d been, as August had claimed, ‘One of those raging feminist witch chicks.’
“Yeah,” he said, nodding.
“What? He’s down there to see her?” I asked, brows drawing down.
They’d been oil and water, constantly fucking snapping at each other. He’d claimed he couldn’t stand talking to her. She’d called him a ‘cocky prick.’ And, well, she hadn’t been wrong.
But none of it ever hinted at something more between them. And that had been a long-ass time ago. The last time any of us had seen Traveler was when Mass and Cammie got married, and she’d come up. Alone. Just for the night. I don’t think I’d heard her name since then.
“Something like that,” Santo said. “Look, he didn’t explain, but he said he had to go, and that something was going on with Traveler. That’s all I know.”
“Christ, Santo, did you at least ask for more?” I asked, raking a hand through my hair.
I mean, in this family, it wasn’t exactly unheard of for one of our guys to go off on some mission to save some girl. But you had to get approval from the boss first. You couldn’t just take off, on your own, doing fuck-knew what.
First, because that was a good way to get yourself killed.
But also because that shit didn’t reflect well on the organization as a whole.
