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“Believe me, I tried. Even tried to talk him into waiting to talk to Luca, but he said there wasn’t time, cut the line, and won’t answer now.”
“Fuck,” I hissed. “Why am I just hearing this now?”
“I just heard about it about ten minutes before you got here,” he admitted. “I did text you.”
But I’d been busy with Savannah. Then trying to talk some sense into my cock after.
“All that shit, that was around the state capital, right?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
At least it wasn’t far if we needed to go and track him down.
“Okay. I will text Luca that I need to talk to him after food. But we keep this between us until I talk to him. Not Dante, not Ma. No one else. You know how that shit goes. And it’s already bad enough that this is coming third-hand from me,” I added, giving my tone a bit of an edge.
Because, yeah, I was closer with Luca. In age. In experience. Just in general. But Dante and Santo and even August were all Made men too. They needed to know when to nut-up and talk to the boss directly. Even when the topic would be uncomfortable. Even if it felt like it was going to be choosing between the Family as a whole, and our nuclear family.
“Yeah,” he agreed, ducking his head, humbled enough.
I had my feelings on how my younger brothers still had a lot of growing up to do, had some experience they needed to get. But I also had to acknowledge that a lot of that was my fault. I was always protecting them, always keeping them from completely falling on their asses.
It was something I was going to need to stop doing.
They had to become the men I knew they could if they weren’t living in my shadow.
With that, I shot off the text to Luca, then made my way back inside.
“Anyway, I was just telling Dante here,” she said as Dante rolled up his shirtsleeves, exposing black and gray ink that covered him damn near everywhere under his suit, “about how beautiful Savannah was. Even looking pale and tired.”
“Ma…” I said, shrugging off my jacket, and rolling up my sleeves too. Because our mother liked putting us to work when she was doing a lot of meal prep.
Santo put himself on setting the table.
Dante was making the garlic bread.
So that meant I was on salad duty.
Our mom took even green salads seriously. No ‘sad salads’ in her house. She wanted them full of at least three greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, peppers, carrots, and some sort of cheese or meat. Usually both.
“No, really,” she said, looking at my brothers, ignoring me. “She’s this lovely creature. Blonde hair, green eyes, this megawatt smile. And she is so sweet. Had kind words for everyone. So full of apologies for the wait, even though everyone knew she was only working with one good hand, and was doing her absolute best.”
“Mother,” I tried again, but she twisted her face into a mask of utter innocence.
“Yes, dear?” she asked.
“Stop planning my wedding,” I told her.
“Oh, darling, I am way past the wedding. Sunflowers, so many sunflowers, by the way,” she said. “I am already thinking of what you will name your babies.”
“We aren’t getting together. And who knows if she even wants babies.”
“She does.”
“Youasked?” I hissed. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised by her comfort level when it came to being invasive as hell. But she never ceased to amaze me.
“Of course I did. Oh, unclench your jaw,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s not like I walked up and saidHi, I’m Nino’s mother, and I’d like to know how many babies you will have with my son. It came up in conversation.”
“Yeah, sure it did,” I said, rolling my eyes at Dante who quickly made sure his smirk fell away because he knew he was next in line for our mother’s matchmaking skills once I was shacked up.
