Under His Watch (The Constella Family #2)

1. Romeo

1

ROMEO

I strode through the main foyer of the guest house, grimacing at how much more work needed to be done. Wallpaper had to be removed. All this nasty old carpet had to go, and then the sanding and polishing of the old hardwood floors would follow. Updating appliances.

Franco set down another box of debris to haul out. Dust rose up, and we both sneezed.

“You’re sure you want to deal with this place?” he asked.

He was more than the high-ranking capo in my family’s organization. Franco Constella was a distant cousin, too, but at times like this, he resembled the brother I never had.

Never say never. I bit my tongue and refrained from groaning. In seven months, I might very well have a brother.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I lied.

I wanted something to keep me busy, busier than I already was as my father’s right-hand man in the Constella Family. I was his second-in-command, and I handled a variety of responsibilities in that position.

“This old property needed work, and I want to put my blood, sweat, and tears into fixing it up.”

“Oh.” Franco nodded, looking around the house that was part of the extensive Constella real estate portfolio. “Sure. So you can, what? Purge out the guilt you shouldn’t have?”

I shot him a hard look. I wasn’t in the mood for him to tell me to get over the guilt. I was the only survivor in a fight three months ago. The lone man who lived. Three of our fine soldiers hadn’t made it in a fight that Mario, a rat in the family, set up.

They shouldn’t have died, not like that. And I would never “get over” it. That would be a dishonor to their memory.

He knew he'd crossed a line, being that harsh about this topic. Holding up his hands in a truce, he sighed and shook his head. “Hey, you know what? I don’t blame you for wanting to move out of the main house while Dante and Nina are acting like lovebirds.”

I chuckled, wiping the sweat from my brow. Fall was coming soon, but right now, the humidity of the late summer was sticking. We’d been moving junk and debris toward the door for hours. It seemed Franco wanted the empty-mindedness of manual labor too.

“I’m not coming here to renovate this place only to get away from them,” I argued.

He scoffed. “You’re not?”

“All right.” I shrugged. “Maybe that is a factor in it.” But I wasn’t hiding. I’d always resided in multiple places. My “home” was the guest house behind the mansion my father, Dante, now shared with his fiancée, Nina. My cousin Eva lived in another such guest house. Franco, too. We all had our rooms and quarters in the big mansion, and we always would.

My father understood that I liked to diversify with my time and residence. I wasn’t married. I wasn’t shackled to anything but my job in the family, so why not have multiple options?

“But this place does need some attention.” I gestured at the derelict surroundings, evidence of decades of wear and tear and even more of them with grave neglect. The house was something in the family and nothing we’d want to sell. My father never bothered with it except to discipline the new recruits, soldiers who came here one night and got a little too drunk and broke some old shit.

“That doesn’t mean you need to be the one acting like some handyman contractor.”

I shrugged. He wouldn’t talk me out of it. “I wanted a project.” I needed something to help me ignore how happy my father looked with Nina. I was glad for them both. He deserved love and loyalty after my mother died over thirty years ago. But this creeping sensation of jealousy was not something I wanted to endure any longer. I was sure it would fade. My father and Nina got together so quickly, and everything happened so fast between them that I hadn’t really had any time to get used to my father no longer being only a workaholic and always accessible.

Eventually, it would be the new norm. My father would be a husband to someone again, and a father to their baby soon, my potential half-brother.

I was confident that a little space from them would help me get used to it. And maybe with that separation and not seeing them so wildly in love, this envy would loosen its grip on me.

“Hell, I wouldn’t mind a project myself,” Franco quipped, nudging his foot at a pile of busted wood in a heap from furniture that hadn’t lasted the test of time. “I know they’re not trying to rub it in our faces, being so all over each other all the time…”

I watched him, feeling like I’d recently grimaced just like he was doing now. “But it makes you realize what you don’t have,” I finished for him.

He smirked. “Yeah. Exactly.”

Franco wasn’t much better than me in terms of meeting and holding on to a woman for more than one night. He slept around here and there, but he was more focused on his work for the family than his own sex life. We were all like that. We had to be when so many lives were on our shoulders.

Years ago, Franco was serious about someone, but she was a distant memory now. I couldn’t even remember her name if anyone were to ask.

“Don’t tell me that we’re going to suffer now that he’s found his woman,” Franco joked. “Like a contagion.”

I rolled my eyes. “What, that we’re all going to want to settle down since my father has?”

He furrowed his brow. “Nah, it won’t happen. Not to me. I thought about it so long ago that it feels like another lifetime has passed.” Catching a broom as he slid along the wall, he shook his head. “Besides, this isn’t an ideal time to settle down. Or start projects.”

I stuck my hands in my pockets. “Until something happens with this war my father declared on the Giovannis and the Devil’s Brothers, I want something to busy myself with.” It felt like an epic waiting game, watching our rival Mafia men and those bikers who’d recently come onto the scene.

He huffed. “Eh. You just need to get laid or something. Not start a fucking renovation.”

“This is a project,” I reminded him. “Something to fill my downtime. I’m not changing careers.”

“And I’m not suggesting you are.”

I wanted to groan. He was like a damn sibling, a brother. We always bickered like this. “Then what the fuck are you suggesting?”

He ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I’ve inhaled so much dust and shit in here helping you that my brain is fucked.”

I laughed, walking toward the back to appreciate the fresher air breezing in through the open window.

“I’m suggesting,” he said, following me, “that you get laid.”

“Like that’s a solution.” It wouldn’t be. Finding an easy piece of ass might have entertained me for a few hours, but that was it. Afterward, I’d be right back to my usual brooding self.

“I’m not saying it’s a solution, but hell, maybe finding a woman to fuck could remind you that being a bachelor isn’t always that bad.”

I smirked at him, not buying it.

“Well, maybe getting laid would help you get your head out of your ass.”

I stared out the window, watching the sun set further. All my life, I’d been a serious sort of person. A brooder. An introvert. A watcher and daydreamer, more comfortable in my own head than with others. Being “moody” wasn’t just a phase I went through as a teenager. I wasn’t emo or gothic in my adolescent years for the hell of it. I was a Mafia prince, born and raised with the laws of violence and corruption reigning supreme. No one was sane and lighthearted with an upbringing like I had.

Lately, though, my guilt about not preventing those three soldiers from dying had dragged me even lower. It wasn’t depression, but deep-seated regret. It wasn’t some sort of manic pit or any other psychological nonsense. It was hating that I couldn’t have saved those good men.

“Romeo.” He sighed. “You have got to stop beating yourself up for not being able to control those men dying. For not being able to control everything.”

That was my most consistent flaw. I was a control freak, and that extended to the bedroom. Crossing my arms, I leaned against the window frame and stared at him. “Which is why giving me advice to ‘just go get laid’ is a joke.”

He rolled his eyes, setting his hands on the open window frame. I didn’t miss the slight flinch as he locked the muscles in his left arm. He was shot trying to defend Nina and Eva at a spa the night the MC men kidnapped Nina, and the muscles that the bullet pierced were still healing.

“I’m a hard lover,” I reminded him. We didn’t talk about this shit. We didn’t deal with chitchats about women, sex, or marital goals. It was common knowledge, though, that I wasn’t the ordinary man who could get off with just any easy pussy available. Franco knew. Back when we were younger and stupider, he accompanied me to the sex clubs where I acquired, then fine-tuned, my preference for the kinkier side of fucking.

“I’m sure there’s got to be a seasoned whore around here somewhere who could handle you.”

I raised my brows at him.

“For a price,” he added hastily.

Buying sex no longer appealed. After witnessing the miracle of how much my father had changed since meeting his other half and falling so swiftly and seriously in love, it seemed like a cop-out to want anything else.

Who am I kidding? I’m not in any position to go looking for someone. Someone who likely doesn’t exist. I’d need a patient and equally hard lover, and I wasn’t sure she was real.

Besides, it was dumb to try to start something with anyone when I needed to start caring about myself more. Regardless of how often I was told to get over my guilt and move on, I struggled. If and when I could open up to letting a woman in my life, I had to do so knowing I was the best version of myself as possible.

I didn’t love myself anymore. Not after failing my Mafia brothers.

In my darkest—and usually drunkest—moments, I got hooked on the idea that being loved again would make me feel whole. That finding a real match in a woman would help me accept that I was worthy of love. I wouldn’t achieve that with some random hooker. Not even a skilled escort. It wasn’t only sex that would make me change, but a real connection. A bonding experience of decent companionship. That was what I needed.

“Seriously,” Franco said. “You’re the Mafia prince of the Constella Family. Many women would be willing to entertain you. They’d volunteer to be your ‘project’ and keep you busy.”

I deadpanned at him. “What women? The ones like Vanessa Giovanni?”

He winced at the mention of the woman who’d pursued my father so relentlessly since the beginning of the year. While seeing my father and Nina so sickeningly in love was an adjustment, I was very glad that I wouldn’t have to put up with telling Stefan Giovanni’s clingy daughter to get lost.

“Yeah, it’s a bunch of stupid nonsense.” He sighed as he stood and backed up, stretching his spine and arms. “We don’t need a woman.”

I shrugged. It’d be nice, though.

“We need to stay on guard. Keep our eyes open.” He glanced at me, somber and serious. “With Dante focusing on Nina and the arrival of their baby, he won’t be one hundred percent focused on the war with Stefan and Reaper.”

I cringed at the mention of the Devil’s Brothers MC’s leader. Reaper was as nasty as they came.

“Which means we—you and I—need to handle the due diligence for him.”

I held out my hand for him to smack it in our custom shake. “And we will.”

My loyalty to my father and my family would always take precedence over any projects I might take on and any daydreams I might create about a fantasy woman who’d accept and love me for the twisted, dark bastard I was.