Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
M y hand squeezes Aria’s under the table. This is fucking awkward. I don’t know what my brother was thinking when he set up this dinner. I know we need to make an effort to get to know our sister, but surely there is a better way.
“So, Esther, what are you hoping to do after school?” Ellie asks in an attempt to break the silence.
“I’m not a hundred percent sure yet. I think I’m going to try out stripping for a bit. I hear they make decent money.” Esther shrugs.
“Fucking hell.” Tommy shakes his head.
“Relax. I’m joking, obviously .” She laughs.
“It wouldn’t matter if you wanted to become a stripper,” Gio tells her.
“Oh, you I like. You believe in women being able to do what they want with their bodies?” she asks him.
“Women, yes. You, not a fucking chance. It wouldn’t matter because there isn’t a strip club in this city that would give you a job.” He smirks.
“Meh, Australia’s a big country,” Esther replies, unfazed.
“You think our reach is limited to this city?” I ask her.
“Okay, she’s joking, and she doesn’t know about your family business,” Mary tells me.
I lift an eyebrow. “What exactly have you told her?”
“Nothing,” Esther answers for her. “But I’m not an idiot. I know who you all are. But just so you know, I don’t need five big brothers getting in my way of life.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Daisy chimes in.
“I have three. We have a reverse harem thing going on,” Esther says with a straight face.
“Esther, stop,” Tommy grunts. “She doesn’t date.”
“That he knows of,” Esther adds, and I’m suddenly glad I didn’t have sisters growing up.
“Okay, what are you into? Any hobbies?” I try to steer the conversation in another direction.
“What’s with the twenty questions?” she counters.
“We’re trying to get to know you.”
“Why? What’s the point? I vote we just go back to doing things the way we were before,” she says.
“Well, the cat’s out of the bag. It’s not our fault we didn’t know about you,” I tell her.
“It’s not my fault your father beat my mother for years before kicking her out onto the street half-dead,” Esther says. “This—us pretending to be one big happy family—is bullshit.”
“Esther, stop.” Mary looks from Esther to Gio, the worry written all over her face. “She didn’t mean it. She doesn’t mean to be disrespectful.”
“Let her say what she wants. She should get it out. Besides, I like her fire.” Gio shrugs, and Mary stares back at him like she’s seeing a ghost.
“You look like him,” she whispers. “The old him.”
“What do you mean the old him ?” Marcel asks.
“Giovanni wasn’t always the way he was. When I first met him, the man was… charming, nice, caring,” she explains.
That makes me laugh out loud. “Giovanni was anything but caring.”
“He was. And then… he wasn’t,” Mary says.
“I’ll be back.” Vin gets up from the table.
Cammi goes to stand. “I’ll come with you.”
“No, stay.” Vin kisses the top of her head and whispers something into her ear before slipping out the glass doors.
“If he gets to walk away, so do I,” Esther says. “Be right back.”
“Wait! You can’t just roam around.” Mary grabs her daughter’s arm.
“Let her go,” Gio directs. “She can go wherever she wants.”
“There are guards everywhere,” Mary tells him.
Gio smirks. “I’m aware.”
“They don’t know her.”
“They’ve been briefed,” Gio fires back.
Talk about a dinner party from hell.
“Come on, Mary. I’m sure you remember how this all works. No one in this house is going to do anything to go against the boss. We’re mafia, not animals,” I remind her.
“You do know that you’re all a bunch of assholes, right?” Esther looks at the four of us left at the table. “I don’t know how much you’re paying these women to be your wives, ?cause they actually seem normal, nice… But you guys? Assholes ,” she says before walking out the same doors Vin just exited.
“She’s got quite the mouth on her. She get that from you?” I ask Tommy.
“She’s… adjusting,” he says.
“Yeah. Guess it’s not every day you find out your mother had a whole other family before you.” I lift a shoulder, picking up my glass of whiskey.
“Well, I like her,” Daisy says. “Anyone who calls you four out for being assholes has my vote.”
“What about Vin?” I ask her. “She didn’t call him out.”
“Vin’s not an asshole,” Daisy tells me.
“Babe, seriously? I’m not an asshole,” Gabe says to his wife.
Zoe mutters something in Russian, and I look over at her. “Care to tell the group?”
“She said we’re all assholes, but also the best brothers she could ask for,” Gabe answers for her.
“Actually, I said: Even though you’re assholes, I wouldn’t want any of you to change. ” Zoe smiles. She’s usually the quiet one.
“You have all grown into wonderful men,” Mary whispers.
“No thanks to you.” I lift my glass to her.
“I know,” she tells me.
“You keep looking at my husband like you’re just waiting for him to get up and hurt you,” Ellie says. “Gio would never hurt a woman.”
“I don’t… It’s not that. It’s not you, Gio. It’s just…”
“I get it. The old man fucked you up. Newsflash: he fucked all of us up ,” Gio grunts.
“I should go check on Esther,” Tommy says.
“She’s outside with Vin. She’s fine,” I tell him.
“She’s my daughter and in a strange place full of strange men,” he replies.
“Men who would take a bullet for her,” I remind him.
“Right… because you said so? And you’ve never had anyone betray you before?” he asks.
“No,” Gio says confidently.
“Sure,” Tommy mutters under his breath.
“Okay, how about dessert?” Aria asks. “It really is the best part of the meal.”