Chapter 9
Face planting into my office, my brother Tomaso had arrived. He managed to hold a bottle of Grey Goose high above his head and laugh about protecting the things that mattered. Santo was in the office, standing with his back to the wall. He snarled at Tomaso, then looked away.
“You were getting help,” I said, dipping to a knee in front of him. “We’ve all had to give up our vices.”
“Yeah, you don’t see me going out racking up thousands in hotel bills,” Santo said. “I’m not smoking, I’m just—”
Tomaso’s drunken eyes rolled around. There was nobody there, at least not the Tomaso I’d grown up with.
“You’re both trying to keep me fucked up,” he said.
“You both want someone to blame when shit happens. Because if you don’t remember, I’ve always been there for you.
For both of you.” As he tried lifting his head to drink more of the vodka, I managed to yank it away.
“You’re gonna say something you don’t mean,” I said, putting the bottle on my desk, and Santo immediately grabbed it for a sip. “You need to stop trying to numb the pain with alcohol. And you need to speak to Mom. She needs to hear from you.”
He spat, and it landed on himself. “You’re not even one of us,” he said.
I punched him square on the nose. His head went back down onto the ground, and I glanced to Santo, who shrugged. “I wasn’t gonna let him speak to me like that,” I said.
“He’s a fucking dick for that,” he said. “You’re a brother. He’d never let anyone say otherwise, so he’s probably only saying it to you now because he wants to hurt you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled, standing and brushing my hands down my shirt. “If Mom had heard him say that, I think she would have done the same.”
Santo laughed. “Oh, he’d be in the basement for it.”
“Probably the best place for him,” I said.
He passed me the vodka bottle. I needed a giant glug of it.
It went down smooth. I sighed, looking at our brother on the ground, his T-shirt halfway up his torso.
His sweatpants and jacket combo were the cherry on the cake.
Probably the clothes he’d worn when we checked him into the facility.
He’d wanted to get help as well, it wasn’t purely forced on him.
“You take the legs, I’ll take the arms, and we’ll take him home,” Santo said.
“No way, you get the legs, he’s a kicker,” I said.
“Fine, whatever,” Santo grumbled. “Check him for knives first. I can’t be fucked around with his stabby tendencies. And I’ve got Isaiah waiting for me at home.”
I was jealous. I wanted someone at home, and if I’d left Kalen cuffed to the wall, I would have, but there was no way I was going to keep him there.
I just hoped he was packed up and on his way out of the state.
There was a small pit in me, like a wound which wasn’t capable of healing on its own. “Think I need an assistant,” I said.
“Someone you can fuck, you mean,” Santo said, shaking his head. “No. Tomaso isn’t getting one either. Unless you’re getting the type of woman dad would’ve thrown at you.”
A shudder ran through me, forcing me to tighten up and flex my pecs inside my shirt. “Tommy would love that, actually,” I said. “Pansexuality, right?”
Santo shrugged. “Think so, but I only ever see him with guys.”
“I’m just saying, you can’t be too careful. He’d probably hump a footstool if there was an opening.”
Standing over our brother, we watched him beginning to fuss through the drunken stupor—and maybe I hadn’t punched him hard enough, especially since the comment he’d made meant he probably should’ve been given another punch or a much harder one. His nose wasn’t even bloody.
“We’re taking your car,” Santo said. “I’m not letting him in mine again. Unless he’s in the trunk and wrapped in a curtain or something absorbent.”
This wasn’t the first time we’d had to take care of Tomaso, and yes, he’d managed to piss in both of our cars already. That was before we had men from the organization to drive us around, when we drove ourselves, but it didn’t matter, because it had happened and it wasn’t about to happen again.
“I’ll get Roland to come help,” I said. “We can use my car.”
Santo laughed. “And that’s why I’m the eldest. I’ll call Mom and let her know we’re on our way.”
It was getting late, but we needed Tomaso out of the way.
We couldn’t jeopardize the poker game this weekend, and he would probably get in the way of it.
Once I left the office and Santo to deal with our brother in case he woke, I sucked in a deep breath, pushing out my chest. I walked right through the people at the bar, and around tables with seated guests, most of them wanting to greet me as the owner.
It was at that point I realized how stupid it might’ve been to even try and get Tomaso out of here—unless we Weekend at Bernied him into making everyone think we were just traveling our drunken brother out.
Lost, and almost stuck trying to think of what I should do, I walked right into Kalen, right outside the large arched doors into the restaurant. He smiled at me.
“What are you—”
“Hi,” he said, in his now adorable way of being. “I’m sure you—”
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said, grabbing him by both arms. I looked around at the darkened street. “You need to be on your way out of the state.”
He shook his head, then nodded, sending mixed signals. “Listen,” he said, shrugging my hands off me. “I—”
“Spit it out,” I said, snapping my fingers with two sharps clicks. It signaled to my driver, Roland, who was across the street in my car. It hadn’t meant to signal him, but it did—habit, I suppose. “Quick.”
“I don’t want to quit my job, well, maybe eventually, but I want to see you—to keep seeing you,” he said. “And I’m sure you’re gonna tell me again to leave, but I don’t think that’s what you really want. Do you?”
I stared at him. Sometimes it did feel like sleeping with me was a bit of a novelty, something to say you did, or at least one of the Bianchi brothers.
We were criminals, and that turned people off, but it only turned them off about relationships.
I didn’t know how much of what Kalen was saying could be believed.
He was still a Fed at the end of the day, and I couldn’t have that hanging around the Palazzo.
A stink I don’t think I could clean if it was found out.
“I’m not even—”
Roland grabbed both of Kalen’s arms from behind. It was always a little fun to see the drivers exercise their strengths, especially considering they were former associates who’d become a little too old to be running around the streets with arms.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “You need to leave now. Before my—”
Santo’s distinguished cologne smell arrived before him. He laughed. “Before what?” he asked. “Spill, brother.” He looked at Kalen, and then back at me. “I’m no mind reader, but it sounds like you’ve been fucking a federal agent.”
At this point, Kalen was burned as an agent—if that was the term they used. Could he be burned if he was just an analyst? I didn’t even want to think about it, but he was on my mind, he was consuming my thoughts. “You make it sound like I’ve done this before.”
Santo continued to look Kalen over, and I was glad he was being quiet. Santo hummed, shaking his head. “If Dad was here, he’d have him put in some cage like a beast,” he said, stepping toward me. “I take it you like him?”
Kalen’s eyes were directed to his feet. I knew he wanted the answer to that question as well.
I liked him, but I didn’t know if I wanted him to be around me, or this entire operation.
He’d end up dead, and we’d end up being the family that worked with the Feds.
I always put family first; it was practically burned into me.
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “We have fun together.”
“I’ll leave,” Kalen offered up.
Santo laughed. “You can’t leave now,” he said.
“What?” We both said at the same time.
“Listen, brother, I don’t care who you’ve decided to sleep with, or what your relationship is like, but Dad is dead,” he said, laughing a little more. “We can do whatever we want now. We run this.”
I stared at Kalen, and his eyes filled with hope. “I can still go,” he let out. “I just wanted to come and see you again, just to—”
“How is he at poker?” Santo asked.
“No,” I said. “He’s not getting involved.”
“Well, I wasn’t suggesting he play,” he said. “But having someone with a good set of eyes, who knows the games, the rules, and all that, it would help. And it would force him to decide.”
“On what?” Kalen asked.
Looking around, people were leaving the restaurant and passing us. Nobody batted an eye at the way Roland continued to hold onto Kalen, or that the way we were standing like this was an interrogation.
“You came here for him. I’m assuming that means you’re a compromised agent, wanting to sacrifice all that for whatever Rocco has to offer,” he said, giving my arm a gentle punch.
“He already said no, and we’ve got bigger shit to deal with,” I said.
Our brother was out cold in my office, and if he woke up, there was no telling what he’d do.
The last thing I needed was the smell of his piss in the room, mingled with the old book smell I’d curated.
“He’s best off going home, leaving the state, and forgetting about me. ”
Kalen’s jaw trembled, and I wanted to cup his chin, to keep him from slumping like someone whose big gesture was over and done. “I thought we had something,” he let out. “The way you touched me, it was like—like the touch of someone who cared.”
Roland let go of him on that note.
“Can you go to my office and make sure Tomaso is still out,” I instructed Roland. I sucked in a deep breath and looked at Kalen. “I offered you the chance to quit and come work for me,” I told him. “You said no, you decided on a one-time thing. If you’ve changed your mind—”
“I’ve changed my mind,” he let out, chest swelling and dropping with his deep breaths. “But—I can’t just quit out of the blue. I—”
“You could, if you had to take care of your mom,” I said. “And—”
“Is she sick?” Santo asked. “If you really like him, we could foot her medical bills.”
Kalen shook his head. “No, no, I’m not here to get money. I was here because we had a moment.” He reached out, pressing his hand to my chest. “Unless it was a moment I imagined.”
I knew the moment he was talking about. The moment where our power dynamic was established.
I was the dominant, naturally, and he was submissive, giving in and calling me Daddy while he played coy and small.
It was adorable, and it was everything I desired from a partner.
To play with them. Everything I’d been denied before, Kalen was all of it, wrapped in a nice, neat package.
“He was supposed to leave,” I said. “I smelled him out as a Fed the moment he stepped inside, and so will everyone else.”
Santo laughed. “We’re not doing anything illegal,” he said.
Kalen stared at me, but was unable to smile, though Santo seemed receptive to the idea that there weren’t going to be any bodies falling tonight.
“Everyone has heard rumors,” he mumbled, before going off into an explanation about his whole entire reason for being here—here, with us, and not with his mom.
It was all a reason to be closer to her, and I couldn’t fault him for that, and neither could Santo.
As we listened, his eyes blinked and there were tears. “I can’t just quit my job.”
Santo patted Kalen on the shoulder, pulling him into a side hug. “Has my brother told you about the other families?”
“I’m not going to put him in danger,” I said, grabbing at his arm. “And that’s why I told him to leave.”
Kalen was so subdued now as he stood by my side. “I can protect myself.”
With all the sass he’d shown me, I figured he could, but I didn’t want him to. If this was his confession of feelings for me, then I was confessing mine right back to him. And I didn’t want him getting mixed up in anything dangerous—unless that dangerous thing was me.
“All I’m saying is, there are people around here we could point him towards, let him start his little investigations. Then he sticks around for you and his mom—and I’d also like to have someone on our side for the poker games.” We were speaking now as if he wasn’t even there.
I was conflicted. After days of struggle, thinking about all the things I wanted to do with him, I was now being told I could—in fact, Santo was telling me I should.
Santo’s boyfriend had definitely made him much softer, but I think that’s what all of us wanted, to show that we could build on the Bianchi empire without everyone living in fear of us—except the other families and the people they sent to bring us down.
They deserved to live in fear of a shallow grave.
“I have a week and a half left of my vacation, which was granted for compassionate leave,” Kalen said. “So I don’t have to work, or do anything, and we can try dating.” He looked up at me, eyes blinking. He rubbed at his pink nose with the back of his sleeve—it was getting cold, and late.
Santo let out a cheer, startling more customers as they left the restaurant.
We laughed about it, but the laughter stopped when Roland came back to tell us that Tomaso was waking, and he didn’t want to lay a hand on him—which was a wise decision considering Tomaso’s affection for inflicting pain on others.
“Go home,” I told Kalen.
He nodded then shook his head. “I want to talk to you alone.”
I looked him over. “Go to my place. Roland. Can you take him?”
Santo scoffed. “Guess that means we’re taking my car, then.”
And a good job as well, since Tomaso was definitely going to soil himself on the drive to Mom’s place. Kalen saved my car from some expensive detailing, and there was a stir of excitement in me to think there’d be someone waiting for me at home.