Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
Milo
I preferred the heat in the air from the frigid temperatures in New York City. I had escaped the cold by coming to Puerto Rico, but the pending war brewing between Medina and my family was just heating up.
As we climbed the steps to the residence set back on the private beach, Sable gripped my hand.
This had been a long day filled with new experiences for her.
Checking in on my brother to tame my own fears wasn’t the way I wanted to introduce her to life’s luxuries, but we had to take what we could get.
Introducing her to Chello and Lissia would make our relationship more official. I wanted her to get to know me better. I had been struggling without my father and brother. Being here provided me with some serenity, even if we could only stay for one night.
She slowed her pace as she gazed at the beachfront property in one of the most exclusive sections of the area. My family had safe houses all over the world. It had been a few years since I had been here.
We stopped once we reached the porch, but she didn’t loosen her grasp on my hand. I didn’t mind. I thrived off her dependence on me. It was a natural intuition for me to protect her.
“This is gorgeous. I thought your house in New Jersey was spectacular, but this is um….” She waved her hand around. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“My father enjoys the finer things in life, so he makes sure all of his properties are of the highest standards.” I guided her to the door. “Once shit settles down, I’ll take you to some of our other homes. The properties where you will need a passport.”
I hoped a less violent time for my family was in the future. But my instincts knew better.
“How many are there?”
“I don’t know.” I breathed in the coastal air. “Too many to remember.”
“Milo,” Dom, one of Marchello’s guys, met us at the door. “It’s good to see you.”
“You too.” I shook his hand. “You’re doing a fantastic job with all the traveling and what goes with keeping Chello and Lissia safe.”
“Thank you.” He nodded to the men guarding the gate. “I’ll have them get your bags.”
“There isn’t too much.” I nudged Sable forward. “Dom, this is Sable.”
“Nice to meet you.” Dom smiled. “Did you have a good flight?”
“Very good, thank you.” The blush in Sable’s cheeks darkened, enhancing the freckles that dusted her flawless skin. It didn’t take a genius to know she thought about the way I kept her busy on that flight. I’d lost track of how many orgasms she had. “Milo was a perfect traveling companion.”
I grinned as I placed my hand on her back and led her into the house. “The perfect traveling companion?” I whispered into her ear. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“I don’t have any fear of flying now.” She kissed me, lingering at my lips as she spoke. “As long as you’re with me.”
“Milo!” Lissia screeched as she ran down the hallway in a white bikini and a large, straw hat. “Marchello told me five minutes ago that you were coming.”
She wrapped her arms around me and gave me a tight hug, covering me in the coconut scent of sunscreen.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
“I wanted it to be a surprise.” Marchello joined us in the foyer, waiting for Lissia to get her fill of me before he leaned in and hugged me, patting me on the back for a few seconds. “It’s good to see you.”
“You too.” I stepped back and smiled at both of them, relieved to see they were okay.
“You must be Sable.” Lissia pulled Sable into a hug that she wasn’t expecting, but once she stabilized her footing, she embraced Lissia. “Milo has told me so much about you. We text all the time and he sends me pictures, but girl, you’re even more gorgeous in person.”
“So are you,” Sable said. “I’ve seen your wedding pictures. They are stunning.”
“Hello, Sable.” Marchello put his arm around Lissia. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Hi, Marchello.” Sable extended her hand for him. “Milo talks about you often.”
“I probably don’t want to know what he says.” Chello shook Sable’s hand. “I’m happy you could come with him. ”
“I’ve missed you so much!” Lissia took my hands. “There’s no one here to control Marchello when he gets crazy.”
“Who makes him crazy?” I laughed.
“That would be my wife.” Marchello glanced at Lissia. “But you’ve done a fantastic job with our itinerary and security. I’ve heard no complaints from Mrs. Accetti.”
“Are you kidding?” Lissia spun around, making a grand gesture of the foyer. “One place is more fantastic than the next.”
“I’m glad you approve,” I said.
“I’m actually mad at you.” Lissia put her hand on her hip. “How come when I had to go to the safe house last fall, you sent us to the boonies in New Jersey?”
“There was nothing wrong with that property,” Marchello said.
“Yeah, she made the perfect hostage.” We could joke about it now, but there wasn’t anything funny about it then. “Every time I came to visit, I wondered which one of you was going to kill the other one first.”
Lissia and Marchello didn’t have a traditional meeting. Actually, nothing about them was conventional. They were water and vinegar and everything in between, but they were made for one another. I had never seen two people more suited for one another.
I glanced at Sable, whose smile lit up the room as she took in her surroundings. Amongst all the shit going on with my family business, she was my bright spot. The one distraction I thought I didn’t need. I had been wrong about that.
“How long are you staying?” Lissia asked. “Where are your clothes?”
“Dom is getting them from the car,” I said. “We’re not here long. I have business to discuss with Chello that needs to be handled in person.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Lissia rolled her eyes. “Did you at least bring a bathing suit?” she asked. “Oh, and something to wear for dinner?”
“I…” Sable looked at me for assistance. “Did I?”
“You packed for her?” Lissia hit my arm. “How cute.”
“I had clothes sent to the house for her,” I said. “I didn’t give her much notice for this trip.”
“Oh! Milo has the best taste in clothes.” Lissia hooked her arm in Sable’s. “He once bought me a whole wardrobe when Chello and I were… Well, let’s just say Marchello took me against my will and I didn’t have any clothes with me.”
“How come he took you?” Sable asked.
“It’s a long story.” I shook my head. “One Lissia will have plenty of time to tell you while Marchello and I catch up.”
“That’s our cue to leave.” Lissia stuck her tongue out at me.
She gave Chello a quick kiss on the cheek, but he caught her hand and said, “Behave.”
“I always do.” She ran her hand along his jaw. “Sable, let’s go through your suitcase and see what Milo got for you.”
“Okay.” Sable waved at me as Lissia tugged her down the hallway.
“And I want all the details about you and my brother-in-law,” Lissia said. “Don’t leave anything out.”
“God.” Chello sighed. “Let’s go outside and get a drink.”
“How are things going?” I followed him to the patio where the bar cart was set up by the pool that overlooked the beach. “Is Lissia driving you insane?”
“What do you think?” He opened the top of the insulated cart and took out two beers. “She’s just being Lissia.” He handed me a beer. “But I wouldn’t have her any other way.”
“I know that’s true.” I twisted off the cap on the bottle. “How is she really?”
What Lissia had to do in Miami to protect herself from Danny wasn’t easy. No matter how strong a person was, taking a life, even in self-defense, could haunt them for a long time.
“She’s come to terms with what she had to do to survive.” He took a long sip of his drink. “I try to be the best therapist I can be for her.”
“You’ve had plenty of experience in ending people’s lives.” I raised my bottle. “We both have.”
“Yeah, but it’s different for us. We’re conditioned for it.” He sat on a lounge chair. “It’s our job. We protect what’s ours.”
“Lissia protected this family too.” I took off my shoes and then sat by the edge of the pool, dipping my feet in the warm water. “She did what she had to do.”
“She understands that,” Chello said. “It’s the nightmares that get her.” He shrugged. “It shreds my soul apart when she screams bloody murder in the middle of the night.”
“Christ, Chello.” I set my beer down. “That’s horrible.”
Lissia didn’t deserve any of that. Her asshole father had put her in the path of destruction. Gian Gallanti was terrorizing all of us from the grave.
“The nightmares are becoming less common,” he said. “She’s strong. ”
“She’ll overcome it.”
“We want to come home.” He finished his beer. “In order to do that, we have to take care of Medina. I don’t want to bring her back to the city with him lurking around.”
“He might have his sights on Sable now.”
“How the fuck did that happen?” Marchello placed his empty bottle on the table next to him. “He’s too fucking dangerous to know who she is.”
“He intercepted her at the club, but that was an accident. She shouldn’t have been there. It was my fault. I should have had a better handle on the situation. It won’t happen again.”
“You have to keep her safe,” he said. “I don’t know how serious it is between the two of you, but from where I’m standing, you look pretty close.”
“We are.”
“Then she can be used as leverage by our enemies.” He rested his chin on his hand. “We know what that’s like.”
“Mom.” I stared out at the gentle waves floating to the shore. “Something like that will never happen to this family again. We won’t let it.”
“We need to get this family back on track.” Chello stretched his legs across the chair. “The three of us have to get back to New York. Things are falling through the cracks.”
“I’m doing my best.”
“It’s not your fault. You can’t be expected to do the job that three of us handle,” he said. “We have the demands of the cartels to meet. We have to keep the shipments running through the ports while we keep our territory safe.”
“Medina isn’t going to make it easy on us.”
“We have to eliminate the problem.”
“I’m open to suggestions.” I leaned my head back and let the strong rays of the sun penetrate my face. “He’s not going to let this sex trafficking situation go without a fight.”
“He’s not working alone,” Chello said. “Someone is funding him.”
“I thought Gian was the mastermind behind that.”
“That’s what Diego wanted us to believe, but I’ve been doing some digging.” Chello tugged off his shirt and joined me by the pool. “Miami was set up. He wanted me to believe he was a nobody, but there’s more to his story.”
“Do you think he’s been in charge all along?”
“I think so.” He slid off the edge of the pool and immersed himself up to his shoulders in the water. “He’s going through a lot of trouble to get to us.”
“This is a lot bigger than we thought,” I said. “This is what Angelo meant when he said Gian unleashed something far worse on us.”
Angelo, Gian’s second-in-command, had warned Chello and I that something bigger was coming. We thought he meant the trafficking ring, which was why our father went underground to dismantle it. By eliminating Gian and removing Danny from the situation, we thought we had control of things.
We miscalculated.
“That war we fought with Gian is far from over. It was only the beginning.” Marchello rested his arms on the edge of the pool.
Lissia and Sable stepped out onto the patio with drinks in their hands, giggling as if they had been friends forever.
“We have to stop him,” Chello said. “By any means necessary.”
The sunlight caught Sable’s hair in its stream, making it look redder than usual against the backdrop of the white siding on the house. When she smiled at me, an ominous notion took residence in the darkest corner of my mind.
“Before he gets to one of them.” Bile burned my throat when I recalled Diego with his hands on Sable at the club. It was a warning that I wouldn’t ignore.
There wasn’t anything I wasn’t willing to do to protect her.