Chapter 53 Stan
FIFTY-THREE
STAN
Playlist recommendation:
Goodbye - Spice Girls
Every argument with Kitty felt like I was fighting for my life.
Because I was.
And she didn’t let up.
God, how I needed that.
Someone who wouldn’t let me get away with shit. Who’d get in my face. Who didn’t fear me.
Who doled out consequences like her mother made sandwiches.
Proof, once again, that I needed my angel.
Her gaze scrutinized me more than an MRI scanner but eventually, she glanced away, patted the headstone, standing respectfully to the side as she did so.
“Rest, Evangeline. Rest. I have his back now.”
The flood of emotion that triggered in me was something I’d admit to no one, not even her. But I bowed my head as she returned to my side and, with a huff, slipped her arm through the crook of mine.
She was still furious with me.
Together, in seething silence, we walked through the cemetery. That silence continued as she tugged me in a different direction.
I’d go to the ends of the earth for her, so what did a short detour matter?
Her father and brother shared a grave, but the plot was half the size of Evangeline’s—Green-Wood cost a fortune so I got it.
A bunch of flowers sat in the small metal holder in front of the headstone. Rory’d probably know the names. I just knew they were white and pink and fresh, so someone visited regularly. It made sense it’d be Patricia, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn one of the girls brought them.
I cringed as she greeted, “Da, meet Stan. You’d hate him. You’d think he was all kinds of bad news for me, and that’s without him being Sicilian, but then you never did have any taste. That’s why Ma, to this day, wonders if you and Aunt Marge got it on.
“Stan won’t cheat, though, because he knows I know how to castrate a man.
” I didn’t even flinch. Because, yeah, ‘perks’ of her being a nurse…
. “You might not have screwed around with Aunt Barf, but I know you weren’t true to Ma, so I don’t want any crap from you.
So, ta da, your soon-to-be first son-in-law.
“A part of me hopes you’re rolling in your grave because I love you and miss you like mad, but you didn’t deserve Ma.” She wiggled her shoulders. “Man, I really needed to get that off my chest.” Her eyes popped up to meet mine. “Don’t tell Ma I said any of that.”
“Been holding that in for a long time?”
“Since he died.” She cleared her throat.
“Vinny, you better not tell Ma either. You keep that shit close to your chest. I know you ratted me out to her when I broke that pendant her great-grandma gave her when she was a child. But you’d like Stan once you got past his nationality.
He watches hockey with me even though he prefers soccer, and I reckon you’d get a kick out of watching the World Cup together.
He drives me crazy but treats me better than a princess, and he’s even moving into the building with us so I can stay close to the fam.
“I miss you, Vinny, and hate you for leaving us. You were my favorite brother, but you knew that anyway, you jerk. I-I love you and wish you were there to fight it out with Lucas over who’d walk me down the aisle.”
When a hitch sounded in her voice, I knew she’d used up all her words so I broke in, “It’s an honor to meet both of you. Just know that I’d be asking you for her hand in marriage if you were alive, sir. I may be Sicilian and not Irish, but we’re both cut from the same traditional cloth.”
Her hand clung to my arm. “Stan?”
“Yes, duci?”
“Just don’t let me regret loving you. I know you’ll fuck up and you’ll piss me off—that’s a goddamn given—but… don’t break my trust and make me a liar to my da.”
“I swear I won’t.”
I approached her. Cautiously. Wary of her claws. But she let me tug her into a hug with a small sniffle. At first, her tension made my heart hurt. Slowly, gradually, she softened and nestled into my arms.
“Just stop being a jerk,” she fumed.
“It’s hard to change a habit of a lifetime, my dream girl—”
“If I’m your dream girl, then you’ll try!”
“I will. But I’ll fuck up. Will you…”
“Will I what?”
“Now that you know the worst of me, will you stop loving me when I do?”
A breath gusted from her. “No.”
Unable to hide my relief, I slumped my shoulders.
She cupped my chin and stared straight into my eyes. “I won’t let you get away with the stunts you’ve pulled up until now. I think your cum had C-L-O in it or something because this whole ‘courtship’ of ours has to have been a psychotic episode.”
“Please don’t talk about my cum while I’m standing next to your dad’s grave,” I pleaded.
She steamrolled past my protest with a wicked curve to her lips. “Moving forward, if you want this to be—”
“Per sempri,” I inserted because I could tell she hesitated over the right adverb.
“Per sempri,” she agreed with a frown. “Then you’ll stop manhandling my life.”
“All I want is per sempri.”
“Not like you ask for much, is it?” she grouched, but whatever she saw in my expression had her nodding.
Apparently, I’d said something right because she hustled me away from the gravesite to the car.
Yet more silence fell between us as we rode toward her brother’s building.
But her hand settled on my knee and she didn’t move it once.
Lucas wasn’t on shift—a fact we’d learned from their ma—so he let Kitty up with only a raised brow once he saw her face in the intercom.
That raised brow turned into a scowl when he noticed me standing beside her in front of his door. “What’s going on?”
“I need you to get me a meeting with Aidan Jr.”
“Why?” Lucas folded his arms across his chest. “Since when do you let yourself touch anything mob-related? Aside from if it’s a Sicilian dick, that is.”
I made to stalk forward, but she grabbed my upturned wrist. “This is why I dislike you most of the time, Lucas. Get that stick out of your ass, would you?”
“It isn’t right,” her older brother insisted.
“Fuck off.” She scoffed. “One of the O’Donnellys themselves is married to a Sicilian.”
“Jennifer isn’t my baby sister!”
“Why does it matter who I’m with?”
“Your actions make waves, Kitty. They reflect on me.”
“So it’s about your career? Of course it is.” Her top lip curled. “You’re such an asshole, Lucas.”
“Like you’re not a bitch!”
Kitty flipped him two birds. “Meow.”
My head whipped around to stare at her in shock, but that was nothing to the shit-eating grin Lucas sported as he dragged his sister in for a hug.
I blinked and sputtered, “The fuck happened here?”
Lucas sneered at me. “We’re Irish. You wouldn’t get it.”
Perplexed, I watched Kitty laugh, but she tugged her head back to stare at her brother from within the confines of his embrace. “Seriously, I need to speak with Aidan.”
“What the hell for?”
“Got a message for him from someone not Sicilian,” she quipped.
Lucas pursed his lips. “Aidan’s at home. It’s above my pay grade to disturb him on his day off.”
“Can I at least have his number?”
“Why isn’t Capone over there giving it to you?”
“Because,” she said slowly, like he was five, “this is performative, dingbat. It’s important that I trigger this meeting through you.” Her tone remained relatively patient for a woman who, I’d come to learn, didn’t like justifying her own actions.
If anything, her explanation put him more on edge. “What’s going on, KittyKat?”
“It’s important, and you know I hate it when you and Cade call me that.”
“Tough. Shit. Why can’t you tell me?”
“I hate you. Because Aidan has to hear it first.”
Lucas shot me a look. I didn’t nod. Kitty had no need for me to fight this battle. So I just held his stare until he heaved a sigh. “Kitty, come on—it’s my ass on the line here. If I shit on Aidan’s day off, he’ll be a nightmare.”
She grabbed his hands and squeezed them with her own.
“I know we don’t always get along the best, Lucas.
I know you try to protect us and I do what I can to ignore those protections, but please, trust me.
I wouldn’t do this, any of this, if I didn’t have to.
I swear it’s important and, in the long run, it might even improve your standing with Aidan. ”
Lucas grouched about pain-in-the-ass sisters, but he dragged his phone from his back pocket and reeled off a number. “This makes zero sense.”
She tapped in the digits onto her own cell. “I know.”
“Fine.” He wafted a hand. “Go on then. Call him. I’m not going anywhere. I want to hear this.”
She stuck out her tongue. “Pushy.”
When Lucas chortled, she smirked but hit the call button. A soft, shaky breath was sucked in then quickly blown out when Aidan answered, “What?”
“Aidan, this is Kitty Frasier.”
“Kitty?” Aidan’s voice morphed from irritated to confused. “Is something wrong?”
“No, s—” The word ‘sir’ almost fell from her lips. Then she stared at me. I nodded. Her shoulders straightened. “No, Aidan. Nothing’s wrong. But I asked my brother for your cell number because I have something important to share with you.
“It’s regarding the Albanian situation and…” She swallowed. “Dead To Me’s almost assassination.”
Aidan didn’t speak. Not at first.
Then, slowly, he drawled, “And how would you know anything about either topic, Catriona?”
“Eva Martinez contacted me,” she said in a rush.
“This is Valentini-sanctioned,” I intoned in the background, not taking the phone away from her, only setting the record straight.
“Come to my building. One hour.”
Jr. didn’t let her reply, only ended the call.
Lucas received a text that he read out: “Your sister’s incoming. Escort her up to my apartment.”
Kitty whistled. “Fuck. He’s intense.”
“He’s a psychopath.” Lucas hooked an arm around her shoulders. “And you decided to dive straight into shark-infested waters.” He might have been messing with her, but the look he sent me promised death.
“Oh, shut up and don’t be glowering at Stan. This has nothing to do with him and everything to do with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember Beatriz?”
A soft smile danced on his lips. “How could I forget her? You two were inseparable.”