Chapter 41
FORTY-ONE
STAN
As was par for the fucking course with my life, every up came with a down.
I saw Luciu’s mother-in-law—Diana—the fucking second we entered Irish Mob turf.
This albatross had dangled around our necks since the first and last time Luc and I had had the misfortune of meeting her, and now he’d clearly invoked her like a demon spirit sent to cause us trouble.
Before my brother had married Jen, Diana had decided to sell her daughter to a local gang to cover her and her pimp’s debts.
The same bastard Jen had killed when he’d tried to rape her.
Luciu had made Valentini history that day after he’d sliced his very first ‘V’ into Diana’s cheek with a warning that if she ever darkened this side of the Hudson with her presence, she’d die.
The urge to enact his promise made it a struggle to escort Kitty and her sisters back home.
I’d empathized with Luc’s actions before I’d met Kitty. Now? I understood the demarcated lines of insanity that my brother bounced between on a second-by-second basis.
The urge to protect clashing with the urge to shelter someone’s happiness…
Fuck—how did he cope?! And he had kids—literal pieces of his soul walking around the city just waiting—
“Stan? You okay? You look murderery.”
“Just saw someone I wish I hadn’t, Neev.”
Kitty slipped her hand over mine. “Do you need to go?”
Glancing at the street, recognizing we were in West Midtown, I raised her knuckles to my lips. “Not until I’ve dropped you off.”
“Sure?”
I nodded.
Raisin skewered me with a distrustful look, but I ignored it as I returned to my mental juggling while they carried on sniping at one another.
See, Jen might hate her mother, might detest everything she stood for, but that didn’t mean she’d be happy with her husband murdering his in-law.
As for me, I couldn’t allow that cunt to bring a hint of tension into my brother’s marriage.
Butchering his daughters’ grandmother and feeding her to our pigs might trigger a moral dilemma for him, so there was no alternative but for me to handle it on his behalf.
Whatever that cunt wanted, whether it was to blackmail us or simply to test our limits, I wasn’t about to let her wreck it for them. Not after she’d shoved his mercy in our faces by entering Manhattan when that was a breach of their agreement and I—
“I still say you should pretend to have a stomach bug, Kitty, not me.”
That statement had me focusing on Neev, who was studying her nails.
“Why me?!”
“Because you know how to fake the symptoms. You’re a nurse. Duh.”
My lips twisted.
“By that logic, you could fake breaking your ankle again,” Kitty hissed.
“That wasn’t fake!”
“It was a sprain. At best.”
“We returned two days’ late that time. Not early. You know what she’s like,” Raisin pointed out. “She’ll sniff us out.”
“That’s probably because you’re terrible liars under pressure,” I added truthfully, having witnessed them at the dinner table last night.
Neev immediately pouted. “Hey!”
“We’re not all criminals,” Raisin retorted with a sniff.
“If I wanted to deceive you, I could.”
I arched a brow at Kitty. “Bet you can’t. Your poker face is good—” Read excellent. “—but I doubt you can lie to me.” Not now that I’d seen her come…
“Those screams had to be fake,” Raisin mocked.
Kitty’s smile turned, well, feline. “Oh, that was the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God, Raisin.”
As their bickering restarted, not even Kitty stroking my ego held my attention for long.
Unfortunately for me, their presence only amplified my dilemma.
Because family mattered.
Family was everything.
Jen might end up hating me, but I’d protect her.
No other alternative made sense.
My hand clenched around Kitty’s, and her smooth fingers felt so right in my grasp, like they’d always been there, like they always would be. And the ring I’d slid on there dug into my own digit. A reminder. A vow.
She turned to me with a questioning look, but there was a serenity in her expression that soothed me.
“Oh, shit,” Neev muttered, drawing both our attention. “What about our bags?”
“Fuck!” Raisin pinched the bridge of her nose. “This is a nightmare. Maybe we’ll be lucky and no one’s home?”
“Say they were lost on the plane?”
“Knew I liked you, Valentini.” Neev wagged a finger at me.
“Good to know,” I teased, but it was a reassurance all the same.
Luciu’s in-law situation might be disastrous, but mine wouldn’t be.
I wouldn’t, couldn’t, allow it, not when I knew how close Kitty was to her family.
Even if it meant causing some kind of turf war with her brothers to knock some sense into them, I’d make it happen.
“You’ve sneaked out a lot, huh?” Neev asked.
“I was a teenager once.” Not that I liked to think about those days. “I had…” I grimaced. “I’m a recovering addict.”
My honesty earned their full attention. No small feat when Neev and her phone were surgically attached at the hand.
Ironically, for the first time, Raisin didn’t look at me like I was a gnat she wanted to splat.
“How long have you been clean?” Kitty inquired, but no disgust laced her tone. No dismay either. Just genuine interest.
“Since my father’s passing. I wish I could say that I stopped in his memory, but it wasn’t so honorable. Still, I’m clean.”
“What are your other vices?”
“Neev,” Kitty chided.
“What?! You know as well as I do that you switch one for another.”
“Overworking,” I answered with a twist of my lips. “Overtraining. Undereating sometimes. That’s new, though.”
“Cade did that when Vinny died, didn’t he?” Neev stroked her fingers through her hair. “One second, he was the skinny brother, and next thing you knew, he looked like xXx.”
Sporting a somewhat sympathetic expression, Raisin nodded. “He still falls back on it if he’s stressed.”
“Lucas is the overworker, not Cade,” Kitty concurred.
“But he also works out too much when he’s stressed… We’re definitely capable of dealing with your vices,” Neev said with a cackle. “You are sticking around, aren’t you, Stan?”
“I am.”
A gleam appeared in Neev’s eyes. “Good. I can’t wait to see you and Lucas fighting in the street.”
“Neev!” Kitty chided.
“What? You know it’ll happen. Lucas is a control freak, and Stan gives off that vibe too. It’ll be like something from Street Fighter,” she cheered.
Considering that was where my mind took me, I couldn’t argue with her.
“You like ancient action movies, huh?”
She nodded. “It’s all I watch.”
“They’re not dating,” Raisin grouched, talking over Neev. “Or are they?”
“Excuse my sister, Stan. Cretin Craisin thinks the weekend was a ploy for us to take a sneaky break together on the DL.” Kitty flipped her the bird. “Instead of it being proof that I rock as a sister.”
“We weren’t dating,” I told Raisin, holding her gaze because despite my many sins regarding Kitty’s privacy, this was true.
She lifted her chin. “You would say that.”
“Gah, why do you have to be so annoying?!”
I tightened my fingers around Kitty’s. “Raisin.” Her mulish expression faced me head-on. “We were not dating.”
It might have taken a few moments for her to accept that I’d win the staring contest, but she broke eye contact with a toss of her hair before turning to glower at the streets instead.
“We’d better get out here. Walk the rest. No way we’d be able to afford this ride,” Neev said wistfully.
When Kitty nodded, I flickered the privacy screen low enough to convey the request and once it was safe, we pulled to the side of the road. As the sisters scampered out of the car, my gattaredda thankfully lingered.
Appearing unusually anxious, she queried, “When will I see you again?”
“Tonight?”
“Really?”
“Really.”
When Raisin and Neev began squabbling on the street—fuck my life—she hissed. “It’ll be nice not to have to referee these two.”
“They’re relatively amusing.”
“They are when you’re not the neutral zone,” she mumbled. “Anyway, tonight.”
“I’ll text you.”
“You will this time, right?”
I grimaced—it would take a long time to make up for failing her. I should have killed Martinez. Alliance be damned.
“I will. And if I don’t, you text me and you ask me why the hell I haven’t and I will owe you an apology.”
That had her treating me to a coy smile. “What does an apology get me?”
My smirk was unholy. “Anything you want.”
“We’re not talking about Christmas lists here, are we? Or when your dad would tell you you can have anything so long as it’s in a Disney store?”
I shook my head. “No, bedda mia. It means anything.”
“And what if… anything means I want to be with you?” she asked hesitantly, her gaze falling from mine as she studied her lap.
My heart pounded like I’d run the whole way from the private airfield into Manhattan. “It only confirms that you are my àncilu.”
Honestly, madness was only fun if it was mutual.
She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. “Okay.”
“I’ll text first then tell you what time the car will be here waiting for you.”
“You can come to the house, Stan. I’m not trying to hide you.”
“No, just trying to lie to your brothers,” I said around a laugh. “It might be a good thing that I’m the baby of my family, Kitty. I have all the tips. If I were Luc, I’m sure I’d disapprove.”
Her nose wrinkled. “But you don’t?”
“I’m taking an active part in the lie, am I not? A wise man in my world would warn your brothers that you three are a walking disaster together and to never let you out of their sight—”
“Charming.”
“Instead, I’m facilitating.”
She rolled her eyes. “So kind.”
“Only to you.”
With a snort, she shuffled off the seat. But I stopped her by asking, “Will you hide my ring?”
Pausing, she stared at it. “I might turn it around... I don’t know where Raisin is coming up with this bullshit, but I don’t feel like arguing with either of them.”
“I need to get it resized.”
She hesitated. “If you don’t want me to—”
“Kitty, that’s going to be on your finger for a long time. I don’t want you to lose it.” She bit her lip but passed it to me. As I slipped that into my jacket pocket, I retrieved another gift for her. “8137.”
“Huh?”
“That’s the pin.”
8 - my hospital room.
13 - the afternoon we met.
7 - the day I made her mine.
She didn’t take it. “I don’t think—”
“If ever there’s an emergency, you have this to help you. There’s an unlimited spending limit—”
“Unlimited?” she croaked.
“Unlimited.”
“But I don’t need money! I make my own.”
“How would you have gotten out of Cancún without me?” Thanks to Star, I knew full well that her bank balance hovered precariously close to an overdraft. When she blushed, I tutted. “This isn’t to shame you, gattaredda. Just to make sure that you’re always safe.”
“I don’t want to be a kept woman.”
“And you won’t be. Use it. Or don’t. Buy clothes with it or don’t. Keep it for emergencies—that’s all I ask.”
Her frown told me she wasn’t happy about it but that my request was too reasonable to refuse.
With a heavy sigh, she tucked the card into her pocket. “Thank you, Stan.”
“You can thank me by using it when you need it.”
Her blush deepened. “Until tonight, Stan.”
“Until tonight,” I crooned with a final press of my lips to her knuckles before I let her go.
The second the door slammed closed, my smile faded.
I lowered the privacy window to face my Stiddari. “Luigi, make sure they get home safely. Then, once you’re done, head for 34th and Park Avenue. I’ll text you details when I have them.”
“Sure, boss.”
As he ducked out of the car and took off after them, I retrieved my cell from my jacket pocket.
Me: Chad, be ready in 20. Code blue.
Chad: Shit. I’ll pack ammo for…?
Me: Four max.
Not glancing at Dante, who awaited orders, I instructed, “We’re picking up Chad from his place.”