19. Franco
19
FRANCO
B y the time I caught my breath after coming so hard in Chloe, she was asleep. We lay there, tangled together in my bed, and she passed out.
“Long day?” I whispered aloud, amused that I’d literally fucked her so well that she passed out afterward. She was like that when we were younger, too, so into the act of making love that she became so sated and satisfied she drifted off afterward.
Proud that I could please her, I got up to clean off and then brought back a towel to clean her up too. She didn’t stir, and I climbed back into bed to hold her. Sleeping with her in my arms was becoming my norm. She grounded me, and I appreciated being able to reunite with her like this. I tried not to dwell on the fact that she hadn’t told me she loved me too. I said it in the heat of the moment, but I meant it. I would always mean it. Nothing she could do would prevent me from loving her.
Which worsened my concerns.
She’d been distracted, and I wanted to know why.
She’d been guarded earlier when I spoke about Dante, and I was eager to understand why.
Still, she kept things from me, and I was losing patience to get answers.
I closed my eyes, sighing as I breathed in a deep lungful of her scent. In the morning, I’d ask. Before anything else could get in the way, I would lie in bed with her and ask who she’d called that day. I wanted to be able to trust her. That if I asked, she’d reply. If I had to snoop and try to track her phone, it would be a clear sign of her being untrustworthy, which would hurt with how she already had my heart.
I woke up to the sound of my phone buzzing, though, and it seemed this morning wouldn’t be the opportune time to talk with her about anything.
I grabbed the device from my nightstand and with bleary eyes as I woke up more, I read the texts from Romeo.
Goddammit.
It was always something, always another situation popping up, another fire to put out.
I slipped out of bed without waking Chloe. Hurrying to get dressed, I watched her sleep and considered what we talked about before the wedding. Her comment about Dante having a work-and-family balance. Yes, it was taxing to work for the Constella Family. Our jobs never stopped. The danger never slept. Someone else was always out there waiting to try to take what was ours.
But it wasn’t any different from any other occupation. If Chloe and I had married years ago, she would’ve seen how I could fit her into my life, how she could’ve gone to school and had her own career if she wanted.
We were always busy. Sometimes, it felt more hectic than not, but we came together as a family and tackled this Mafia lifestyle together. If Chloe gave me—us—a chance, she’d see that. She already should be noticing how I could make her life better. With my love. With my protection. With my determination to remove the threat of her ex.
It was with that mindset that I headed into Dante’s office.
“First day of your ‘honeymoon’ and this is what you get?” I joked as I brought my coffee in with me. On the walk down here, I filed through all the reports that the capos sent me.
“How bad is it?” Dante asked. He yawned from his seat behind his desk, but he didn’t look too stressed. He didn’t reply to my tease, and if anything, he seemed ready to go right back to bed after we talked.
Only Romeo was in, also on his phone and following up with what the capos sent in. I was technically the head of security for the organization, but that was more of a managerial role, of delegating who went where. Dante, Romeo, and Liam were all given the same shared intel, and I knew they had likely already skimmed through what was popping up overnight.
“Not that it is bad—for us,” Dante added. “If Stefan Giovanni wants to hunt down and fight whoever else might have survived from the Domino Family, he can help himself to it.” He rolled his eyes, punctuating his opinion on his former friend who’d turned shady.
That was what the messages were about—reports of Stefan and his capos attacking a hideout where some of Donny Domino’s survivors were reported to be lurking and staying on the down-low. The Constella soldiers raised the alarm because of how close it happened to some of the capos’ homes.
“We don’t have a part in this,” Dante reiterated. “We don’t need to have a part in a single fucking thing Stefan wants to get up to.”
Romeo nodded. “If any Domino men survived the attack from the Devil’s Brothers, I vote for letting the Giovannis take them out.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “And then the Giovannis and Devil’s Brothers can cancel each other out next.”
“Oh.” Romeo looked up. “Did you hear that Gunner is the Prez now?”
He glanced at Dante, who groaned.
“Fucking bikers. I don’t have the time or patience to dick around and care about whatever roles and policies the fucking MC men use. They are insignificant in terms of the long-standing power we’ve held as the Constella force—or other crime families in the city.”
“Well, until they’re all dead or powerless,” Romeo said, “it seems that Gunner is now the self-proclaimed leader of the Devil’s Brothers. As of last night, at least.”
I was mildly curious. We were on the same page of letting our enemies kill each other off, no matter how long it would feel like a waiting game. “What about Reaper? Is he dead?”
“Dead or dying.” Romeo shrugged. “It sounds like they damn near burned down their clubhouse with infighting.”
“Then fuck them. Let them all rot in hell,” Dante said as he stood. He was still angry, rightly so, about the motorcycle gang. They kidnapped Nina from him and tried to trespass to destroy his home here. I couldn’t blame him for his attitude toward them.
“I’m going to start my honeymoon with my wife.” As he walked to the door, he looked at us one at a time. “But remain on alert. We will monitor this activity but not get involved.”
I nodded once in acknowledgment.
“Keep the soldiers and guards on high alert,” he ordered before he went.
Romeo and I stayed in the office, finishing our coffee and replying to the capos and men who reported in for updates on orders.
“Even though we need to be focused on this activity, we can’t let the situation with Wes Morrison fall to the back burner,” I reminded him.
“Correct.” He sighed, then rubbed his face. “But so far, he’s hiding rather well.”
As a man in a position like his, that made sense. He was a public figure, which meant he’d take caution with anyone being able to track him or stalk him .
“He’s not the first corrupt cop or political figure we’ve taken down,” I said.
“Has Chloe said anything else about him?” he asked. “Or the shooting?”
I shook my head. “No.” She isn’t talking about much of anything now.
“What’s that look for?” he asked, frowning at me.
I cringed. “I feel like she’s hiding something from me.”
“That pertains to the shooting? Or Wes?”
I shrugged. “No. Yes?” I was confident that if she knew something that would be a security issue, she’d come clean. “Ten years is a long time. She hasn’t been in my life all that while, and I know she’s lived her life.”
“A lot could happen in a decade.”
“Yeah. But the longer she’s here, the closer we get, I have to wonder if she wants to stay.”
“If she wants to stay this time,” he clarified.
Chloe wasn’t someone coming into the family for the first time. Dante, Romeo, and Eva all remembered her from before. They accepted her back then, and they weren’t opposed to welcoming her into the family again now. I didn’t fault Romeo for being suspicious of her, given the circumstances she’d come into our lives again, as a witness to an attack.
“If she doesn’t…” he said carefully.
“I don’t want to think about that.” I shot him a hard look. “She’s it for me. She has always been the one for me. If she doesn’t feel the same about me, I’ll spend the rest of my life with her holding half of my heart.”
“Has she talked about why she ran before?”
I shook my head, hating how secretive and guarded she was. I’d never given her a reason to doubt me. I’d never given her an example of how I wouldn’t stand by her and support her.
“It’s got to be her parents. Her fear of sticking with us despite their being all self-righteous and telling her that we’re bad people. Criminals.”
He rolled his eyes. “To the point they’d send Morrison after her and try to bring her home to them?”
I nodded. “You know how controlling they were.” He’d never met them, but we talked. Even Chloe told him how hard they were to please when she hung out with me and Romeo when he visited.
“She’s their only daughter and they wanted her to be the good girl, the sweet, upstanding citizen of a wholesome small town. Not with a Mafia ‘gangster’ and living a life of crime in the city.” Now I had to roll my eyes. It was so stupid, so closed-minded.
“What I don’t get is how she was all for moving here with you when you’d further your training. From what I remember, she made it sound like she wanted to go against her parents’ wishes and choose you.”
I grunted. I remembered that as well. “Something had to have changed to make her reconsider.” By running off to college far away, without telling me goodbye, it seemed she was all talk about wanting a future with me.
“What, though?” Romeo asked. “What could have happened to make her change her mind?”
I didn’t know. For so long, I'd assumed it was the same old. The issue of her parents being so vehemently against the idea of Chloe living with me or marrying me. They despised me when we dated, and they never lightened up on their opinions of me no matter how much Chloe argued I wasn’t a horrible person.
“Whatever prompted her to change her mind, it was stronger than any feelings she had for me.”
He watched me stand. “And what of her feelings now?”
Last night, they all saw me with Chloe and how much of a couple we were, dancing and eating like we were at a real wedding as each other’s date.
“Are they strong enough to make her stay this time?” Romeo asked.
I shrugged, hating that I didn’t know the answer to that. In my arms, I could swear that she loved me as fiercely as I did her. Until she could explain why she left and stayed away, though, I refused to claim that I knew anything about her sentiments. I was sick of assuming that I was good enough to fight for, that I was worthy of her love for good.
As I left him with that question, I wondered what it would take to get the final answers from her without pushing her too hard.
Back in the recess of my mind, I feared the worst.
Maybe she’d never feel as deeply about me.
There was a chance I’d never be deemed worthy of her love forever.
And I hated that she could render me so powerless as to need her love to feel whole. To feel complete.