Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
SEBASTIAN
The front door opens and shuts with a snap behind Simon. After he turns the lock, he pulls off his raincoat and shoves it into the closet with an irritated huff. Burke, from his place on the sofa with a game control in hand, losing spectacularly against Nicolo at Mario Kart, glances away from the screen and lifts a questioning eyebrow at his partner.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” Simon says before he kicks his wet shoes off and crosses the living room. A US Marshal having bad news sounds, well . . . bad.
“What’s the good news?” I ask. Maybe he can keep the bad news to himself. The last time a US Marshal told me there was bad news, my former handler was telling me there was a half million dollar bounty on my head and we needed to move because staying anywhere for any length of time was a sure way to get dead.
He was rather attached to being alive so we packed up and moved, without rhyme or reason, whenever he was sick of looking at the same four walls.
The last thing Nicolo needs after leaving his whole life behind and being cooped up indoors for the last week is bad news.
“Your new identities are ready.” Simon reaches into his bag, pulling out two bulging manila envelopes.
Nicolo grins as he tosses his game controller away and reaches for the papers. Burke takes full advantage of the situation and zips by Nicolo’s stalled car. I’m pretty sure that classifies as cheating but I don’t call him out on it. Nor am I as quick to move as Nicolo.
If the good news is we have new identities, the bad news must be pretty fucking bad. Simon looks like he swallowed something sour.
“What’s the bad news?” It’s better to know, right?
Simon extends an envelope to me. I reach for it, but when I grab it, he doesn’t let go. “Someone fucked up. We’re working to fix it, but it’s going to take time so don’t freak out.”
“Fucked up how?” Because the US Marshals fucking up usually means someone is dead, and that particular fuck-up has never happened. I don’t have any desire to be their first fuck-up. No one forgets the first time you fuck up.
If I or Nicolo dies because the US Marshals failed to do their fucking job, our names will be splashed across every newspaper in the country, immortalized in history in the worst kind of way. I can’t imagine how Mama will handle finding out both her sons are dead after having finally escaped the Family.
Sebastian and Nicolo Rastelli?—
“We’re married?” Nicolo’s soft voice cuts through my wandering thoughts.
I look at him. “What?”
“We’re fixing it,” Simon says, dropping down on the edge of the coffee table.
“Do I get a ring?” Nicolo asks. I choke on my next breath.
Does he get a ring? What about a fucking divorce? We’re brothers!
Maybe I’ve been having some very unbrotherly feelings for Nicolo, and we’ve been doing some very unbrotherly things together behind a locked door, but Simon doesn’t know that—no one can ever know that.
We can’t be married. To be married to him, expected to act like a married couple . . .
Simon scratches the back of his neck and has the grace to look ashamed of himself and the US Marshals as a whole. “I think they assumed you’d already have one.”
Burke coughs into his hand. Or attempts. But it sounds more like a laugh.
I was just starting to think he wasn’t an asshole and now . . . this. Fuck me.
“It’ll take a couple weeks but we’ll have you divorced in no time,” Simon assures us.
Divorced. Not never married in the first place, but divorced. Like a couple who couldn’t get their shit together and figure out how to make a relationship work like adults when in fact, Nicolo and I work pretty damn well together.
Nicolo shakes his head. “I’m not the kind of man that still lives with my ex.”
It goes without saying, divorced or not, he’d keep living with me. But how would he know what kind of man he is? He’s never had an ex-anything.
I take a slow breath. “It’s fine. It’s fine.” It’s fine. Really. So what I’m married to my brother? We haven’t been acting like brothers for the past several days. No one outside of this room knows Nicolo is my brother. It’s fine. “No one’s going to be looking for a married couple. We can stay married on paper for a couple of years and go from there.”
Nicolo does his best to choke back a laugh but his best is piss poor. “People’ll think you’re having a midlife crisis, marrying a younger man.”
I glare at him. Is he really one to talk? Plus—“You’re only ten years younger, and I’m not even middle aged. If people think I’m having a midlife crisis, they’re going to think you call me Daddy and ask for my bank card after putting your mou?—”
Nope. No. Abort mission. Even if Nicolo has been putting his mouth to good use, that’s not something one brother would say to another, and certainly not while two US Marshals are watching them go back and forth like the world’s most entertaining ping pong match.
“How about we take a few days to think about what needs to be done,” Simon says as a slow flush turns Nicolo’s normally pale cheeks a soft shade of pink. I clear my throat and look away, grateful I put on a pair of jeans this morning and not the basketball shorts I’ve been living in for the past week. No way Simon or Burke would miss the hard-on I’m sporting now.
Burke sets the game controller aside after unfairly claiming first place. “We can get you settled into your new rental before your things arrive sometime tomorrow.”
I dig in the envelope Simon gave me and pull out the first few pages.
It’s weird to see my name there—Sebastian—when I haven’t been myself for ten years. But from now on, I’m Sebastian Ritland, a twenty-eight-year-old, newly married, currently unemployed college graduate. My brand-new birth certificate lists my mother and father as unknown. I suppose it’s a lot easier to never have had a family than to invent one.
“I guess we better pack,” I tell Nicolo. It’s not as if we really unpacked to begin with.
“Okay.” He stands up and clenches his envelope to his chest. “Do you think we’re the kind of couple that has pet names for each other? Hubby? Daddy? Big Bro?”
“Shut up,” I mutter as Burke’s laughter chases us from the living room.
Why is he laughing? It’s his people that fucked this up.
“We’ll leave tonight!” Simon shouts up the stairs.
I’ve got about six hours to adjust to the fact that for the foreseeable future, I’m married to my little brother. Somehow, that seems like too much, and not enough time at all.