28. ~Julian~
28
~Julian~
“Good little bitch.”
“You’ll never survive this. I promise you that.”
“Aww, don’t worry, you’ll enjoy it. I want you to. I want you to hate that you enjoy it.”
My eyes snapped open, and I went to bolt up in bed, only to find myself weighed down by Caterina sleeping fully on me.
I frowned. That wasn’t how I’d remembered things being last night.
Milo had been on one edge of the bed right beside me, his leg flung over me and his arm grasping Cat. Then Nico had been on the other edge of the bed spooning her. I mean, yeah, during the night, things could have shifted a little, but not by this much.
The night light that Nico had brought in for me was on as usual, the soothing blue glow providing enough illumination for me to take in the rest of the scene I’d woken up to.
Milo hadn’t just shifted. He wasn’t here at all.
Neither was Nico.
What the hell was going on?
After Cat had told them about the pregnancy, it had come up just how horny she’d been recently, and we’d all given her what she’d needed and fucked each other’s brains out. Over and over and fucking over. We’d basically crawled into bed.
Thankfully, they’d been so exhausted that they hadn’t woken up as I’d startled awake a couple of hours ago from the first nightmare.
I’d been worried about it happening, something I’d kept to myself because I didn’t want a fucking intervention, or them—especially Milo—pushing me to face things head-on. That was the last thing I needed right now.
The only fucking thing I needed was to put Angelo in the ground.
That was all.
That would do it.
It would.
And I was determined to make it so through sheer force of will.
I didn’t want it dragging on and becoming all I thought about, my whole fucking focus.
I had things to do. Carver Group needed my attention, we needed to prepare for the baby, to figure a hell of a lot out where that was concerned, and we needed to bring down the two families and settle everything there so our baby wasn’t brought into a war zone.
I looked out at Cat, sleeping so soundly.
The urge to stay in her warmth was strong, but I was too restless after that nightmare to be able to do that. I needed to clear my mind, or I’d just go right back to the fucking thing.
And now I was also worried about where the hell Nico and Milo had fucked off to.
Jesus.
So, I carefully extricated myself, snatched my boxers off the floor, then headed on out of the room.
I intended to head into the kitchen to snack on some comfort foods—something chocolaty, of course—before beginning my search for Milo and Nico, but I’d only gotten a few steps down the corridor when I heard Nico’s voice in the distance. I frowned when I picked up on the noticeable urgency in his tone.
I made my way down the corridor toward the sound until I reached his office.
The door was halfway open.
I was about to walk on in when another voice pulled me up short. Milo’s.
“The risk is too great, Nico.”
“It’s too great if we don’t let her remain here as a part of it all.”
“I don’t think—”
“This is about her choices, her power. I won’t fuck all over that by sidelining her now.”
“What we’re about to do will escalate the danger a thousand times over. The baby—”
“If we do this, send her out to a safehouse, and hide her away, it will be over. It will ruin everything.”
“Nico—”
“We. Will. Lose. Her.”
I pushed the door open the rest of the way and walked on in.
Nico was behind his desk at his laptop and he jolted as he saw me, slapping his hand to his heart. “Fuck, J.”
Milo spun around where he was standing opposite Nico’s desk in just a pair of boxers and one of his sexy tanks. “Lose the creeping, Sunshine. Goddammit.”
I ignored all the preamble and told Milo, “Nico’s right. We will lose her if you ramp up the overprotectiveness.”
“It’s not being over protective. It’s necessarily protective. She’s carrying our child and we’re going to war.”
“I get it, all right? But Cat’s not just anyone. She’s highly skilled. She’s beyond capable. And she’s a vital asset in this war too, so there’s also an argument from that side of things. We need her, Milo.”
He grimaced and pulled at his spiky hair. “I… just… after everything we’d gone through, all the dark and dirty shit… this child is a gift from on high. I can’t stand the idea of… it just… it needs to be protected at all costs.”
“Not at the cost of her , Milo,” Nico ground out. “It took me so long to earn her trust, then for her to trust all three of us. And a great deal of that was built on the fact that we don’t try to exert control over her, that she’s free to make her own choices, and that we recognize her power and strength. You saw what happened when I almost fucked that up to an extent when I met with Levi that night. This would be far beyond that. Shipping her off to a safehouse and essentially locking her up like a fragile thing, it’s an insult and demeaning beyond belief, especially to someone as forthright and as full of fire like Caterina Leone.”
“You know, it’s one of the reasons she didn’t tell the two of you right away?”
They both eyed me.
“She said that?” Milo asked, taken aback.
“I read it from her and she admitted it was a concern, yeah.”
“Fuck,” Nico said, scrubbing his hand over his jaw. “See what I mean?”
“Goddammit.” Milo dug his fingers into the edge of the desk and sucked in a breath. “Well, she’s not on the front lines of these strikes later tonight, so that’s something. At least she won’t be in the field.”
“You realize she was pregnant during the crash?” I pointed out. “Also, when she massacred those assholes in that garage and when she came to rescue me?”
“Yeah, and it was unbelievably lucky that the baby wasn’t hurt during the crash, let alone all the rest. I mean, fuck, that kind of thing runs out.”
“I’m not doing it,” Nico insisted. “So you need to get on board and find a way to make peace with it.” He rose from behind his desk and walked to him, his tone softening as he asked, “Do you think this reaction from you has some roots in what I revealed to you about Leo being responsible for your parents’ deaths? That it could be bringing up some issues there?”
“Maybe,” Milo admitted.
“It makes sense,” I said, walking to him and stroking his arm. “That happened during the last war and your mom was an innocent.”
“But Caterina’s not,” Nico told him. “She’s one of us. She’s a warrior. Santino is terrified of her, for fuck’s sake. That’s how much of a force to be reckoned with that she truly is.”
I nodded, brushing my fingers over Milo’s cheek. “It’s not the same as what happened to your mom.”
His eyes met mine and my gut twisted at the stark emotion swimming in his striking espresso pools.
“It’s not the same,” he murmured. “I just…”
“You love her,” I spoke.
“Yeah,” he admitted, his eyes brightening as he put that out there.
“I love you too.”
We all spun to see Cat standing there, leaning against the doorframe, and beaming at Milo.
She was wearing one of my white tees, and she looked sexy as fuck in it. Cute too at the same time somehow.
“I can’t wait until you start showing,” Nico randomly blurted out in completely uncharacteristic fashion.
The surprise of it had all of us bursting out laughing.
He was so into this pregnancy, even more than I’d already predicted him being.
Milo burst from us, strode across the room, and wrapped her up in his arms. “I do , you know? I love you so much.”
“I know,” she murmured happily into his chest. “I feel it from you.”
When he pulled back enough where she could actually breathe properly from his overwhelming bear hug, he told her, “I don’t know how much you heard of that, but I need you to know that I just want you and the baby safe. I’m sorry that I—”
“It’s all right. I understand the impulse. And it’s coming from a good place.”
“But we also can’t let fear control us,” Nico spoke. “Especially not when it comes to this.”
Cat nodded. “If we’d allowed that to be the case beforehand, we never would have gotten to this point of challenging the families. Of fighting for our freedom from all of this insanity. We need to focus on seeing this through.” She eyed Milo intensely. “And that’s how we protect our child.”
“Absolutely,” Nico agreed.
“Okay,” Milo said, easing back from her, but not before planting a soft and sweet kiss on her cheek. “Okay, yeah, I hear you. All of you.”
Nico sighed with a whole lot of relief.
I wasn’t surprised.
We all needed to be on the same page more than ever with what was about to go down later tonight.
It was bad enough that I’d strained that by acting alone— going rogue, as Nico called it—in my desperate bid to take down Angelo myself.
But I’d fucking failed, and I wasn’t gonna let that be the case again. And I wasn’t gonna hurt our foursome by going off half-cocked again either. We’d do it together. Nico had promised me justice and I would trust in that. I had to. For the good of us all.
Once these strikes were done, the time for that would come.
“Did our voices carry all the way to the living room and wake you up?” Nico asked Cat.
“No. One of my alerts woke me up.”
Nico frowned. “I would’ve seen it as I was going over the tactical plans for the strikes,” he said, gesturing at his open laptop on his desk.
“It’s not concerning that. I’ve been trying to determine why the hell Joe interfered with the Shawn Price takedown. I know you told me to put it on the back burner, because you thought I was juggling enough as it was with manipulating the upcoming raids of Marchetti and Leone gambling dens and strip clubs, leaking amassed evidence to key influential figures backing Santino to break those connections, and also infiltrating and rerouting funds across Leone Family accounts.”
“Jeez, he was obviously right about you juggling a lot,” I said.
“I know, but Joe’s involvement had been nagging at me. So I’ve been looking into it while working on the rest. I managed to identify all the buyers and partners connected to Shawn Price’s trafficking business. I put tabs on them, monitoring their activity, and the alert basically signaled me that they’ve gone dark. All of them. They’re dead.”
“What?” Milo uttered.
“It’s Joe,” she explained. “He’s killed them all, wiped out all connections to Price and that operation.”
“To ensure it couldn’t be revived even with the Price and Wharton aspect annihilated?” I asked.
“That sort of business does make him sick to his stomach, but he’s also not a benevolent guardian angel operating out of the goodness of his own heart,” Cat said. “There’s got to be more to it.”
“And you think whatever it is has something to do with us?” Nico asked.
“Something that can impact us, yes. There’s something I’m missing, a connection I can’t make. I’ve reached out to him in our usual covert way, but he’s not responding.”
“Too busy on his murder missions,” I grunted.
“We’ll deal with it after the strikes. We’ll all pull together to figure out what’s going on,” Nico said, shutting down his laptop and walking to her. He pressed his hand to her belly. “Right now, however, you need to get some rest. This little baby needs taking care of, Caterina.”
“And we’re making another doctor’s appointment too,” Milo said.
“All right,” she conceded. “Yes, to both those things. But first, I need to eat something really bad.” She looked out at me, pouting her lips.
“Yes, you can finish off my Maltesers,” I told her.
“You need something much more substantial than that,” Milo spoke.
“I will. In the morning. Just a snack for now.”
Milo eyed Nico for support.
“Let her have her snack. It’s clearly some sort of craving.”
“Fine,” Milo said. “Just for tonight.”
I chuckled and then the four of us headed on out of Nico’s office.