Chapter 23 Rem
REM
“Mmmm, more.”
I slide my fingers into my wife’s mouth, stifling a groan as she licks clean the chocolate cake I’m feeding her. It’s only been an hour since she gave me a bone-melting orgasm and my dick is already begging for round two.
I silently talk the greedy fucker down, reminding myself that it’s been an exhausting day and Lena doesn’t need me pawing her. She needs sleep. And more chocolate. Not necessarily in that order.
“That cake is sooooo good.” Lena offers me a bite. “Come on, you have to have some.”
I’ve already had my fill of lamb ragù and Barolo wine, but I can’t say no to her.
I eat the cake and try not to choke as Lena gives me a heart-stopping smile.
Well-fed, well-pleasured, cocooned in the cashmere sweater and lounge pants I packed for her, Lena’s curled up next to me in bed, bare-faced and looking at me with unfettered joy.
“What?” I ask, heart pounding a little too hard.
“It’s good, right? Maybe the best cake I’ve ever had.” She bounces up and down, her enthusiasm contagious.
“Yes, mia amata. It’s delicious. But…” I lean into her, stealing a kiss that lasts longer than I intended. When I pull back, we’re both breathless. “It’s got nothing on you.”
Lena blushes and gives my shoulder a push. “Are you flirting with me, Mr. Cosenza?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Cosenza. Do you want me to?”
Lena’s blush burns brighter, and she drops her gaze, idly spinning the fork in one hand. “I…umm…”
Embarrassed, she scoots away, leaning against the mass of pillows propped against the headboard. Instantly I regret teasing her. Instantly I want her back.
Like she’s reading my mind, Lena reaches out and traces the wedding band on my left hand.
I always knew I’d get married. For men like me, protecting the family is synonymous with growing the family.
Staying single is not an option for me or Ari.
But whenever I’ve thought about it, it’s seemed like something in the far-off future.
Not something to look forward to, but something to deal with when the time came.
Except, the time has arrived, with Lena, and I’m shocked to realize how much I love seeing the ring on my finger, its matching pair circling hers. It feels right in a way I can’t begin to explain and don’t want to.
The only thing I want to do is scoop my wife into my arms, hold her safe as she falls asleep, and ward off the screams that regularly pierce her dreams.
Lena doesn’t stop me when I pull away just long enough to move the dinner tray off the bed.
I’m back a moment later, sliding her body against mine as we lay back against the pillows.
I put on sweatpants and a t-shirt before room service came.
Lena traces imaginary images on the fabric, her head propped on my shoulder.
Her finger pauses, her face tipping up to mine. “That first night in your office you mentioned something about a brother. Does he live in Chicago?”
“Yes.”
“But he wasn’t at the wedding.”
Because he would’ve forbidden it. It’s an uncomfortable truth, so I lie. “He was out of town otherwise he’d have been there.”
“Oh.” She resumes tracing, her finger spreading warmth through my shirt to my skin. “Tell me about him, about your family.”
“They’re your family, too.”
Lena’s inhale is audible, but she doesn’t say anything. I find her hand on my chest and lace our fingers together. “Ari’s the older brother, by two years. We were both born in Italy and moved to the States when we were little.”
“And your parents?”
“My mom died when I was seven. My dad two years later.”
Lena props herself up on one arm, gives my hand a squeeze. “I’m so sorry. That must’ve been hard, especially since you were so young.”
A faded image of my parents flits through my memory. A subtle hint of citrus trailing behind. I realize with a pang that I can’t remember the last time I thought about them, the last time I could clearly recall their faces.
“It was hard,” I say, fighting back a sudden wave of sadness.
“To outsiders I’m sure they seemed like hard people, even vicious.
They were part of The Family, after all, and there’s a certain level of brutality that no one, not even young mothers, can escape.
Especially not then when everything was done so old-school.
But to me and Ari, my mom was always warm.
Strict but warm. My father was around less, but he always had time to play with us when he was home. ”
“Like with toys?”
“No, with guns.”
Lena sits up, shocked and I laugh, a deep, long laugh, the kind I haven’t had in years.
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” I say, secretly loving the slaps she lands on my chest, addicted to having her hands on me, no matter the reason.
“We played sports,” I continue between chuckles. “Soccer, baseball, that sort of thing.”
“How very All-American of you.”
I shrug, still grinning. “What can I say. Even mobsters like to have fun every once in a while.”
“You’re nuts.” Lena collapses back onto my chest. “Totally, completely nuts.”
I catch her hand, plant a kiss on her palm. “And yours.”
Lena’s grunt is non-committal, but I don’t miss how she curls her fingers around the place my mouth just was. “And your mom? What do you remember about her?”
“She was always making food. Feeding boys seems to be a non-stop job, even if I wasn’t aware of it at the time.
She was constantly churning out something in the kitchen and yelling at us to stop trekking mud across her floors.
And she always smelled of lemons. For years after she died, I would catch a whiff of lemon and look around, expecting to see her out of the corner of my eye. ”
“And now?”
And now she’s been gone so long I can barely remember her face.
Haven’t dared look for her in years. “Uncle Aldo is our family now,” I say, deflecting.
“He and his brother, Marco, took Ari and me in after our father died. We went from being the kids of one of his trusted soldiers to the adopted nephews of the Cerreti capo. Ari and I aren’t related to Aldo by blood, but no one dared questioned when he made us his.
From that point on if I was looking over my shoulder it was to stop someone from stabbing me or mine in the back, not to look for my dead mom. ”
“Wow.” Lena sits up, her legs crossed under her body. “That’s…”
“Too much?”
“I was going to say lonely.”
Lonely. That word is an unexpected knife to the heart, one that vanishes when Lena rests her palm on my chest. She’s watching me and I try to hide how hard her comment hits.
“I just mean that you were young when it all happened,” she says. “That’s a lot to handle, especially with both your parents gone.”
“Something I think you know a little about.” I lift up so we’re face to face. I tuck a strand of Lena’s hair behind one ear. “You lost both your parents, too.”
“I’ve lost two sets, actually. So, yeah.
I’m speaking from experience.” Lena looks at me with eyes so clear I can see the sadness there, deep down to her soul.
I want to pull her close, to strip that pain away and take the burden from her.
But she just gives me a somber smile, her shoulders straight as she bears all she’s lost.
“Tell me,” I say, not wanting her to carry it alone. “Tell me about them.”
“There’s not much to tell about my birth parents, honestly.
My mom arrived at the hospital alone. My dad had already died a few months before.
I was born, she died a day later due to complications from having me.
The nuns who ran the hospital moved me to their orphanage shortly after.
The Haywoods adopted me a month after that.
I was lucky. I know that. Far luckier than most. The Haywoods raised me, loved me.
They weren’t perfect—no one is—but they were great parents.
They died when I was eighteen. I miss them. All the time.”
A tear slips down Lena’s cheek. She must not realize because she’s startled when I wipe it away. “And your aunt?”
“My mom’s sister,” she answers with a sad smile. “They weren’t close, but Mable didn’t want me to be alone after my parents died, didn’t want me to feel like I didn’t have anyone on my side. So, she informally adopted me.”
“She sounds like a kind woman.”
Lena looks to the ceiling, a few more tears escaping. “She really was. She didn’t deserve to die that way, Rem. We have to figure out why she died that way.”
“We will, mia amata. I promise we will.”
Lena kisses me, her lips hard and demanding. Our emotions are raw, dangerously exposed after revealing our pasts to each other. I drink from her, tasting the bittersweet chocolate and salty tears, touching her face and neck until she relaxes into me.
The kiss goes from savage to sweet, each touch punctuated by a quick breath, a flutter of eyelashes. When we eventually part, Lena is looking at me with an expression I haven’t seen before. A look that reaches through my ribs, grabs my still-beating heart and squeezes tight.
“Thank you,” she says, our foreheads touching.
“For?”
“For everything. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or next week, or if I’ll still be alive in a month. But for everything you’ve done for me since that first night— thank you.”
I want to confess right now. To tell Lena everything my uncle has accused her of, to tell her my brother and I have been keeping tabs on her for months.
To tell her that up until recently I thought she was a threat to my family.
A family I’ve now made her a part of. I want to confess everything, to clear my conscious, to start a real life with this amazing woman.
But Lena breaks away before I can even figure out where to start, getting off the bed before I can stop her.
“Where are you going?”
“Just wait.” She dashes into the bathroom, and I hear her rustling around in the closet. A minute later she’s back, uncurling her hand in front of my face. “Can you help me put this on?”
“What is it?”
Lena lets the necklace fall from her hand, the chain looped around one finger. It’s gold, a small circular pendant swinging from the bottom. “It’s the only thing I have left of my birth mother. She was wearing it when she died, and the nuns made sure it stayed with me.”
I take the delicate piece from her, clasping it around her neck as she holds her hair out of the way.
As soon as it’s on, Lena touches the pendant, the movement so instinctive I can tell she’s done it a million times.
Some of the tension leaves her body, the beloved jewelry back where it belongs. “It feels so good to have it back.”
“Why was it at your aunt’s house?”
“The clasp broke on a previous visit. Aunt Mable offered to get it fixed and held onto it until the next time I came by.”
“Which was supposed to be the day of the fire.”
“Yes,” Lena says on a deep sigh. “It’s a miracle it survived.”
And that you did too. I must be just as exhausted as Lena, because my throat closes at the thought, my lungs burning as I try to push back more emotions than I’ve felt in years. I touch the pendant around Lena’s neck, trace the lines of the pattern imprinted there.
The room around us is quiet, shadows growing as the sun sets beyond the windows.
My men are walking the building’s perimeter, more standing guard in the hallways.
This hotel has hosted pop stars, movie stars, presidents.
Their security is second to none except mine.
We’re safe here, secluded in this oasis from the real world and the threats circling closer and closer to Lena.
But as I look at the necklace around my wife’s neck, a memory starts to twist in the back of my brain. It’s just a thread, a scrap of an image—nothing I can see clearly. But I feel a pit open up in my stomach as I become more and more certain that I’ve seen her necklace somewhere before.
It’s still dark outside when I wake up, head pounding. I know where I’ve seen it.
As quietly as possible, I slip out of bed and make my way through the suite to the large living room. I dig my laptop out of its case, wincing when the blue light flashes bright in the darkness.
I have to click through folder after folder, file after file before I find it. Buried deep in the information I’ve collected for Aldo I find the picture I’m looking for.
I’d marked it as useless. It didn’t seem relevant at the time. But, as I click through the scanned copy of the church announcement, I know I’ve found the thing that’s going to turn my hunt for Aldo’s missing traitor on its head.
The original paper was torn and discolored when one of my contacts found it; the digital scan isn’t much better. I have to zoom in several times until I can make out the face of a baby and the small inset photo next to it, one showing a pendant hanging at the end of a chain.
The baby isn’t mentioned by name and is still so young the gender is unidentifiable.
The photo is in black and white, so not even a blue or pink hat would help.
But the nuns at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in a small suburb outside of Chicago were making a final plea for information about the orphaned baby’s family as the mother had died shortly after childbirth and the father sometime before.
As I study the photo, reading and re-reading the caption beneath it, the pit in my stomach widens to a sinkhole.
When Aldo tasked me with this search, all he gave me was a name, a year, and a location.
The nuns didn’t include a name in the bulletin, presumably out of privacy for the dead mother. The baby hadn’t been adopted yet, so it—she—was still nameless. But the date fits, as does the town.
And the necklace shown in the picture, it looks identical to the one around Lena’s neck.
My mouth is dry. I stride to the bar and down a shot of whiskey, then another. I wait for the burn to make me feel better, but the twisting in my gut only gets worse.
I’ve let my instincts guide me my whole life. They’ve kept me alive when more than one person has wanted me dead. They’ve helped me ferret out traitors, avoid the authorities, and kill anyone who threatens my family.
Those same instincts are screaming now, so loudly it’s impossible to muffle them no matter how much whiskey I drink. There’s no chance that the necklace that appeared in my search for Aldo’s la traditrice and the one Lena inherited from her mother aren’t connected.
Fuck, it’s more than likely they’re the same necklace, especially after what Lena told me about the details of her birth.
Which means that everything about Lena—her past, the threats on her life, her very marriage to me—is tangled up in Aldo’s search for the woman who betrayed him.