8. VIN
VIN
For once, it’s not my fault.
Tommy is in the chair across from me, his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, a glass of water sitting untouched on the table beside him. He’s working through something in his head even though he won’t fucking say what it is.
I’m sitting with my arms crossed over my chest, waiting for these fuckers to say something of substance.
Matti finally straightens and heads over to his desk in the corner. He pulls out a folder and hands it to me as Tommy seems to wake from his stupor.
It’s the funeral arrangements for Aurelio.
The funeral home calls me every few weeks to find out what’s going on.
The diocese has finally stopped calling.
Every message from them and everyone else who expects to play a role in this thing has been handed to me by Matti or Tommy without comment for months now.
“Set the date,” Matti says finally. “It has to happen, Vin. We can’t keep stalling. People are starting to talk.”
“Let them talk,” I snap, glaring at Matti. He doesn’t back down, his gaze solid. I roll my eyes.
Tommy leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his jaw tight. ”We look weak. We look like we don’t have a boss. The funeral is how we make it official. You know this.”
“I know.”
“Then—”
“I said I know.” I lean back in my chair and press the heel of my hand into my eye socket. The headache that’s lived behind my left eye for weeks pulses dully. “I’m working on it.”
Silence stretches out again, long and uncomfortable.
Tommy pinpoints me with an unwavering stare.
“What?” I say.
“You tell me.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean, Tommy?” I fucking hate where this is going.
“Something is going on, Vin.” He glances in Matti’s direction. “And we all know what it is. But you won’t talk about it. We’ve been in this room three times this month and we keep having the same conversation that goes nowhere. Matti and I can’t do our jobs if you won’t talk to us.”
“I talk to you.” I hate how fucking defensive I feel, but they’re not wrong.
“You give us information,” Tommy says. “That’s not the same thing.”
Matti nods and crosses his arms. “We can run logistics, Vin. We can run operations and security, all of it. But we aren’t making moves, and there is business to be done.
The status quo won’t hold forever. So if there’s something you need to handle, we need you to let us help you so we can get past this. ”
I say nothing. They both wait. The clock on the wall ticks. I tap the folder with Aurelio’s funeral arrangements a couple of times and exhale hard.
“The marriage for the alliance,” I say finally, looking up from the folder first to Tommy then Matti. “I don’t want it.”
Neither of them reacts.
“The funeral makes me officially boss,” I say slowly, working it through out loud for the first time. “The funeral also marks the end of the mourning period, which triggers the contract with the Irish. The contract triggers—”
“Your marriage to Ashlyn,” Matti finishes.
“My marriage to Ashlyn.” I feel like I’m fucking talking about someone else.
Matti exhales through his nose. “So you’ve been stalling on purpose. We all know you don’t want to get married. Why didn’t you say something? We could have handled this by now.”
“I took the year to consider my options. The fact that I could lean on Italian tradition bought me time to think things through.” I roll the folder into a cone and gesture at the clock on the wall. “I don’t have another clock to hide behind.”
“And you don’t want to get married,” Tommy says.
“I don’t want to marry her.”
Matti’s expression softens. He’s a hard man, my brother, but right now he’s looking at me like he understands everything I’m feeling without me having to say it.
“Then don’t,” he says. “We’ll find another way to the ports. We’ll fight for them if we have to. If you want Soph—” He stops himself. “If there’s a different path you want to take, we support you. Fucking always.”
I look at Tommy for his input. His gaze is locked on mine but I know his brain is processing at high speed.
“Tommy,” I say.
He sets his hands flat on his knees. “You’re not going to like what I have to say.”
“Pretty much fucking never do. Tell me anyway.”
He nods once. “It’s true you don’t have to marry Ashlyn MacCuinn.
Matti’s right: we’ll back whatever you decide, you know that.
” He pauses. “But if you break this contract, the Irish will take it as a signal that you’ll break any contract.
That’s how they think, how they operate.
Their word is everything. A man who breaks a contract is a man who can’t be trusted, and a man who can’t be trusted—”
“Is a target,” I finish.
“Is a target,” Tommy confirms quietly. “Which means Sophie would be a target too. And potentially our women and children.”
The room is so fucking quiet. Matti drops his gaze to the ground.
“And the odds,” I ask.
Tommy meets my eyes, spinning his ring absently.
“Hard to say,” he says. “We’ve built a lot in the last few years, and we’ve made up a lot of ground that Aurelio lost. But going to war before we have time to build a strong foundation, train all the new guys, position everyone, come up with a strategic offense—” He shakes his head once.
“I don’t know if I’d bet on us, and I always bet on us. ”
I nod. Fuck.
I stare at the folder with Aurelio’s name on it, and my headache kicks into overdrive.
I want to fucking break shit. My fucking father is dead and he’s still fucking up my life—and with a deal he made when I was 20 fucking years old. I didn’t even know Sophie existed then. I fucking hate him all over again, the ten thousandth time since I put a bullet in his head, I hate him.
But I won’t be him. I won’t be selfish and put what I want in front of what the family needs. That’s what he would do. He would break any contract that didn’t suit him and watch his men die for his pride and call it loyalty.
I’m not him.
I look up at my brothers. Matti, who has a daughter now, who has Siena. Tommy, who has Giovanna, who would burn the world for her and nearly did, and his twins on top of that. Both of them are watching me, and I know without a doubt that they’ll do whatever I ask.
But I cannot bring my war to their doorstep. I cannot ask them to fight that fight. Not when we don’t have the odds. Not for my pride. Not even for my Sophia.
“You’re right,” I say to Tommy, and his jaw eases slightly. “I’ll set the date for the funeral.”
Matti crosses the room and drops into the chair beside me.
He doesn’t say anything. He just reaches over and grips the back of my neck briefly and lets go.
I know he gets it. He would never give up Siena, and I’d never ask him to.
That’s what being the boss means: you make sacrifices so your men don’t have to.
“How will you handle things with Sophia?” Matti asks carefully.
I look at him.
“Ordinarily, that would be none of my business. But I was there on New Year’s Eve, Vin. I saw you drag her away from Gavin, and more importantly, Ronan saw it, too. I don’t know how he’s going to feel if you marry his sister but try to keep Sophie on the side.”
I do. Especially since he asked me pointedly to avoid humiliating his sister. And I don’t want to just keep Sophie—not that she’d let me do that if I tried. I want to make a life with her.
“I’ll handle it.”
“Vin—”
“I said I’ll handle it.” I stand up, the chair scraping back. “I just need to figure out how to keep her in my life without making it worse than it already is.”
Neither of them responds to that.
Sophie’s restaurant opens in a few days.
I imagine her in that kitchen happily cooking, strands of hair falling out of her ponytail.
So fucking beautiful. I won’t fuck with her before she gets the doors open to the Arsenal.
I owe her that much at least. But once that’s done, I’m not waiting any fucking longer than I have to.
I’m going to figure out how to keep her in my life, and she will submit. That’s all there is to it.
“Set the date,” I say finally, turning back to them. “The end of January. Give me until the end of January.”
Matti nods. “Done.”
Tommy stands and straightens his jacket. “For what it’s worth,” he says quietly, “I think you’re making the right call.”
I don’t answer that. For the right call, it feels wrong as fuck. Anything that keeps me away from her in any capacity is the wrong fucking answer. But I’ll fucking figure it out. I have to.