75. Rico
Rico
Every. Fucking. Day.
Karma isn’t just a bitch; she’s a vindictive, petty, grudge-holding lunatic with a particular vendetta against me.
And right now, she’s wearing Marco’s face.
Still, I keep going because I don’t have a choice.
It’s the only thing I have left—the sliver of hope that if Allie pressed forward when I gave her nothing to cling to, she might do the same.
If I keep sending messages, trying to prove I want her in my life, maybe—just maybe—she’ll give me a chance.
Or she’ll continue to ignore me, and I’ll spiral further into the depths of my self-inflicted purgatory. Either way, it’s progress.
“I have never in my life seen you this attached to a phone, and honestly, it’s making me nauseous,” Marco announces from the other side of my desk, his face twisted in melodramatic revulsion. “If this is what personal growth looks like, I’d rather have you emotionally dead inside again, thanks.”
I ignore him and check my phone again.
Nothing.
Marco leans back in his chair, hands laced behind his head, embracing like the smug bastard he is. “So, is your therapist still that shriveled-up Voldemort look-alike?”
I almost laugh. A real one. And I hate it.
Not because it’s Marco, but because it’s foreign—an emotion I locked away so long ago that feeling it now is like suddenly remembering how to breathe underwater. I hate I deprived myself, my family, and Allie of something as simple as a laugh.
Dr. Dingleberry (his real name is Dr. Lowell, but that’s irrelevant) told me to show Allie I care.
To let her in since I’ve done nothing but keep her out and, more importantly, push her away.
All of this, frankly, is a fucking mystery to me.
How do you show someone you care when you’ve spent your entire life perfecting the art of apathy?
So, I started texting her. The same messages I would have written on the Post-Its, but digital, because that’s all I could think of. Only now I’m more pathetic. Following up, practically begging her to respond. To ask “why” or anything.
She hasn’t taken the bait. She hasn’t replied at all.
And I deserve that, too.
I ignored months of her texts, her calls, her attempts to speak to me. I did everything I could to push her away, to break her down until she finally stopped trying.
Now she has.
And I hate every fucking minute of it.
I hate waking up, checking my phone like some pitiful, love-sick idiot, only to see the read receipts taunting me.
Now I know how she felt.
To be discarded. To try to and receive only silence. To realize your words aren’t worth a response. You aren't worth a response.
“That’s gotta sting,” Marco muses, watching me check my phone again. “She still ghosting you?”
I nod.
“Yeah, see…correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t that exactly what you did to her your entire marriage?”
I nod again.
“So…what? You think if you just text her enough times, she’s going to cave and be all aww, he finally gives a shit and comes running back?” He glances at the envelope on my desk—wrinkled, coffee-stained, and very much unsigned. “I assume you’re not planning on signing those?”
I shake my head. “I don’t want a divorce.”
Marco steeples his fingers under his chin, eyes gleaming with something I don’t like one bit. “Why?”
I narrow my eyes. “Are you my therapist now?”
“I’m just trying to gauge how far gone you are. Personally, I think you just need a good ass-kicking in the ring, and you’ll be cured. But hey, what do I know?”
I ignore him, still staring at my phone, willing a response to appear.
Marco shifts in his chair, and for the first time since he barged in here uninvited, I notice something. He’s tense. Marco is a lot of things—chaotic, agitating, unstable, and slightly unhinged—but tense? That’s not his style.
“What’s going on with you?”
His smirk falters. “Nothing.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You really want to play who’s hiding more shit with me? Brother, I will win that game.”
“I assume not.”
“I’ve got things on my mind.” He glances away, jaw stiffening.
“I’d assume so.” Marco took on a role most people in this family think he wanted. The truth? He didn’t. He hates being Don. But he won’t walk away—not because he loves power, but because he’s the only one stubborn (and ludicrous) enough to think he can change things.
Not really sure how you restructure the mafia, but if anyone is deranged enough to try, it’s him.
Dom and Alex walk in, exchanging glances before looking at us. Their eyes flick to Marco, sprawled across from me in a chair that, yes, I fucking added to invite people to stay in my office, then land on me, where I’m comfortably ignoring them all from my desk.
“I don’t think I’m enjoying this therapy bullshit if it means this bullshit shows up more often,” Alex says, nodding at Marco.
“There’s always a price to pay,” Marco snaps, his usual amusement absent. Instead, he looks... bitchy.
Dom drops into the seat next to him. Yes, I added not one, but two chairs. I regret it right now, though. “Time of the month, cousin?”
“Something like that,” Marco mutters before pinning Alex with a sharp look. “Why are you here? I thought this merger meant you were permanently chained to your wife’s ankle like a well-trained lapdog?”
“I am.” Alex shrugs. “Just stopped in to say I’m heading out for the day and to make sure none of you idiots caught some highly contagious illness that requires me to evacuate the building.
Rico’s entertaining guests, which is suspicious, and you,” he gestures vaguely at Marco, “are voluntarily existing in public. Clearly, something is wrong.”
Marco rolls his shoulders, exhaling heavily. “I have my own problems to deal with, but instead of handling those, I’m constantly fixing your problems.”
“Hey,” Dom interjects, looking offended. “You didn’t help me.”
“Oh?” Marco tilts his head. “You let your girl go on a date with Theo Carlyle, and then I had to track him down so you could man up and reclaim her before she realized she had options. Then you handed her your balls on a silver platter. Again. For free.” His sharp gaze flicks at Alex.
“You know what you got from me. You’re welcome, by the way.
I don’t even have the patience to list all the ways I carried your ass through your shit with Violet.
” Then those amber eyes land on me. “And you—I found you the perfect wife, one who actually tolerates you, and you still fucked it up. Now you’re giving me a headache.
You all have officially convinced me there is absolutely no reason to ever get into a relationship.
Women are complicated, and they turn grown-ass men into sniveling bitches. ”
We all fall silent, staring at him.
“What?” he snaps.
Dom’s lips curl. “Care to talk about… her?”
Marco’s eye twitches. “Fuck off. All of you.” He stands, buttons his jacket with a little too much force, and scowls at me. “And quit texting her. She won't respond.”
I quirk a brow. “How do you know?”
The sound Marco makes is halfway between a groan and the death rattle of a dying bull. Which feels fitting, considering the amount of bullshit coming out of his mouth.
“Why do you think?” he snaps. “She still believes you cheated on her. That you’re seeing your so-called therapist, which she clearly thinks is code for a weekly appointment with a walking STD in Louboutins.
So maybe, just maybe, that’s why she’s not responding to your soul-baring texts.
For fuck’s sake, Rico. Clear up the part where you weren’t balls-deep in betrayal before you compose poetry about her eyes again. ”
My jaw tightens hard enough I feel it in my molars. “She still thinks I cheated on her? That I’m seeing my escort and not a therapist three times a week?” I ask slowly, biting down each syllable. Feelings are fucking useless. At this moment, they’re slapping me hard, and I hate them.
Marco blinks. “Why would she think otherwise?”
I am going to kill him. “Because you talk to her. You talk to Violet. Violet talks to her. All of you talk constantly in your little estrogen-fueled group chat—yet somehow no one has passed along the teeny tiny detail that I’m not fucking an escort and haven’t since I got married?”
I wave my hand between all three of them. “Not an escort. A therapist. A real one. Framed degree. Office with a ficus. Weekly emotional crucifixions included.”
Alex picks at an invisible lint speck on his jacket, unbothered as ever. “Still your mess. Clean it up yourself. Isn’t that what your therapist is for? Accountability? Emotional maturity? Or do you just Venmo him to let you monologue into the void?”
Marco rubs the bridge of his nose like my existence gives him migraines. It probably does. I get it. I give myself migraines.
“None of it matters,” he mutters.
I blink. Again. “She thinks I cheated on her. Which, granted, okay—I may have given her that impression when I implied I was screwing my therapist. I didn’t expect her to believe it still because I figured one of you would have blabbed the truth like you do oh so well.
” I also didn’t expect her to leave me, ignore text messages, and weaponize Post-it notes, but here we are.
I breathe through the concrete currently lodged in my throat.
“That assumption’s bad enough, but the idea that she still thinks I’m seeing an escort weekly? Still paying a professional for orgasms and validation? And you’re saying that doesn’t matter?”
Marco drops his hand from his face and levels me with that look.
“Even if she believed you didn’t cheat,” he says, “she thinks the only reason you want her now is because it’s convenient.
You don’t want a wife. You want a solution.
And she just happens to be the lowest-maintenance option on the market.
Already installed, preheated, capable of carrying an heir.
Congratulations. You’ve turned your wife into a subscription service. ”
“That’s not how I feel about her at all. It’s a lot more than that and you fucking know it.”
Silence.
Alex and Dom both gape at me like I just admitted to recreational murder.
“What?” I ask.
Alex opens his mouth, then shuts it. Dom just blinks rapidly.
“So… you’re serious?” Dom finally asks, dragging out the word serious like it physically pains him. “Like… actual feelings? Loooovvveee?”
And just like that, whatever lingering respect I had for my twin is dead.
“Are you done?”
“Not really,” Dom muses. “Might take me a few months to process this.”
I roll my eyes, glancing at my phone. Clearly, my current approach isn’t working.
Marco groans. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” He stalks over, slides my chair out of the way, and starts typing into the search bar on my computer. A few weeks ago I’d kill a man for touching my keyboard. My brothers crowd behind him, leaning over my shoulder like a bunch of vultures circling roadkill.
I clench my jaw but inhale deeply, reminding myself that while this is annoying, it is not worth breaking noses over.
“You want your wife to believe you actually want her for something other than her reproductive capabilities?” Marco scoffs, still typing. “Start here.”
We all lean in, looking at what Marco pulled up on the screen together.
Dom raises a brow. “That’s… actually, not a bad idea.”
We all look at Marco in mild horror.
Marco smirks. “I know. It’s disturbing, isn’t it?”
His expression shifts, tightening. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go handle my shit for once. And no, I definitely do not need your help. Your collective relationship IQs are on par with a toaster, and that’s insulting to a supremely functional appliance.”
Dom holds up a hand. “Wait… you have a relationship problem?”
Marco flips him off and stalks out.
Alex shakes his head. “I really pity whatever woman Marco is interested in.”
“I pity him,” I correct, scrolling through the screen.
They both look at me.
“Think about it,” I continue. “Any woman who can rattle Marco has to be the female version of him. And worse. Imagine that creature.”
Dom visibly shudders. “I’d prefer not to.”
We all stare at the screen again.
And then it hits me. The way to prove to Allie that I chose her. That I actually, really, truly want her.
Because I do.