Enzo
Anger simmered in my veins. Holding back this kind of rage wasn’t something I was accustomed to, but it had to be done.
I couldn’t kill a man in broad daylight, in the middle of a coffee shop. There were limits to my powers. Charles was a minor annoyance before, but he’d turned into someone I needed to put in their place.
I dialed a number I tried my best not to call, but I needed the best on this.
“Miss Morning’s Little House of Horrors, how may we make you scream today?” A voice I wasn’t familiar with answered. I pulled the phone away from my ear and checked that I had called the right number.
It was right, but that didn’t mean Adrienne wasn’t using a voice simulator or something. It wouldn’t be the first or the fifth time she’d done that to me.
Adrienne was Marcello’s wife and someone I thought of as a sister. She hadn’t been in our lives for long, though I had always known about her because their fathers had arranged a marriage contract when they were still in diapers.
She was also part of an elite private security force, Bridge City Securities. It was an all-women outfit, and they were the only people in the world I could say terrified me.
Sometimes, if I asked nicely enough, Adrienne would help me find out information. Or if she was bored enough.
“Where is Adrienne?” I asked and winced at how demanding my tone was. That was a sure way to get hung up on and ignored until I remembered my manners. I didn’t have time for that.
There was a scuffle on the other end. I waited patiently while what sounded like a wrestling match for the phone ensued.
“What’s up?” Adrienne asked, breathless. “Hold on.” I waited.
“Sorry. I’m back.” Her voice was back to normal. I was getting better at noticing the odd things she did on a regular basis. “What do you need?”
“I need you to dig up everything you can on Charles Clearwart III,” I said.
"Serena’s ex?” she asked. I grunted, hating that he was even that to her. I kept an eye on him, but until that moment in the coffee shop, I hadn’t realized how awful he was to her.
He was around so rarely that I had only seen them interact for a moment twice.
Charles was an absentee father, at best. He was also an idiota who didn’t know how lucky he was to have Serena and Harper.
It was clear that Charles was going to be a problem. There was a glint in his eye that I’d seen in men who felt like I was taking away their toy —men who didn’t let things go.
For everyone’s sake, I needed to understand what I was dealing with and make plans.
“I see you’re finally doing something about that little crush you have on Serena,” Adrienne said.
“How do you know about that?” I sighed.
“You order men to watch over her, and you think that wouldn’t make it to Marcello, the Don, and then me?” Adrienne laughed. I rubbed my temples. It seemed like I was going to have another conversation with Marcello about keeping personal matters personal.
Was nothing sacred anymore? A man could no longer keep his obsession to himself.
“Can you get me everything I need to know? And while you’re at it, there’s a woman, too. I think her name was–” I paused, trying to remember the woman who looked at me like I was a piece of meat and didn’t hide it.
“Apple.” Adrienne cut me off, sighing. “She’s a trust-fund girl who thinks she’s Blair Waldorf to Charles’ Chuck Bass.”
“Should I know who those people are?” I needed to keep her on track. Otherwise, she’d go off on another tangent I didn’t have time for.
“Probably. Anyway, they’ve always had a thing for each other that, in the end, hurts everyone around them, but they’re too self-centered to see it. I’ll send you my dossier on them. I’ve been waiting for an excuse to use it.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Please don’t mention it to her.” I knew Adrienne and Serena talked regularly, and I didn’t need Serena to know anything until I was ready for her to.
“I won't. And for the record, I think you’d be good for her. So don’t screw it up, or I’ll make you regret breathing in her direction.
Bye.” She hung up. Some men would take offense at how Adrienne spoke to them, as if she were their superior.
Especially the men who Marcello, Rafael, and I grew up around.
Women were often things—possessions—who didn’t have a say. They’d never met someone like Adrienne and would have no idea how to handle her, let alone consider working with her.
They had more than earned that level of respect from me that the old men who used to be in my position handed to men who never deserved it.
They had skills most men only thought they had but couldn’t even conceive of having.
As a group, they got the job done, and I never once had to worry whether it would get done or about the blowback of such actions.
Competence went a long way in my world, and they had that in spades.
Adrienne and the women she worked with were among the few people I trusted.
With the most important thing crossed off my list, I headed into the office to get to work.
Long ago, I learned to accept some of my more obsessive behaviors.
Checking in on Serena daily and setting eyes on her multiple times a day had become part of my routine. It brought me peace.
First, it was the walk to school, ensuring both my girls made it there okay. Then came lunch. If Serena was in her creative zone, it was likely she wouldn’t stop to eat. Which bothered me only because I hated how stretched thin she was.
She took on any project that came her way, charging rock-bottom rates when she was worth so much more.
I’d see to it that she not only charged more but was more selective with her work. I wouldn’t allow her to work herself to exhaustion every day.
I walked out of the office, barely nodding at the people who worked for Panorama, the architecture and construction firm that Marcello, Rafael, and I created as the legal side of our business. We were able to control the unions better when we employed them.
Marcello always knew he’d be the Don of the Cosa Nostra. Rafael and I were introduced to him when we were young. From there, we spent years planning what we would do differently. How would we reimagine the brotherhood in our image? Make it a true family.
When Marcello came to terms with his arranged marriage and fell in love with Adrienne, everything shifted. She was a badass who could take him down, and we grew in ways we never could’ve predicted.
One of those ways was expanding beyond the East Coast. Adrienne’s base was out of Portland, Oregon. Her job sometimes had her passing through New York, visiting her family while she was here if she could, but it was inconsistent.
Marcello took a leap of faith, moving there, prepared to grovel for the rest of his life for the way he screwed up. Adrienne didn’t make him wait too long, and he was the happiest I’d ever seen him.
With him on the West Coast, I was responsible for running New York and all that it entailed.
Marcello ran a tight ship—one that I helped mold from the beginning.
Slipping into the top spot was easy, even though there was still some general dissatisfaction from the older men who wanted to go back to the golden days when you could kill someone in broad daylight because they had offended you somehow.
Grabbing the takeout from Thai Villa, I walked the few blocks to her building.
I hated that she split her studio up so half of it was a makeshift apartment.
I hated that I knew she didn’t like it. She’d never said it in so many words, but it showed in the throwaway comments she made.
I hated how hard she worked, but she was always taking on more because of what I had to assume was fear.
I touched my ring, the one my father had worn, and remembered how he taught me to have patience. That nothing I wanted would come easily, and if I gave up after the first obstacle, I didn’t deserve it anyway. Especially with love and women.
It was about showing up, showing her in all the small ways I’d be there for her, just as I’d be for the big moments.
Making sure she ate, got home safely, and was as happy as she could be—that was the bare minimum.
Patience. It was something I had in abundance and had no issue with exercising.
I had no intention of letting her slip through my fingers, but I knew she needed some convincing. She was skittish, constantly ducking and not looking me in the eye.
Some might misconstrue those small actions as disinterest, but they didn’t know her the way I did.
No, I saw the way her ears went red when I came out of the dressing room with my shirt unbuttoned.
The way her eyes lingered on my body, before flashing to my face, and then glancing away.
Noted how she spoke fast, like she needed to get the words out before she second-guessed herself and stopped talking.
It made me smile, thinking about how she was when I walked her home yesterday. She was flustered, angry, and then skeptical, given the side-eyes she sent my way. I didn’t want to break the spell and talk, so I let it be.
It took everything in me not to walk her upstairs and remind her she was perfect, that someone cared about her and wanted her exactly as she was.
It reminded me of the stories my dad used to tell me about how he won over my mother.
For him, it was love at first sight. For my mother, it was the opposite.
She wanted nothing to do with him or his life, but he didn’t let her reasons deter him.
He showed up and helped her tend her pistachio trees, walking back and forth from the city center to her farm.
He was there in small ways, showing her who he was, and eventually she agreed to dinner.
One dinner turned into two, then days spent together, and finally, she loved him almost as much as he loved her. I grew up in a house full of love, which was abnormal in the time of arranged marriages for alliances, and love was considered a farce.