Chapter 34
THIRTY-FOUR
MATEO
Vanessa walks straight into Gino’s house without a second thought.
Clearly, they’ve grown closer over the last year.
Before, she would’ve knocked every time we came over.
The house is quiet, almost too quiet, the same uneasy stillness as yesterday.
Vanessa sets the twins into a playpen in the library.
“Wouldn’t Juliet be cooking breakfast by now?” I ask, standing behind her.
“Probably,” she says. “But she’s been coming over to our house every morning, so she might be cooking earlier now.”
“Hey, you two,” Gino calls from the top of the stairs.
He’s wearing sweatpants and no shirt, and I blink at the sight. What the hell is happening? Normally, you’d never see Gino without slacks and a button-down. Yet here we are.
“Hey,” Vanessa replies easily.
“Where’s Juliet?” I ask.
“Uh, somewhere around here,” Gino says, and I swear he’s blushing.
“She’s probably upstairs cleaning something,” Vanessa says firmly. “You really need to give her a break, Gino.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he mutters. “You tell me that every time you come over.”
Juliet appears in the hallway behind him. If she’s still working, then apparently pajamas are the new uniform around here. “Hi,” she says softly, a faint blush coloring her cheeks.
I make a mental note to ask Gino about that later.
“We’ll talk in my office,” Gino says to me.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Vanessa. She smiles at me as I follow him.
“Okay.”
Juliet and I pass each other on the stairs. She leans in and whispers, “Don’t worry. We took good care of her.”
“Thanks,” I say with a smile. She continues down while I head up.
“Let’s go into my office,” Gino says.
“All right. Could you at least put on a shirt?”
He snorts. “Who knew you’d become so bashful.”
“Bullshit. You know you’d never be caught dead like that.”
“A year ago, sure,” he says, glancing down the stairs where Juliet and Vanessa are still standing. “Now I’ve realized I need to chill out more.”
I step into Gino’s office. It looks exactly the same.
Same desk, same chairs, same décor. The only difference is the stack of paperwork covering his desk.
I walk over and scan it, realizing it’s all contracts and legal documents.
The kind I should’ve been handling. I wonder if he’s brought in a new lawyer while I’ve been gone.
“All right, let’s get to business,” Gino says as he walks in behind me.
“Thanks for putting on the shirt,” I snicker. I’ve never seen him dressed this casually so late in the day.
“What? This is my house, you know.”
“I know. You just never work in sweats and a T-shirt.”
“Like I said, I need to chill out more,” he says casually.
I lift a brow. “Mmm, okay. Whatever you say.” I’d bet good money it has something to do with the dark-haired woman downstairs.
“Take a seat.” He points to the chair across from him. “As you can see, I have no fucking idea what I’m looking at. But since I took over all of the Russos’ shit, I need to make sure everything transfers correctly.”
“What do you mean, transferred?”
“After they took you, I decided we needed to stop playing pretend and actually act like a mafia. Do some damage.”
I stare at him, shock written all over my face.
“Relax,” he adds. “We didn’t kill just anyone. Only the people who were trying to kill us.”
Jesus. He did more to find me than I ever realized. There were so many days I thought they’d stopped looking, or that they weren’t trying hard enough.
“So,” I say slowly, “who did you kill?”
“Me? No one,” he says. “But the guys took down Lorenzo’s operation three days ago. And they killed a few of the goons that were guarding you.”
He exhales. “It wasn’t easy. It took days to find a way in. The place was secured and secluded. Like a military base.”
“Walk me through it,” I say, unable to stop myself. “Please. I need to know everything.”
Gino sighs. “We spent months digging through every property they owned across Italy and came up empty. I leaned on some old contacts my father had, had them scour the country for you. Nothing.”
He shakes his head. “The first six months were nothing but dead ends. Every lead Drew found turned out to be bullshit. Anytime Lorenzo called, he was nowhere near where he was holding you. He used his father’s villa as cover.”
He takes a breath before continuing. “When Vanessa had the twins, I knew I couldn’t let other people handle it. They were taking too long to get me information, so I took matters into my own hands—”
I cut him off. “Did you go over there yourself?”
“Hell no.” He lets out a short laugh. “Your wife and Juliet would actually kill me if I even suggested it.”
He sobers. “I gave Drew full authority to do whatever he thought was necessary to find you. He started hacking directly into the Russos’ servers. Lorenzo used his father’s computers for most of his communication, which is why we couldn’t track you. That was the blind spot.”
He leans back. “We finally got a break about a week ago. Drew cracked their accounting and banking systems. There was one property tied entirely to his mother’s name. That’s what gave it away. We never would’ve looked there if it hadn’t been for Juliet.”
I frown. “Juliet?”
“She suggested we start looking at the women,” he says. “Some of them are like us. They trust deeply. They love hard. And they protect the people closest to them.” He gives me a reassuring smile.
“What about his dad and the other brother?”
“They’re alive. They had no idea Lorenzo was holding you. They thought he scared you a bit and you went straight home.”
“What?” I ask in shock.
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s how I was able to take so much from them without raising alarms. This was supposed to be a clean, easy deal. Lorenzo just wanted it all for himself.”
“Jesus. Why would he do that? And how did no one see it?”
“Because he had his own guys,” Gino says. “He wanted to run the Russo empire by himself. He built separate teams that didn’t interact with anyone else.”
“So what did you get from them?”
“All of their stateside properties,” he replies. “Which is a lot more than I expected.”
“How much?”
“Ten warehouses, two commercial buildings, four office buildings, and three apartment complexes.”
I shake my head. “I didn’t know they had that much here.”
“Neither did I. But they didn’t want a war with us, so they handed it all over. And honestly, I think it’s because Lorenzo ran the stateside business. They wanted to distance themselves from it.”
Knowing I’ve gotten enough out of him for now, and that I’ll keep digging until I have every last detail, I ask the one question I know will annoy the shit out of him.
“So who’s your lawyer now?”
“What kind of question is that—” He scoffs. “You are.”
“Who’s been helping you with all of this?” I press. “We both know you have no clue what you’re doing when it comes to legal jargon.”
“Juliet,” he admits. “She’s been helping with everything. She knows a lot about contracts and that kind of stuff.”
“About Juliet,” I say carefully. “When did she stop waking up at sunrise to get things done?”
“I don’t control when she wakes up.”
“I beg to differ,” I counter. “Considering when I walked in, both of you were still in pajamas at almost ten.”
“So now it’s a crime to sleep in?” He lifts his brows at me.
I shrug. “No. But you know what? I’m not going to pry into what you do in your free time.”
“Good,” he says flatly. “And never fucking start.”
I snicker. We both know I see straight through him. I’ve been calling it for years, the two of them together. But I also know he doesn’t want to have a heart-to-heart, so he keeps his mouth shut—and so do I.
“How did you take the news about the kids?” he asks.
“I mean… okay, I guess,” I say. “But why didn’t anyone tell me before I got here? Seeing them for the first time was a shock.”
“Because Vanessa was texting you every day with updates,” I tell him. “We all knew that. So we didn’t say anything.”
“Did she know you found me when you did?”
“No. I didn’t want her stressing, waiting up all night for you,” he says. “It was hard on her. She came here every day like clockwork. Looked for you every day with me. Spent more time in this office than I wanted her to.”
“Who had her text me every day? Was that you?”
“No. One of her friends from the hospital suggested it,” he says. “It helped her sanity. Trust me. The first few days after she found out she was pregnant, she’d just stand there staring at the driveway, waiting for you to pull up.”
My chest tightens.
“She quit her job at the hospital so she could be home as much as possible, just in case you showed up,” he continues.
“When she realized it wasn’t going to happen like it does in the movies, she poured herself into finding you.
She stayed focused. Dedicated. Up until two days ago, she sat in that chair you’re in right now, going over every piece of information, trying to pull it apart. ”
“She did all that?”
“Yeah. And she made sure everything was ready for the second you got home.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your office. Food. Anything she could control,” he says quietly. “It really fucked with her, man, you being gone. Having something ready for you helped her cope, especially when I never had updates.”
He exhales. “Even after the twins were born, she spent hours doing it. Talking to them about you. Holding onto you any way she could.”
I swallow.
“It messed with her head,” he adds. “So you need to take care of her. Make sure she’s okay.”
“Did she ever tell you any of this?”
“No. Juliet and Alonso noticed what was happening at your place and told me. We didn’t confront her. We just asked around, subtly. She confirmed it.”
He meets my gaze. “Just watch out for her.”
“You had Alonso watching her?”
“Yeah. Why not?”
“Just an interesting choice,” I say. “You don’t usually let him do things on his own.”
“He’s done plenty on his own,” Gino replies. “But he was the one I knew would be a friend to her. No jokes. No bullshit. Just support.”
I nod. “Yeah. Good choice.”
He smirks. “You know I run things around here, right?”
“Barely,” I shoot back, snickering.
The next few hours pass with the two of us catching up.
We go over everything that’s happened in the last year and what still needs to be handled to close out the remaining Russo deals.
Adding more properties to the portfolio means more money, but it also means more reason to keep the business as clean as possible.