I let him lead me upstairs, and while he took off his robe and tossed it on a chair, I unzipped the jeans and stepped out of them. I was surprised when Charlie slid his hands around my bare hips, and I glanced at him over my shoulder. Instead of saying anything, he stepped back and stripped off his clothes. Then he climbed onto the bed, leaned back on the pillows, and let his knees fall to the sides, offering himself to me as he held my gaze.

  I pulled off my T-shirt and dropped it on the floor before following him onto the mattress and taking him in my arms. I asked, “Are you sure you want this right now?”

  “I need you inside me, Dante. I can’t explain why. I just do.” Explanations weren’t necessary. I needed to be as close to him as possible too, after all of that.

  We kissed and caressed each other for a long time, and once I was hard, Charlie lubed my cock and guided it inside him. Despite what we’d said earlier about needing a bit of roughness the next time we had sex, it was just the opposite. He wrapped his arms and legs around me, and we watched each other as I moved in him. When my husband whispered, “I love you,” it felt like the most amazing gift. It didn’t matter how many times I heard it. Each one was something to be cherished.

  I stayed inside him even after I came, and we held each other until Charlie fell asleep in my arms. Only then did I let my cock slip from his body. I pulled the blanket over both of us, curled myself around my husband, and held him securely. I needed to feel like I was keeping him safe that night, even if it was only an illusion.

  Chapter Five

  Three weeks later

  Occasionally, I liked to pretend my restaurant needed me to function properly. It really didn’t, since my staff was competent and efficient, and they all had years of experience, unlike me. Still though, they pretended with me, and when I came in on a random Thursday afternoon while they prepared to open for dinner, everyone went out of their way to make me feel important. Tyler Remmy, my brilliant chef, insisted I taste that night’s specials and asked for my opinion, as if I had anything relevant to say about his consistently superb dishes aside from, “Holy fuck, that’s delicious.”

  He sent a bowl of soup with me as I headed to my office. Along the way, I was intercepted by my manager Beatrice, who asked me if I liked the changes she’d made in the dining room. I shifted the hot bowl from one hand to the other and blinked at the dark wood tables set with white dishes and sparkling stemware. After a few moments, I said, “Okay, I give up. What’s different?” It turned out she’d swapped out the short, square vases for short, spherical ones. That Beatrice, what a rebel.

  After assuring her the vase balls were a tremendous upgrade, I finally made it to my office. Then I spent some time looking over the books and organizing some receipts, even though I paid my brother Mikey, the accountant, to handle all of that for me. Mostly, I just tried not to drip soup onto his beloved, color-coded spreadsheets, which he was much too fond of.

  My brother Vincent strolled into my office maybe twenty minutes later, dropped into a chair, and said, “I know I’m not interrupting anything.”

  It was almost but not quite like looking in the mirror. He was two years younger than me and wore glasses, but we were often mistaken for twins when we were growing up. I saw more differences in us now, though. We had the same build and coloring, and neither of us ever seemed to leave the house in anything other than a dark suit, but he seemed younger than thirty-one, while I felt ancient. It was as if we were aging in opposite directions.

  “You’re right,” I said, closing the binder with its rainbow of spreadsheets. “I’m as useful as an inflatable dartboard around here. Still though, I come in a couple times a week for shits and giggles. What’re you up to?”

  “I saw your SUV out front when I was driving by. Thought I’d drop in and see how you’re doing, since I’ve been a bit MIA lately.”

  “Well yeah, with twin babies at home. I’m surprised you have time to breathe.”

  “Just barely.”

  “You wouldn’t change it for the world though, right?”

  He grinned and said, “I really wouldn’t.”

  “Fatherhood definitely agrees with you.” He and his husband had adopted their son Josh a couple years before having twins with a surrogate. Even before that, falling in love with Trevor had transformed my ever-serious brother. Happy wasn’t a word I would have applied to him before his husband came into his life. He was now though, and the kids just seemed to magnify it. I asked, “Do you think you’ll stop at three, or are you and Trevor going for your own personal basketball team?”

  “We’re good for now. Ask me again in a couple years, after the horrors of diapers and the sleep deprivation are a distant memory.” He crossed his ankle over his knee and said, “What about you and Charlie? I know you’d started talking about having kids.”

  “We were, but we both agree it’s just not the time.”

  Until the arson investigation was resolved once and for all, I couldn’t even think about bringing a child into our lives, not with so much uncertainty and the potential for another attack hanging over us. Somehow, the fire had the opposite effect on Vincent and Trevor, and they’d stepped up their timetable on having a baby. My brother had explained it like this: for them, it had been a reminder that life is short and happiness should never be put off. While I agreed with that in principle, I also thought the act of bringing kids into my life required far more optimism than I could muster at that point.

  “You’ve had a hell of a lot on your mind,” Vincent said, “and actually, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that. I know I haven’t been pulling my weight with trying to chase down leads, or with anything else really, and I want to apologize. You shouldn’t have to handle all of this on your own.”

  “Oh hell no Vinnie, don’t even go there. You and Trevor are busy with those babies and with your teenage son, and that’s exactly what you should be focused on right now. There’s no reason to apologize.”

  “Yeah, but still.”

  “Look at what I’m doing right now. I’m loitering in my office, and I just finished organizing a stack of receipts that I know for a fact our anal-retentive brother Mikey is just going to reorganize as soon as he sets foot in here tomorrow. It’s not like I’m out scouring the globe. I would, obviously, if I knew where to start, but there just hasn’t been a damn thing to go by, no leads, no clues, not even a rumor. So, don’t feel guilty about all the stuff you think you’re not doing, alright? Because for quite a while now, there hasn’t been a damn thing to do.”

  “That’s not entirely true. I still think you should have called me before going to confront Steven Messina a few weeks ago.”

  “Cameron Doyle already had my back, though as I told you, that proved to be wholly unnecessary.” I glanced at my brother, and after a moment I asked, “If I had called you in, you would have handled it differently than I did, right?”

  He considered the question before saying, “It’s easy to say yes, but then, I wasn’t there. I didn’t see what you did. I’ve gotten my hands dirty for this family in the past, you know that. But I hope I would have shown some compassion in this case. From the way you described this guy, it sounds like you made the right call.”

  “We need answers, though.”

  “Yeah, but that kid wasn’t the only route to finding Mick Messina. Besides, you thought he was telling the truth about not knowing where to find his uncle.”

  “True.”

  We talked for a few more minutes, until Vincent stood up and said, “I’d better go run my errand. I’m glad we got to catch up a bit.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “That warehouse store where you buy everything in bulk. Trevor and I are tired of running out for diapers in the middle of the night, so we decided to start buying them by the metric ton.”

  As I walked him to the door, I pointed out, “My restaurant isn’t on the way to that warehouse store.”

  “I know. I was stalling for time. Have you ever been in one of those places? It’s a horror show. Why would anyone ever need two gallons of mayonnaise?” Vincent held up his hand and said, “Don’t answer that.”

  “I hope to never experience the terror of bulk shopping.” My ringing phone interrupted us. I glanced at my cousin Nico’s name on the screen and answered with, “Hey, what’s up?”

  He sounded slightly out of breath. “I just heard from my brother. He may have located Jerry.”

  Adrenaline surged through me, and I put the phone on speaker and said, “Tell me everything Constantino told you.”

  “It was a voicemail, and all he said was, word for word: ‘I may have gotten a lead on Jerry. One of my sources thinks he was caught on film in Pittsburgh. I’ll let you know when I confirm.’ I was observing a surgical procedure at the hospital, so my phone was off. I called my brother back as soon as I played his message, but it went straight to voicemail. I’m still waiting for him to call me back.”

  Vincent and I exchanged looks, and he grabbed his phone and fired off a text as I told Nico, “You need to let me know the moment Constantino calls you back.”

  “I will. I assume you’re on the next plane to Pittsburgh, right?”

  “Definitely.”

  “See if you can get us tickets on that same flight while I text my boyfriend. And do you want to call Vincent, or should I?”

  “Vinnie’s standing right here, so he heard all of that. You and Luca shouldn’t go to Pittsburgh though, Nico.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, for starters, if we all go rolling up in there like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Jerry might get wind of it and bolt. That’s why I’m going alone.”

  “Like hell you are,” Vincent muttered, looking up from his phone.

  My cousin’s voice rose as he said, “This all started with me, Dante. Did you forget that part? Here, let me recap for you: Jerry went ballistic when I fell in love with one of Sal Natori’s sons and hired my own brother the hitman to kill Luca in front of me. That’s why you removed Jerry as head of the family, which turned him against all of us and drove him to the Messinas, who may have set the fire that almost killed our entire family. Now tell me how the hell this is your battle and not mine!”

  “What are you going to do when we find Jerry? Kill him? You’re an EMT and a medical student, Nico. You save lives, you don’t take them!”

  “I’m not going to kill him, but I have no qualms about beating some answers out of him!”

  “That’s still not you,” I said. “You’re not a violent person.”

  “I’m willing to make an exception in this case.”

  “But like I said, the more of us that go, the more likely it is that Jerry might spot one of us and disappear again. And even if that doesn’t happen, it’s bound to get messy. If he really did have a role in the fire, he’ll know why we’re coming after him, and he’ll go down guns blazing.”

  Nico sounded exasperated when he said, “So I’m supposed to just sit here while you go off and fight my battle for me?”

  “It’s not just your battle,” I reminded him. “It’s mine, too. I put Jerry in charge, I made that mistake. If you really want to talk cause and effect and line up all the events that led to the fire, you have to start with that one. It was the first link in the chain, not you falling in love with Luca.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. Just let me do this, Nico. Stay here. Keep yourself and your boyfriend out of harm’s way, and trust me to do what needs to be done.”

  He mulled that over for a few moments before saying, “Yeah…okay, but only because you have a point about a big group of us attracting attention. If Jerry’s guilty like we think he is, he’ll definitely bolt if he spots any of us. You can’t go by yourself, though. He might have bodyguards or members of the Messina family backing him up, you’d be outgunned.”

  “Oh, he’s not going alone,” Vincent muttered as he frowned at me.

  I ignored that and said, “I need to go make my travel arrangements, Nico. Call me as soon as you hear from your brother.”

  “Count on it.”

  When we disconnected the call, Vincent put his phone away and said, “I booked us on a charter flight that departs in just over two hours. And don’t even start that shit about going alone, because it’s not happening.”

  “Come on, Vinnie. You’ve got three kids at home. What if, God forbid, something happens to you? Those children need you, and so does your husband.”

  My brother held my gaze levelly and said, “Trevor and our children are exactly why I’m going. I need to keep them and the rest of our family safe. That means finding the people responsible for the fire and making sure they can never hurt us again.”

  From his look of steely determination, I knew there was no talking him out of it, so I said, “Fine. At least I know you can handle yourself, unlike Nico and Luca. I have a problem, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A few weeks ago, after Doyle found Steven Messina, Charlie told me in no uncertain terms that he’s not willing to sit on the sidelines while I go off on my own and track down leads. What the hell am I supposed to do about that?”

  “Your husband’s a former football player. He’s tough. Plus, he’s spent the last year and a half learning to shoot and has become an excellent marksman. You could do a lot worse than Charlie backing you up.”

  “But the last thing I want is to put him in harm’s way, any more than you’d want Trevor in the line of fire.”

  “I get that,” he said. “But what choice do you have? If he insists on coming along, you can’t stop him.”

  “You’re right, but I hate this, Vincent. If anything happens to Charlie….”

  “It won’t, because you’ll keep him safe. So will I. And you know what? He’ll probably keep us safe, too.”

  “How? It’s not like the gun range. Those paper targets don’t fire back!”

  “Give him some credit, though.”

  I said, “But he’s just not ready for what’s probably going to go down when we find Jerry. Besides the very real possibility of Charlie getting shot, what if he ends up being the one to pull the trigger? He’ll have to carry that with him the rest of his life.”

  “Like I said, you’re not going to let him get hurt. As for the rest of that, he’s a grown man. He’ll deal with whatever happens.”

  “But Charlie’s not like us. He’s so innocent.”

  “He also told you he won’t be left behind, and I know he’s doing that because he adores you and needs to feel like he’s helping not only you, but the family he married into. All you can do is accept it, protect him while it’s going down, and be there for him if it all goes to hell.”

  I muttered, “It would help me if he stayed home, where it’s safe.” After a moment I made myself dial Charlie’s number, and when he answered, I said, “We have a lead, angel, and we need to get to the airport. Please pack a bag for both of us. Vincent and I will pick you up soon.”

  I pressed my eyes shut as dread and worry knotted up my insides. If something happened, if Charlie got killed, it’d be game over for me, too. There was absolutely no coming back from that.

  As I exhaled slowly, Vincent did something he’d never done before. He put his hand on the back of my neck and touched his forehead to mine, just for a moment. There was so much love, compassion, and understanding in that one simple gesture, expressed more eloquently than words ever could. I was so grateful for my brother right then.

  Chapter Six

  Charlie sat on the edge of the bed and flexed his bad knee, the one which had sustained the injury that ended his college football career. It bore a long scar from the surgery that had patched it back together again, and the knee stiffened up from time to time. Sitting for several hours on the cross-country flight obviously hadn’t agreed with it. Not that Charlie would ever complain, no matter how much pain he was in.

  I crossed the hotel room and bent to kiss him before asking, “Can I get you anything? Some ibuprofen?”

  He caught my hand. “No thanks. I took some while I was in the bathroom, and it’ll kick in soon. Why don’t you sit down?” My constant pacing had to be annoying, so I made myself sit on the edge of the mattress with him. Charlie brushed my hair out of my eyes and said, “I know waiting like this must be driving you nuts, but you should think about getting some rest, Dante. It’s late, and we probably won’t hear from Constantino until morning. Since he and his boyfriend are driving down from somewhere in Canada, I bet they’re still on the road.”

  I said I’d try, but when my phone rang a moment later, I was back up like a shot. Nico’s name was on the screen, and I answered with, “Did you hear from your brother?”

  “I was calling to ask you the same thing, and no, not since he called me back about seven hours ago. Where are you?”

  “In a generic hotel near the Pittsburgh airport. Vincent’s across the hall, we got here about half an hour ago.”

  “Well, sit tight,” Nico said. “I’m sure my brother will be in touch soon.”

  “It’s fucking killing me to be this close to where Jerry was spotted without being able to do anything about it.”

  “You know you’re doing the right thing by staying out of sight, though. It’s just like you told me, you don’t want Jerry to spot one of you and bolt. Connie has a dozen people watching the downtown area where our cousin was caught on camera,” Nico said. “He’ll let us know as soon as there’s any news.”

  I was still surprised, both because Constantino was taking such an active role in tracking down Jerry, and because I’d found out he was very well-connected. He had access to an underground network that could hack into traffic and municipal cameras around the country, then run the images through facial-recognition software to basically find anyone anywhere, given enough time. It was a hell of a resource.

  Constantino had distanced himself from the family years ago, when he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a hitman-for-hire. Needless to say, he’d made a lot of enemies in that line of work, and once he retired, he and his boyfriend began living under aliases and moving around a lot to keep his past from catching up to them. That meant we heard from him even less than before. But ever since the fire, he’d really been making an effort to help track down those responsible, which I wouldn’t have expected from him.

 

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