“Well, I may be the black sheep of the family, but I still care about what happens to my herd.” After a beat, Connie added, “I instantly regret that analogy.” We were both grinning as we rejoined our loved ones.

  Chapter Seven

  “You owe me twenty-three thousand dollars.”

  “Only because you cheat,” I told Vincent.

  “So do you,” he said, drawing the stack of chips toward him. “You just don’t cheat well.”

  “I’ll win it back in the next round. Just watch,” I said as I shuffled the cards, but my brother pushed back from the table.

  “I need a break from this poker marathon. I’m going to video-call Trevor and the kids.”

  “It’s very cute when you make faces and talk in a squeaky voice for your babies,” I told him. “And don’t worry. Even though I recorded you doing that, I’ll only use the video when I have a solid reason to blackmail you. That may actually come into play sooner rather than later, if you keep insisting on playing classical music every waking hour.”

  My brother shot me a look and tapped the screen on his phone. Instantly, Vivaldi began to play, and I groaned dramatically. He brandished the phone like a weapon, jabbing it in my direction a couple times before grinning and heading to his bedroom to call his husband.

  “I need a break too, and something to drink. I think we’ve been playing for three straight hours,” Charlie said as he got up and headed to the kitchen.

  “Four,” Andreo chimed in, “but who’s counting?” He and Constantino wandered off as well.

  “Quitters.” I turned to the man on my right. “What about you, Fergie? How about a poker showdown, mano a mano?” Wes Ferguson was one of the men Connie had hired to be our eyes and ears in the neighborhood and the surrounding area, and he and his crew used the apartment we’d rented to rest up in between shifts. He was a big African-American guy in his late thirties, with a shaved head, biceps like telephone poles, and a mad crush on Britney Spears, who was immortalized in a tatt on his right forearm. He was equal parts tough and quirky, and we’d instantly become friends.

  “Maybe later, Dante. I need to take a walk around the block, I feel like I’m atrophying from sitting so long.” He had a point. I followed him out of the dining room, then hung a left to go find Charlie in the kitchen while Fergie continued to the front door, grabbing his coat from the rack along the way.

  I envied him as he left the apartment. We’d moved into the furnished, four-bedroom flat in downtown Pittsburgh under the cover of darkness (and by way of an underground parking garage) five days earlier, and since then my group had basically been under house arrest. If Jerry was still nearby, and that was beginning to seem like a big if, we didn’t want to run the risk of tipping him off to our presence and sending him running, and that meant staying out of sight. So, while Ferguson and his team staked out the neighborhood and another team a couple states over monitored traffic cams and municipal surveillance cameras, the rest of us just loitered and tried to pass the time.

  Charlie was making cocktails, and I came up behind him, nuzzled his hair with my cheek, and asked, “Are you sorry you came along? You have to be bored out of your mind.”

  He turned to face me and draped his arms over my shoulders. “I’m glad I’m here to keep you company. I gotta say though, you and I need to get out of this apartment for a while. Our cabin fever is going to spiral out of control in another day or two.”

  “You’re right. We’ll plan on heading out of the city tomorrow, just the two of us. It won’t make a difference if we’re in this apartment or an hour away, since they’ll hold Jerry for us once they catch him. It’s just so fucking frustrating. We should have found him by now, with so many people watching the downtown area. He was carrying a bag of groceries in that surveillance photo, which suggests he’s living in this neighborhood. But with each day that passes, it feels more and more like he slipped through our fingers.”

  “We just have to wait and see what happens.”

  “I know.” I kissed Charlie’s forehead, then watched as he finished mixing drinks for both of us. He’d been working his way down a list of cocktail recipes on his phone, which had been given to him by my grandmother. The current concoction was vividly blue, and when I asked what it was, he said, “It’s called an Adios, Motherfucker, for good reason. There are five kinds of liquor in here.”

  “I’m surprised we had all the ingredients.”

  “Only because I added them to the shopping list when Fergie picked up our groceries. I’ve decided to appoint myself official waiting game mixologist for the duration of our stay in the Burgh. I’m also going to start pretending we’re on vacation, which is why all the drinks have been very colorful and tropical.”

  I grinned and said, “It’s good you’re finding ways to entertain yourself.”

  “Within reason. Four of the dozen recipes Nana sent me are meant to be set on fire. I’m saving those for when we’re really hard up for entertainment and want the fire department to pay us a visit.”

  We carried our drinks into the living room and got comfortable on a couple chairs facing the big windows. We were on the fifteenth floor of a fairly generic apartment building, in a bland, fully furnished beige-on-beige unit normally rented by corporations for out-of-town workers. It had been raining off and on since we arrived, and Fergie, who was a Pittsburgh native, told us we were ‘lucky’, because normally the city was buried in snow this time of year. As I looked out at the steel gray sky and the ominous clouds rolling in over the confluence of three rivers in the middle distance, I couldn’t help but think ‘lucky’ wasn’t the word I would have chosen.

  Cameron Doyle called me a few minutes into cocktail hour and asked if there was any news. “Not yet,” I said as I swirled the ice in my big blue drink. “I promised to call you as soon as anything happened.”

  “I know. I just wanted to call anyway, and….”

  “And what?”

  “Well, I did something stupid last night.”

  “So you’re calling me to confess your sins?”

  “In a way. I went back to that club, the one where we found Steven Messina a few weeks ago.”

  “You’re right,” I said, “that is stupid.”

  “It gets worse. Guess who showed up while I was there?”

  “Our dorky little friend? Was he dressed like a teenager again?”

  “Yes and yes. He’s adorable, though.”

  “So adorable that you slept with him?”

  Cameron sighed and said, “I did, yeah. And I just really felt I needed to tell you that.”

  “He’s not a suspect. There’s no conflict of interest here.”

  “I know. But if his uncle was the one who tried to hurt your family….”

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with Steven, any more than your family’s mob ties back in Ireland have a thing to do with you.”

  “You have a point there. But with his family and yours being sworn enemies, I just felt kind of…disloyal.”

  “Don’t give it a second thought.” I took a sip of my drink, then added, “I have to say, I’m a bit surprised he gave you a second chance, after the way we blindsided him last time.”

  “Same here.” Cameron sounded embarrassed as he added, “He said he came back to the club hoping to find me, because he couldn’t stop thinking about me.”

  “Well good, I’m glad I didn’t screw things up for you.”

  “I have to admit, it’s exciting. He said I’d definitely be seeing him again. I feel so optimistic about this, and it’s been ages since I felt like that.”

  “I sincerely hope it works out for you, Cam.”

  “Thanks, mate. I appreciate it.”

  We spoke for a few more minutes, and when we disconnected, Charlie and I put our empty glasses in the dishwasher and went into our bedroom. He flopped onto the mattress and tucked an arm behind his head, then asked, “Did Cameron call to tell you he’d gotten some?”

  “Yes. Specifically, he called to tell me he’d gotten some with Steven Messina. He said he felt disloyal, since the Messinas and our family haven’t exactly been BFFs over the years.”

  “He’s a good friend.”

  “He is, and I worry about him. I hope this thing with Steven turns into something long-term, so he can stop hanging out at sleazy pick-up joints.”

  Charlie said, “I can’t even picture him in a place like the one you described. He’s so shy and reserved.”

  “Plus, he has no game whatsoever.”

  “True. Though maybe you don’t need game in a place like that. Maybe you just need to be willing.”

  I sat beside Charlie and changed the subject as I brushed his hair back from his eyes. “We have a couple hours before dinner. Do you want to go back to the gym? I need to burn some energy.” There was a basic but functional workout room one floor up in the apartment building, and we’d been spending a couple hours a day there.

  “I’m all for burning energy, but we already visited the gym this morning,” he said. “What we need now is a bit of cross-training.” The mischievous sparkle in his eyes told me exactly what he meant by that, and I grinned as I got up and locked the bedroom door.

  “You know what I like about this apartment?” I unbuttoned my gray shirt and tossed it on a chair.

  “The all-beige-all-the-time color palette?”

  “Surprisingly, no. I like the fact that the bedrooms are pretty well soundproofed.” I started playing some classic rock music on my phone and put it on the nightstand. “I’m leaving that on for extra insurance, though.”

  “Good idea. This might get loud.” My husband flashed me a wicked smile and reached down to adjust the bulge in his gym shorts, taking an extra moment to rub his cock through the fabric. Lust flared in me, and when I kissed him and he pushed his tongue in my mouth, it just acted as kindling.

  Charlie laughed when I scooped him up and tossed him onto his stomach. Because he was wearing his usual lounging-around-the-house outfit of a T-shirt and gym shorts, it took just one swift tug to get him half-naked. When I saw he was wearing a sexy red jockstrap, I said, “You were totally planning on seducing me today.”

  He grinned at me over his shoulder. “Well, yeah. When isn’t that my plan?”

  I tossed his shorts aside, followed by my shoes and socks. Then I crawled between his legs and ran my hands up his thighs. He drew in his breath when I spread his cheeks and flicked my tongue over his hole. And when I found the lube and worked a slick finger into his tight, warm opening, he flexed his hips and ground his cock against the bed. Watching him get turned on was the world’s best aphrodisiac. My cock swelled in the confines of my pants and briefs, but I ignored it and concentrated on my husband instead.

  Charlie moaned as I began finger fucking him and rubbing his pleasure spot, but he made no move to reach for his cock. He was leaving his pleasure up to me, and I loved that. When I slid my finger from him and murmured, “Get on your knees, angel,” he complied instantly. He kept his back arched and his head and arms on the mattress as he raised his ass for me. He looked so damn good like that, and I wanted to take him right then and there, but I wasn’t going to rush it.

  Instead, I pulled the jockstrap beneath his thick hard-on and his balls, then picked up the lube again. I slicked his cock and started to jerk him off, and Charlie thrust into my hand. After a couple minutes of that, he whispered, “Please, Dante.”

  “Please what?” I knew what he was going to ask, but I wanted to hear him say it.

  He looked at me over his shoulder. “Please spank me.”

  I kept jerking him off as I gave his bottom a little slap. “Like that?”

  He rasped, “Harder. Please.”

  Over the years, we’d figured out exactly how much pain my masochistic husband needed to get off when he was in that mood. We’d been pretty hardcore at first, but as we learned about ourselves and each other, we discovered it really didn’t take much to leave us both feeling satisfied. He was already so aroused that spanking him slightly harder made him moan with pleasure.

  It drove him wild when I built up the sensation gradually. He begged and pleaded for more as the slaps on his ass stopped just short of his threshold, almost but not quite giving him what he needed. That was our version of edging. When I finally brought my hand down solidly on one cheek, Charlie’s cock jumped in my grasp and he muttered, “Fuck yes.”

  After a couple more minutes of spanking him and jerking him off, Charlie was overcome with need. He thrust into my fist as he begged around his labored breathing, his sentences urgent and choppy, “Fuck me Dante. Please. I need you in me.”

  He grabbed the lube as I quickly unfastened my belt and pants, then pushed them down along with my briefs. Charlie squirted some of the thick liquid into his palm before reaching back and grasping my cock. He jerked me off roughly to lube me up, which made me moan. When he pushed two lubed fingers inside himself and fucked his hole to get ready for me, it was so mind-blowingly erotic that my breath caught.

  I took an extra moment to strip off my clothes, because I wanted to calm down enough to delay the orgasm that was already building, and while I did that, Charlie peeled off his T-shirt. He returned his head to the mattress and arched his spine, then reached back with both hands and spread his little pink ass for me. But his passiveness ended the moment I pressed my tip to his hole.

  Charlie rocked back, impaling himself on my cock before grabbing the top of the headboard. For every thrust into him, he drove himself back forcefully, slamming his ass into my hips as he gasped and moaned. We fucked hard and fast, both of us totally lost to it, until my orgasm ripped from my body. I stifled a yell as I shot into my husband, grasping his hips, pushing into him again and again.

  But that wasn’t the end of it. As soon as I finished, I pulled out and grinned at Charlie as I tossed him the lube. He smiled too as he pushed me onto my back and climbed on top of me. After he slicked his hard on, he worked a lubed finger into me and prepped me quickly while he jerked himself off.

  We held each other’s gaze as he replaced the finger with his thick cock. A few slow, careful thrusts to open me up soon gave way to a wild, no holds barred fuck. Charlie pumped in and out of my ass as he chased his orgasm, and a wave of pleasure rolled through me as he slammed into my prostate. It hurt a little too, but I liked that.

  He grasped my shoulders as he drove himself into me. He’d been so worked up that he came soon after, fighting back a yell like I had. My husband was shaking and covered in sweat by the time he finished. He collapsed on my chest, and I wrapped my arms around him and grinned at his satisfied smile.

  “I love it when we do that,” he murmured drowsily. I did, too.

  Before I met Charlie, giving up control like that would have been unthinkable. It just required far more trust than I ever thought I’d be capable of, after that terrible night when I was seven, which rewrote who I was at the cellular level. But Charlie was my redemption. He’d restored my ability to trust, giving me back a part of myself I was sure I’d lost forever. When I kissed his forehead and said, “I adore you, angel,” it didn’t begin to cover it.

  *****

  Eventually, we showered and made ourselves get dressed and leave the bedroom. It was dinnertime, and for the second time that week, Fergie’s crew had brought us a local masterpiece called Vincent’s Pizza, because we’d begged them for more. A Vinnie Pie was a thick, gooey, completely delicious mess, so loaded up with cheese and toppings that you had to eat it with a fork. Charlie and I both dove in enthusiastically.

  Because it was my job as his older brother to harass him, I’d started calling Vincent ‘Vinnie Pie’. He tried to glare at me whenever I did that, but a little amusement always slipped through. That evening though, his mood was somber, so I left him alone.

  When he got up and went into the kitchen, I followed him and said, “You need to go home, brother. I know you miss Trevor and your kids like crazy.”

  He took a couple beers from the refrigerator and handed me one as he said, “I told you I’d have your back when we found Jerry. That hasn’t changed.”

  “But this is taking much longer than anticipated, and you can’t just sit here, week after week. Your family needs you.”

  “So do you.”

  “Always. But between Fergie and his people, and Connie and Andreo, that’s a hell of a lot of firepower behind Charlie and me. If you decided to head home to take care of Trevor, Joshie, and those twin babies, nobody would fault you.”

  Vincent tossed his glasses on the counter and pushed his hair off his forehead. “I hate this, sitting around helplessly, waiting and wondering if Jerry skipped town. Hell, for all we know, maybe he was just passing through.”

  “You should be with your family, Vinnie. Fly home tomorrow, and I’ll handle this for both of us.”

  “That wasn’t the deal. We were going to take down Jerry together.”

  “It’s like you said though, what if he left, or was just passing through? You’re not going to sit here for months, just in case he shows up again.”

  Vincent asked, “What about you, Dante? How long are you willing to sit here and wait?”

  “As long as it takes. It’s not just that it’s been five days, it’s that it’s been a fucking year and a half. Finally, we have a solid lead! That was Jerry in the photo, no doubt about it. I spent all this time not knowing if he was alive or dead, and with no idea where he was in the world. But five days ago, I know he was two blocks from this apartment.”

  Vincent put his glasses back on. “Well, if you’re staying, I am, too. What I said before about being here for my husband and children still goes. The way to keep them safe is to catch the people behind the fire. Yeah, I miss them like crazy, but finding Jerry and getting the answers we need is what’s best for them.”

  I stifled a sigh as he returned to the dining room. My brother was as stubborn as I was, and he never listened. It was way too easy to picture us weeks or months from now, still going completely stir-crazy in that generic apartment.

 

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