They left a bodyguard outside my room the whole night.
Which was overkill, considering I got the surprise of my life when I peeked out my door to find Rome staring at it from a chair he’d slid over.
I opened it wide to glare at him. “What are you doing? You should face the other way in case someone tries to kidnap me.”
“That’s what our bodyguard here is for. I’m here to watch for the real danger: you sneaking off and doing something stupid.”
I slammed the door as loudly as I could. Then I opened it wide and slammed it again for good measure.
Still, I slept like a baby wrapped in a very safe cocoon. Was this what it felt like when my father was still living? Was this the family dynamic I missed so much?
The next morning, he was gone. I was left with just the security. “Dante, can you stop staring out into the abyss and make yourself useful this morning?”
“Katie girl, you’re going to wreck this family, you know that?” he said as he turned to me with a sparkle in his greenish-blue eyes and a smile I knew he only had for me.
His sun-kissed skin made me wonder where he’d been the past couple of weeks. “You have some mission in the Caribbean and decide not to call me?”
Dante had done contract work since getting out of the military, and I knew he was flown places to do things in the middle of the night that only he and very few others knew how to do. I was lucky that he’d been an ally since the first day I’d met him.
“I’d have called you,” he said, “but I heard you’ve been chumming it up with all the other men in the city. Georgie and now Bastian, huh?”
“Ha. Ha. You got a car here?” I leaned against the doorframe of my room and stuck my bottom lip out.
“Where you want to go, toots? I’ll take you.”
I needed to burn off the energy from the night before. I needed to get a handle on my thoughts. Decompression and centering of the mind worked for most. I got there by beating it out of myself. “You got time to train? I need to let off steam.”
“Sure thing. But if Bastian asks . . . Ah, fuck it. They got eyes on us. They’ll know.”
“Sorry. If it’s going to be that much—”
“Don’t sacrifice your health, mental or physical, for someone else’s comfort, toots. They might be important, but you’re the most important thing to yourself. Got it?”
I didn’t argue with Dante. The man’s aura or spirituality or something just flowed through me, made me believe his words, and empowered me to push on with what I wanted without asking anyone else.
We jumped into a black SUV and made it to a gym we frequented.
Mats were reserved, but Dante walked up to one of the signs and pushed it aside. Reservations weren’t something he ever had to worry about here.
The owner walked by shirtless and waved to us both. “You guys here for a few rounds? I’ll jump in to spar in thirty if you got time.”
“Nah.” Dante shook his head. “Katie and I got to get dressed and train before we head out pretty quick. I’ll hit you up later.”
He winked at us and kept moving, eyeing up other members. The sweat in the air and the music pumping through the gym had me beelining to the lockers to get changed. My body yearned for workouts now. I craved getting knocked around and finding a way to get back up again.
Dante had begun training me when we’d first met. It’d started as self-defense. He’d called me tiny at a meeting, and I’d responded with some barb about how I’d find a way to take him down. He’d laughed and then offered to teach me. If he was in town, he called religiously to make sure I was meeting him at the gym.
I pulled my hair up into a ponytail and eyed the bandage on my ribs from the tattoo. Pain wasn’t too bad there today, but if I wanted it to heal correctly, we’d have to be careful.
“Got a tattoo last night,” I announced as I walked onto the mat in my tennis shoes and compression leggings.
My tight white tank didn’t hide the bandaging too well, and Dante pointed at it. “What’d you get?”
“Just a quote to add to some ink I already had.” I stretched my arms by pulling one close to my chest and then shaking it out before I did the same with the other.
“Hope it’s inspiring.” Dante went through the same motions.
“It’s either that or depressing.”
He chuckled and got on the ground with me to do a butterfly stretch. “Aren’t they all?”
I nodded, and we continued to loosen our muscles for about five minutes.
“You probably need some more self-defense lessons.”
I whipped my head up from looking down at my legs. “They told you?”
“Girl, everyone knows. You’re our bait. No one gets to mess with you without repercussions.”
I fell back on the mat with a growl. “Where’s the damn confidence in me or at least the confidentiality for some of the stuff I do? Mario embarrasses me by sharing every single incident in my life with the family.”
He poked me in the stomach. “Embarrassed by what, huh? We’re here to protect you. How’s that head of yours after getting knocked out?”
“Fine,” I grumbled.
Dante had mastered a lot over the years, and one of those things was attacking when his victim least expected. His hand struck down onto my throat where he crushed my windpipe. Before I had time to react, he grabbed my hair and my head flew to the ground, but his hand was there to catch my skull before delivering any damage. It jarred me, rocked me, made me remember how quickly I could be caught off guard.
Would they miss me? Would they really always be there to protect me?
Or would I have to protect myself?
I knew the answer. Deep down, everyone knew the answer about the family.
I hooked my hand onto his wrists, making sure my thumb stayed aligned with my forefinger instead of wrapping around his arm like I had always wanted to do in the past. Dante had shown me that it was never good to have my thumb lingering on the other side of his arm. If for some reason the attacker yanked away fast, it could dislocate and leave me even more at their mercy. Instead, I had a stronger grip by keeping my whole hand together. I brought down as much weight as I could with my elbows onto his forearms. He didn’t budge, so I lifted my hips and then brought them down with my elbows that time. I got just enough oxygen to keep moving by dislodging his hands somewhat.
I was small, agile, and flexible. I brought my legs up onto his hips and shoved him back hard. Normally, the next move would have been to grab his forearms as he slid away from my shove and try to hold him somewhat in place to kick his face, but I let him go, scrambled to my feet and motioned for him to come at me. “See how quick you can be now.”
He smiled at me like I’d invited his devil out to play. Then he lunged. I blocked his first two punches and dodged a kick. I took the momentum from it and rounded to kick his knees.
He always had me beat, though, and today was no different. The man was trained to fight, to kill, to never be caught in a compromising position. He grabbed the leg I’d brought him down with while it was still in motion and shoved it up so high, I landed on my back, wind whooshing out of me, leaving me gasping.
I closed my eyes and let Dante laugh at me wincing at the pain. “Damn, Dante. That hurt the tattoo,” I moaned.
I opened my eyes to see him standing over me. “You’re a liar. The pain is only in your pride.”
“Go away or help me up.”
He took two steps back. “Little one, you only learn by getting up yourself and making sure you face your opponent again. The one who falls down over and over is the strongest of all in the end.”
“Blah, blah, blah. I know,” I grumbled as I got up. I wondered if he truly believed that, if he’d struggled over and over again in his life and finally found the place where he was strongest.
Dante stumbled into the family with his expertise, but he’d been an outsider for so long before then, I didn’t know if he’d ever quite be comfortable fitting in with Bastian, Cade, Rome, and the others. The man was strikingly beautiful and also completely different from the other Italians. His roots were a mixture like mine, his eyes that emerald that shone bright like a panther’s. He’d never fit in with the others with his appearance, but he didn’t try to, either. I envied that about him, wondered how I could forget that I’d been left out too.
“Come at me again,” I said, beckoning. “This time, go easy. I’m working with a banged-up head already.”
Dante never went easy on anyone, but he worked me hard for the next hour, and I was thankful that I had to concentrate on only that in order to not get my ass beat.
“Give me a minute,” I panted from the ground again. I’d never once had him on his back throughout the workout. “Then come at me again.”
“Jesus Christ. We’re done for the day, woman. Your forearms are bruising.” I’d used them to block and break holds for the past hour, and they were sore enough to be damaged.
“So what?” I retorted as I scrambled up.
“You’re wired from last night. Your body’s tired, though. You need rest.”
“I don’t want rest,” I said, hands on hips.
“Fine. Go shower and get your spare clothes on. I’ll take you to work or something. I’m not sparring with you anymore today.”
I blew a raspberry and stomped to the locker rooms. My legs screamed for me to sit down, but I didn’t. My arms burned like they wouldn’t be able to wash my hair, but I did.
By the time we left, I knew Dante had been right. I was fighting away the reality of the situation, and I didn’t want to face the fact that things were changing quickly.
I made it my mission to reset the chain of events the rest of the day by doing exactly what I always did. If this day started the same as any other day, it meant it’d end the same too.
The sting of the new tattoo, the throbbing pain through my muscles after working out—and mostly the burning memory of Rome sliding in and out of me while he ravaged my mouth—were memories that needed to be forgotten.
Especially when he’d left me this morning without a word. Especially since we were probably back to where we’d started, and that was nowhere at all.
Especially since I wanted more, and I didn’t exactly know why.
I argued with Dante the whole way back to my apartment. “This isn’t anyone else’s life, Dante. I’m doing what I want and I have commitments, a job. I’m not going straight to Bastian’s.”
“He’s going to be pissed.”
“He’s going to be pissed I went to work out too. So, what’s a couple more places? I have a week or two to get things in order. They got eyes on me. Go do your thing. We’ll all be back together later anyway.”
He sighed and I knew I had won the fight. He dropped me off at my apartment, and I got to avoid the drastic change to my life a little longer.
One week passed of Bastian and I being spotted here and there. We had dinner. We frequented a bar. We appeared as though we were dating. It was nothing over the top, but the few times Rome came with us to watch our backs, his eyes would meet mine, and my stomach would plummet.
Rome never said a word. He didn’t even blink twice when Bastian would grab my hand or lean close to appear as though he had something intimate to share with me.
I stared at myself in the mirror a few days later and changed the bandaging over my tattoo before I pulled on a black crop top that barely covered it. After fluffing up my hair with a bit of cream, I added a dash of lip gloss. I didn’t look bad. My curves were always on display, my skin was always clear of blemishes, and I liked to think men found me attractive. Still, Rome didn’t say a word to me after that night.
He clearly had amnesia, and I was about to get it too. I didn’t need to worry about a guy who never worried about me.
I hopped on the bus and went to my job at the coffee shop where I’d worked all through college. I’d graduated, good grades and all, and moved into the city with Georgie, but it didn’t stop me from doing what I always had. Graduating was supposed to be this monumental time where I went off and got the job of my dreams, where I became a real adult, and where I was finally out on my own. College was supposed to be a stepping stone into adulthood. After graduation, though, nothing monumental happened. No mountain moved, and no river parted.
I’d been navigating on my own for so long, a diploma wasn’t going to change anything.
I got to the shop and threw on the royal-purple apron. I turned on the machines Jackie hadn’t started yet and let the low hum of music rock me into my usual routine. It was my little slice of normal. Jackie ran the shop and concocted me a perfect caffeine fix whenever I walked in.
“New drink for you!” she announced, bouncing with excitement when I returned from the store room. “Also, look who stopped in.”
I glanced over and saw the only girlfriends I kept in touch with, Brey and Vick, munching on some granola.
“Bastian called Jett this week,” Vick, a bubbly dose of blonde fairy, announced. Jett was the owner of Stonewood Enterprises and Vick’s husband. She threw an oat cluster into her mouth and crunched on it way harder than necessary.
“Great. Everyone knows,” I grumbled and pulled a metal stool over to sit.
“Are you okay to discuss this now?” Brey murmured softly, pushing a piece of her dark hair behind her ear before she continued. Aubrey Whitfield had attended the same high school as me, and we’d shared too much back then to ever sever ties. She’d become a friend I couldn’t let go of even though I knew having ties to no one was smarter.
She ended up marrying Jett’s brother, Jax, becoming a Stonewood just like Vick.
And I knew the Stonewoods did business with the family. Their name, along with the Armanelli name, ran the whole city.
I just wasn’t sure how much they knew, how much I could tell them, how much I wanted to. We didn’t mention business when we hung out. “I’m tired and have to work, guys.”
“Not true,” Jackie sing-songed as she wiped down one of her espresso machines. She motioned around the shop. “No one here to work for, and they’ve been frothing at the mouth more than my frother to talk to you about God knows what.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “You’re no help.”
She shrugged in her green sweater. “Just being honest. I have a million things to do in back, including calling the owner of this place to figure out my lease. Watch the door and talk to them.” She glanced their way. “They look too worried to be in here enjoying coffee. Bad for the aesthetic of the place and all.”
With that, my excuse to avoid the conversation walked through the back door. I sighed and took another long drink.
“Brey’s too sweet to start, so I’ll go. We’re all aware of who Bastian is. At one point in time, back when I was just dating Jett, you gave us all a scare by dating Bastian. We thought it fizzled out. Come to find out, maybe not.”
I sighed. It was a long time ago when we’d staged Bastian dating me. We’d done it for a few moments to be seen by a target and that was it. Vick and Brey had only witnessed it because the target had worked at Stonewood Enterprises.
Vick continued, “Jett told me you two are seeing each other again.” Her tone was grave, and coming from Vick Blakely, that was epic. She was never anything but optimistic.
I glanced at Brey, who’d pursed her lips and widened her green eyes a bit as if to say that I should at least indulge her.
Vick seemed so innocent, so naïve to the fact that life could be about making sacrifices and taking risks rather than just fairy tales and butterflies. It’s what I think both Brey and I loved about her.
She was light while we were not.
Brey sighed. “I actually really like Bastian.”
“As you should. The man would die for you,” I said. “And Jax would be the one killing him.”
I smiled, remembering a time Bastian had danced with her in a club, remembering the way he and Cade had acted as if they didn’t know me. Back then, we weren’t so high up, just kids of the mafia boss and a girl trying to fit into the family. So many nights I’d acted like I’d known Bastian, Rome, and Cade only as well as Brey and Vick did.
Now, Vick and Brey had married some of the most influential men in the city. Stonewood Enterprises had to have ties with the mob. So their women did too.
How long would they know my past wasn’t exactly my past? How long would they believe I hadn’t been a part of the mob until now?
The mob family kept their ties low-key. We weren’t supposed to react when we saw each other. It was a new way, a way to keep our ties hidden, making it harder for enemies to figure out structures, dynamics, and mostly our weaknesses.
I was one of the biggest secrets of all.
Brey nodded like there was no denying my statement, her soft dark waves bouncing over her white top. “Jax and Bastian have nothing to fight over, though. At least, not right now because you want to be dating him, right? He’s not forcing your hand?” My best friend looked at me with concern. She wanted to know that I was okay, that there was no danger.
I’d lied to them time and time again about the men I was with. But they were both involved with Stonewood men now. “You both know you’re hypocrites, right?”
“Excuse me?” Vick almost shouted, her straight blonde ponytail whipping around as she turned to glare at me.
“Vick, your husband owns one of the biggest corporations in the city—you think he isn’t involved? You think he isn’t working closely with Mario and Bastian?”
She stuttered and put her manicured hand to her mouth. “He’s not . . . well, we aren’t . . . the business is as clean as it needs to be.”
I shrugged and pointed to Brey. “You know she’s lying, right? All of Chicago couldn’t be clean if they scrubbed their asses all day long. The Armanellis are everywhere. My family is—”
“Your family?” Brey asked, her eyebrows raised.
I groaned and pulled a hand through my brown-and-blonde-highlighted curls. “I should get to work, you two.”
“You need to be dragged to an intervention,” Vick grumbled. “You’re hiding things from your best friends. That’s absolutely not okay.”
“This isn’t black and white, Vick,” I shot back.
“Nothing is more black and white than friendship. Specifically, our friendship.” The conviction in her voice made it loud enough for everyone down the damn road to hear. “You say you don’t care, and that means you very much do. So now I’m completely invested in bothering the shit out of you until I learn every detail and make sure everything works out perfectly. I think we need to call Rome.” Vick started digging in her fancy purse.
I almost snatched it and threw it across the room. “You’re so damn dramatic. I swear to God, I wish I never met you.”
“I’m dramatic and yet you’re saying you wish you never met me.” She scoffed like my words weren’t at all disrespectful. That was the thing about Vick, she would gloss over everything negative I said. I could tell her that I was bleeding out on the floor, and she’d probably look at the blood, tell me it was a pretty color that accented my face, and then navigate the situation flawlessly.
She located her phone and scrolled through her contacts. “Was Rome there the whole night with you after the incident?”
I froze at her words. They both must have got intel about my night in the alley which meant they knew more than they should. “Rome has nothing to do with this.”
“We want what’s best for you, Katie.” Brey put her hand on my arm, and when I stiffened, she slid it down to grab my hand and laid her head on my shoulder. “You’re not going to hide it all. You might not care, but I’ll care twice as much for the both of us. Vick won’t leave any stone unturned either. We want to be there for you. And Jax and Jett do too.”
“And Rome does too. Probably more than anybody,” Vick chimed in, but she’d set her phone down like she was giving me a second to digest the information.
I stared ahead, knowing I’d lost my one family member at seventeen even though I fought hard as hell the best way I knew how to keep him alive. It made me a little colder to the world, a little more hesitant to have friends, and a lot more lethal within the family I had now. I was willing to do what it took and not look back, because I didn’t have anyone that I really cared about to look back for.
Except Brey and Vick.
“You two are like little roaches that just won’t go away, you know that?” Brey accepted me in high school when no one else would accept the foster child who’d hopped around men’s beds. And Vick had attached to us in college, then stuck on like superglue. I sighed. “They’ve been my family since before you met me, Brey.”
She squeezed my hand, and I felt her head nod. “Okay? Can you explain?”
“There’s not much to explain. Dad was sick; I got in where I needed to so I could get him meds.”
“So they’re family?” she whispered as if trying to take it all in.
“As close as you and Vick.”
Vick gasped and then grabbed her phone. “Jett’s going to figure this out with us.”
I snatched it away. “Jett works closely enough with Bastian to know not to dabble in this, Vick.”
“My husband is going to dabble in whatever I want him to.” She glared at me but didn’t press the button to unlock her phone.
“Your husband and Bastian are dealing with government issues already.”
“So what he said to Jett the other day is true?” She jumped up to pace back and forth in front of us. “Some guy hit you over the head, and he’s concerned. Like how concerned? Like sleeping with you concerned? Like your boyfriend concerned? Jett said you’re moving in with him.”
I sat silently, not denying her statement at all.
“You can’t just move in with him!” Vick slammed her hand down on the counter.
“You sound like a helicopter parent right now, Vick.” I sighed and met her through-the-roof angry tone with a monotone one. “Calm down.”
“Brey!” Vick whined and motioned to the one person everyone thought could talk sense into me. Brey was the rock and only foundation I would have listened to had it been negotiable.
It wasn’t, though.
She studied me a second longer and then nodded. “She’s moving, Vick.” Then to me, “Do you need help?”
“I got it. Some of the guys will come by—”
Vick’s honey eyes bulged. “Some of the guys? Oh my God, Brey!” She stomped her foot. “How can you think this is a good idea?”
“I think you calming down would be a good idea,” I grumbled, but I had a small smile on my face that I couldn’t hide. Normally, Vick would have shoved me into any man’s home and told me to find my happily ever after. The fact that she wasn’t doing that now proved she cared enough, and a little piece of my parentless heart warmed.
“I got the move under control. Promise.”
