I straightened as Amelia walked into the dining room. She smiled when she saw Luc. It was the kind of smile a wife gave her husband. The sort that told you they were happy and in love. When she didn’t smile at him like that, she had the look. The look was all there in her eyes.
She’d always looked like that. Right from that first day I’d met her.
That day when I’d rescued her, at the mall.
Amelia, the daughter of Raphael Rossi, our old boss.
She’d thought I was Luc. We weren’t twins, but we looked a lot alike. Maybe I looked like a more badass version of him. Especially these days.
“Goddess.” Luc beamed as she skipped into his awaiting arms.
“God, you two need to get a portable bed,” Maurice, Luc’s best friend, scolded. He sat next to me at the dinner table. Gio and Dante chuckled.
Most nights, we gathered like this. We met up as family and ate dinner at Luc’s.
“We don’t need a portable bed in our own house,” Amelia snapped at him and full on kissed Luc. She didn’t care who was watching.
Maurice made a sound like he was choking. I couldn’t even make my usual snide remarks. Wasted in the mood. In fact, I almost hadn’t come tonight.
“Can I get you boys anything?” Amelia asked when she moved out of Luc’s grasp.
“We’re about done, Mrs. Boss.” Dante nodded.
The guys still called her that. They all did.
“Cool, I’m going to check on Raphael,” she said that with a little glint in her eyes. The only person that woman loved more than Luc was my little nephew, who she’d named after her father. “Is he sleeping?”
“Out cold.” Luc nodded. “Let him sleep. Go wait for me upstairs.”
Maurice rolled his eyes and stood up. “That’s our cue to leave, men. Plus, if I get back too late, Gigi will turn me into a toad.”
Luc laughed. “I’m pretty sure she won’t.”
“She will try.” Maurice frowned. He’d married the good little witch. Amelia’s best friend.
Everyone was happy. One happy family. Sure, Dante and Gio were single to some extent, but they were living exactly how they wanted to.
“I’ll make you boys roast on Sunday.” Amelia giggled and looked at me. “Claudius, should I roast you a squirrel?” It was a running joke between us, to some extent.
I smirked and gave her a pointed stare. “Yes, you do that. Put some jalapenos on its head.”
“Okay. I’ll even throw in some pink bon bons.”
To my surprise, a smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. I guess it kind of wasn’t all that surprising since my sister-in-law knew exactly what to say to crack my hard exterior when I got like this.
She waltzed over and planted a kiss on my forehead. Maybe she could see something was wrong with me too. I knew Luc could see it. Took one look at me as I walked in earlier, and that recognition formed in his eyes.
“Make you chicken.” Amelia laughed as she backed away.
“Mrs. Boss, can you make those little desserts like last week?” Gio jumped in.
“Sure, I’ll get Gigi in to help. She makes them better than me.”
She left us. Dante, Gio, and Maurice followed and closed the door behind them, leaving me with Luc.
Luc released a slow sigh. “So, I need to tell you something, but I can see something more than usual is up with you. What is it?”
I didn’t want to talk about it. “What did you have to tell me?”
Luc laughed, not the humorous kind of laughter. This was more sarcastic. “Right, how about you tell me what’s up first, and then we hear what I have to say?”
I leaned forward onto the table. “Brother, I know you know when I’m not in the mood to talk. So, don’t push me.”
“Prick. I know you know that I’m possibly the only person you can talk to.”
I frowned and narrowed my eyes at him. Sometimes Luc drove me crazy because he was always right.
I was older by two years and should have been wiser, but it was always him.
He always knew what to do, and damn it, he wasn’t possibly the only person I could talk to. He was the only one who could reach me when I was like this.
I didn’t answer straight away. I just sat back in my chair.
“Last week was Marissa’s anniversary, but that’s not what’s up your ass.” Luc drummed his fingers on the solid wood of the table.
My gaze fell to the dark brown hue, then I returned my focus to Luc’s bright blue gaze.
“I fucked up big time.”
“Who’d you kill?” He looked worried, like really worried, and he was serious.
“Jesus, no one yet.”
“Good… I mean…” He got that faraway look in his eyes. The kind that he’d gotten since he’d been married to Amelia. Luc wasn’t part of the business anymore and what he deemed our way of life.
He knew things were still clean, but if I was honest, I knew one day things could flip.
“I know what you mean.”
“You’re the boss, and it looks like things are going well. I won’t tell you what to do. I have no right, but know that I have your back. No matter what.” He nodded.
“Means a lot.”
“You know I do, Claudius. So, how exactly did you fuck up this time?”
“Ava.” As soon as her name left my lips, I recalled the image of her from last night. I deserved the slap. What got me, though, was how she’d looked. The disappointment in her eyes, the hurt. The hurt I’d caused.
Luc’s expression softened. “Did you see her?”
“I saw her.”
Luc bit the inside of his lips. “Did you… you guys have a repeat of four years ago?” A tentative expression washed over his face. Tentative and careful.
“No.” He’d dragged that out of me too. Although I think I didn’t need much to crack me on that one. I’d actually told him what happened, but Dante and Gio guessed it.
Four years ago, as I watched Ava from the shadows, I watched her break down and do the strangest thing. It was like she could sense me, sense my presence. I’d been hiding behind a mausoleum. It was closer to Marissa’s grave. She just spoke out loud and said, “How can you just stand there and watch me in pain? Claudius, you bastard.”
That’s what she said. She couldn’t see me, but she knew I was there.
I didn’t come out to her. I just watched, watched her break down, then it took me another hour before I lost my mind. I must have lost my fucking mind because I wasn’t thinking with my brain anymore.
I went to her house, and seeing her sent me over the edge. We slept together, and then I did something I never thought I’d do. I left her.
I left before morning. Before she woke. To her it must have looked like I didn’t care, like I was just using her.
But that was so far from the truth.
It was so very far from the truth, and my actions had made everything else so much worse than it had already been.
“Hey.” Luc tapped on the desk. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
I pulled in a breath and on release, I managed to start talking and filled him in on what was going on.
“Claudius, are we going to have this same crazy conversation again in ten years?”
“Maybe, and you know why.”
“Right, so it’s better for her to believe some lie? To continue believing the fucked-up for sure mess you conjured.”
“It keeps her safe.”
“Goliath took her to mess with you.”
“Yeah, he sure did. He messed with me big time.” We knew to keep our family out of business, especially our women. I’d kept Marissa right out, and Ava hadn’t even been in the picture. To get to a guy like me you had to come at me by targeting my weaknesses.
“So, you’re just going to continue like this? I know you. You don’t want anyone else. You want her.”
Things had always been messy between Ava and me.
Well… not always.
Not in the beginning.
She was sweet.
I’d never had sweet before. She was the sweet college girl a guy like me should have stayed away from. I was seven years older than her, and I was a mobster.
I should have stayed away from both her and Marissa. I didn’t.
I went for the good girl, the sweet angel, and messed up.
Marissa tricked me. Tricked me big time and in a way that the only person who I could tell was Luc.
Our relationship was formed from tricks and traps. Tricks and traps that no longer mattered because she was dead. All she did was love me, and now she was dead.
I couldn’t let the same thing happen to Ava.
“Luc, as long as that animal is alive, I won’t rest. That puts her in danger. He took her when he didn’t know how I felt about her. What do you think he would have done to her if he knew?”
“It’s been seven years, Claudius. No one’s seen him or heard of him.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m going to stop looking for him. Plus, it’s not just him. He’s just one example. She doesn’t belong in my world. A world where anything could happen to her. A world where one day things could be fine and the next day it dangerous.”
Luc pressed his lips together again and straightened. A dark look washed over his face. “Something happened on Monday, and it panned out when I dug a little deeper.”
Luc only looked and spoke like that when something bad happened. Something dark.
“What is it?”
“I saw one of Manello’s men in my shop.” He steepled his fingers and gazed at me.
My blood instantly boiled. The Manellos were the key to finding Goliath. They’d been off grid just like him, and prior to that they’d only resurfaced when shit was going down. “Who was it?”
“It was a lackey, a grunt. He wouldn’t have known it was my shop.”
Luc ran a wine store in town. I doubted that anyone who’d been away for the last couple of years would have guessed that the shop was his, or even that one of the most feared and revered had settled down in the vanilla lifestyle.
“What’d you do?”
“Saul followed him.” Saul was one of Luc’s men. It was funny they were still part of my crew, but they stuck with him. They were just there in case of trouble. They worked with him, looked happy doing it, but if I needed them, they’d be at my side. “Saul said it checked out. Claudius, if the Manellos are back, then something’s going on. People know you’re boss. They’ll know.”
I stood up to go.
“What are you doing?” Luc asked.
“Leaving. I’m going to look into this.” I needed to.
“Can I ask you to stay out of it? Let them do whatever it is they’re doing and just watch your back.”
“No, you will not ask me that.” I looked at him like he was crazy. “For years, years I’ve been looking for some kind of lead. I don’t care where Goliath is. I will find him. He linked up with the Manellos before. They must know something. If you truly wanted me to stay out of it, you wouldn’t have told me anything.”
Luc chuckled off key. “Maybe. Maybe I just want you to have some closure, finally.”
“Thanks for the info.” I moved to the door.
“Tell Ava the truth, Claudius. The whole truth.” His words stopped me.
I turned back to face him. “I don’t know if I can do that.”
He shrugged. “She deserves to know. If she hates her sister for what she did to you two, it actually doesn’t matter. But if you have any feelings for her at all, give her the respect she deserves with the truth. I’d want to know if it were me.”
I took in the serious expression on his face, took in the sense in his words, took in what they meant.
It was logical to tell the truth. But how did I do that? I could paint it to make Marissa look bad with the way she’d fooled me.
However, that would excuse my guilt in the mix and make me look like the good guy.
I’d always prided myself on being able to tell the twins apart. For me it was easy. I knew the one my heart reacted to. It was evident from day one.
To me the women might have been similar but not the same.
Marissa, however, lay in wait to catch me at the most vulnerable time in my life.
That night, I didn’t know truth from lies. I never saw past the glimmer of her pretending to be Ava.
I never had the strength for it.
In my rendition of the truth I’d have to tell Ava that I got wasted because hours before, I’d lost one of my best friends. Henry. Luc knew this story all too well.
That fucking psycho Victor Pertrinkov killed Henry, his wife, and their two kids, and there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could have done about it.
I got wasted, plastered out of my mind, and Marissa picked that moment to reel me into her trap.
That was the truth.