One California Sunrise
One California Sunrise
ALEX
Watching my unofficial bride attempt to exit the tragically diminutive lavatory, sweating like an overtaxed hippo under the full sun of the Serengeti, brings a smile to my lips that has absolutely nothing to do with our recent nuptials and everything to do with the bet that I made with Ryker, stating that Ana would spend an entire goddamned hour shaking the fucking airplane when she inevitably got stuck in that tiny four by four booth attempting to remove layer after layer of the starched overpriced silk that was her gaudy-awful dress. Instead, I suggested she crawl out onto the wing of the plane, where I knew there would be adequate space for a creature such as her to move about freely, but did she listen? No. Of course not.
Suffice it to say, she did indeed get stuck and it has taken her free roaming groomsmen more than sixty-five minutes of my life to remove both sides of the doorframe and one wall panel just to set her free with all of her well fed exponentially endowed curves still intact.
I smirk and she glares at me, snarling as she passes by wearing next to nothing at all. “Fuck you, Alex!” she snarks, heading for the back of the plane.
My left hand twitches for one of my throwing knives, the centuries old instinct to hunt and kill all ravenous beasts nearly dragging me back a thousand years.
It’s just as well. They’re packed away in my luggage, somewhere in the cargo bay. Besides, it would have to be a head shot and I truly fear her skull may be even thicker than her hide.
“I’m going to go see if she needs help,” Ryker informs me, cocking an eyebrow before he joins her at the rear of the plane. Ryker is Ana’s lifelong bodyguard, and the only man in her entire entourage capable of independent thought.
He’s also first in the line of fire whenever Ana has to walk more than a fifteen foot distance in a public space and the whole team of them is required to hold formation around her. He’s at the head of the circle. The tip of the sword. The crown-ing jewel, so to speak.
There are ten of them, these bodyguards. Ten! Less one man and Ana’s ass cheeks are suddenly a compromised point of entry, because it literally takes every single one of those, jacked up, over amped cyborgs to complete one revolution of her orbital circumference.
Why does she get treated like a top military secret? Because she is the first and last of the Romano line. The only remaining heir of Paul’s deviant bloodline. There isn’t even a second or third cousin that can stake a claim. Ana Romano Soon-to-be-ex DeMarco is the only branch on that family tree, which is why Paul arranged a contract for her marriage in the first place.
Paul was really just an Underboss that the Grand Table refused to ascend. He knew he had to align his daughter with someone the Bosses both feared and respected, or he would lose his seat. And when the families retire a seat, they retire the bloodline. The whole goddamned thing.
Ever since Paul…disappeared, all anyone has had to do to make a bid for her territory is maim her. They don’t even have to kill her. They just have to show that she’s weak.
All I have to do is fuck her and consummate this farce of a marriage…tying myself to her completely…and just like that, I will be the newest District Boss.
But even I will not ascend beyond that until I provide an heir.
A male heir.
Or so they think.
Unfortunately for them, I have never been the type of man to warm another’s chair when I should have my own. I’m not a fucking space saver or a goddamned placemat and I truly despise each and every one of those out of touch old bastards for even believing that I would accept somebody else’s name on my seat. They knew who my father was. So why would they announce plugging me into the ‘Romano’ corner like it was some kind of goddamn wedding present?
No. They’ll either offer me my own place at the table, my own seat, or…I will provide a new table and fill it with younger, hungrier heirs. The price per bid? Execution. One Don per chair, close contact only, each death must be intimate. It is that simple.
When Mickey first disappeared, I was preparing to do exactly that, create my own table, but so devastated was I by Romany’s absence, I could hardly hold a conversation with anything that wasn’t a full glass of Scotch. Before I knew it, the Dons had seized more than a few of Mickey’s most lucrative assets. One of those being…the Bella Bambola…and I just wasn’t having that.
So, I resigned myself to a life of whiskey and one double wide woman, thinking that I was saving us both with my sacrifice. But now…
Well…now I know better…don’t I?
Because…now I know where he went…and now I know where she is.
And…I am one California sunrise away from figuring out whether or not this crippling pain that I’ve been experiencing in my chest every night and every wake for the last four months is purely physical or…if I, Alex DeMarco, am well and truly fucked and in love.
Though, I have to wonder…have the two of them been together this entire time?
Did she choose Mickey over me and just decide never to let me know?
At the wedding, I honestly fantasized that Romany might show up and tear not so little Miss Ana Romano away from my side to take her place, but…
…of course she didn’t show.
Truth be told, when the Priest called for objections and none came that weren’t my own, I had three feet out the door already.
But all it took was a flash of gunmetal from the goddamned Priest himself and I was reminded of what I was expected to do.
After the ceremony, Don Leone informed me of the Table’s decision to relinquish all of Mickey’s seized assets to me. Provided that I found him before the next Grand Table meeting and presented him before them visibly chastised and under my heel. They expect me to keep him in line. To keep him…amicable.
Ha!
Mickey has forever been the one power that the families could not control and their views on him have always been a source of great controversy.
Did they want to kill him, or did they want to see him rise? Mostly, they wanted him dead, but they knew they would only get one strike and if they missed…
It’s just like introducing a pitbull puppy to a pack of individually harmless dogs. The pack senses the threat that the puppy will become one day, so they kill it while it’s still young and defenseless. Eliminating it before it can become big enough to fear…big enough to rule them.
Unfortunately for the Bosses, Mickey is not a puppy. Nor has he ever been defenseless. I mean maybe when he was two and three, but my uncle kept Mickey a secret from the world until he turned sixteen. Leaving him to be raised by his Greek mistress and her twelve street hustling brothers while my aunt pined for her ‘dead’ son from afar. So, by the time the Bosses met the threat that is my cousin Savo, it was already too late.
And god help me…if Romany has chosen him…if she has forgotten me…I will become the thing she never saw coming. I will become her thing to fear.