“It’s lovely, but you must give that girl more than expensive jewelry, Nico,” my mother says when I call to ask her opinion of the ring I sent her a picture of. “She’s not Margareta.”
“I know that.”
“I hope so,” she huffs, hanging up.
After leaving the jewelry store, I intend to go home, to spend the evening getting to know my wife better while attempting to ‘do better’ as she said.
A call from my cousin changes all that.
“If I had a pretty bride waiting for me, I wouldn’t want to spend my Seconda here either,” Eros jokes when I join him at Spice.
“Where is he?” I reply, not in the mood to joke around. We chat briefly about other business - his father, one of my many uncles, is the Underboss of Detroit - until we reach the VIP room in the basement.No one else is down here tonight, but Dante is in the fighting cage, wearing nothing but his fight shorts and carving an intricate crown design across the floor. He’s carved a similar version of it into his thigh. There’s blood everywhere, but the cuts aren’t dangerously deep.
“I found him like this,” Eros says, warily. “I didn’t know who else...”
Dante and Eros are the same age and have always been friends as well as cousins, but I’m the one people call when my brother’s demons take over. They fear he’ll lash out at them at any second. It’s when his monster turns inward that I worry.
Getting down on my haunches, I carefully take the knife from my brother’s hand. He doesn’t resist. That’s actually what scares me most.
“Thank you, Eros. You can go,” I tell our cousin. Once he’s gone, I lower my head, resting it against Dante’s. “I know you’re hurting, but she wanted to go home. What can I do to make this right between us?” I murmur.
His dark eyes find mine, a furious fire burning in their depths. “Hurting? I feel nothing.”
“How long will you lie to me and to yourself?”
Without warning, he lunges at me like a wounded wild animal, and we grapple on the floor. My blade rests against his carotid before he can wrap his powerful hands around my throat. Dante has probably killed more men with his bare hands than any Trio man alive, but one slash, and he’d be a dead man.
“Please don’t make me hurt you,” I plead, the only man I would ever beg for anything.
He gives me an unhinged smile, standing up as if the violence never happened. “Tonight is my big brother’s Seconda. We should find some girls to fuck, shouldn’t we?”
I shake my head, sheathing my knife. “I won’t make that mistake with Matilde, and I don’t believe you want that.”
His smile runs away. “How was your wedding night, brother? Better than the first one, I take it?”
“I won’t share details, but yes.”
“Bene.Have a drink with me.”
“Your leg?”
He glances down, brushing at the clotted wound until it’s weeping fresh blood again. “It’s nothing.”
***
It’s late before I feel okay leaving Dante alone at his apartment. Once I return home, I dismiss Ugo and Enio. “In the future, you don’t need my approval if my wife wants to go somewhere unless you deem it unsafe. If so, tell me about it… and explain to her why you’re concerned.”
Grunts of acknowledgement and they go, so I set the alarm.
Checking on the children, I find them peacefully sleeping in their cribs.“Your children will be my children, too.”I love her fierceness, particularly when it comes to them.
“Did you give your mama a hard time today?” I murmur to them.
When I step back into the hallway, I notice light spilling from under a closed door.
Not from our bedroom.
Her old one.