Spring was finally in the air, despite already being a couple of weeks into it. Unfortunately, the old adage of April showers bringing May flowers held true for the city, even if the only flowers that would grow were in cement pots between benches on the sidewalks. The wetness didn’t seem to want to leave, and it had rained almost every day for a week.
Cara was starting to wonder if she should invest in a poncho and rain boots.
It didn’t matter how long she lived in Canada, the weather still took her by surprise every single year. It was as though Mother Nature spent three to four months in a bitter rage Canadians liked to call winter, only to then spend two months in the wet, mucky depression of spring.
Cara tightened the coat around her neck to keep the chill of the wind out, while simultaneously keeping the umbrella high to battle the rain. She weaved in and out of the rushing people on the sidewalk, coming nearer to her destination. A small café just a couple of blocks away from her university that she frequented throughout the week.
All the while, she ignored the shadow of a man following behind her.
A bodyguard, according to Gian. Because she needed one of those now. Just in case. The guy never came close enough to speak, and Cara didn’t even know his name. He’d never introduced himself, and by the time Cara realized she had a new shadow, she was too irritated over the whole thing and didn’t want to discuss it at all.
Cara slipped inside the café, mastering the ability to pull in her closing umbrella through a shutting door at the same time. Somehow, her hair and coat still felt wet, despite having the umbrella up the whole time she had walked the two blocks.
Maybe it was time to look into getting a car, after all.
Cara had the money, as far as that went. She didn’t live in luxury, her expenses were very little in the grand scheme of things, and her trust fund was still heavily padded with a decent number. She had her long-deceased paternal grandparents—and her brother—to thank for the trust fund that allowed her several years in a university program without needing to work, though. Instead of dividing up their fortune between their children, they included their few grandchildren as well. Had they only left the trusts in the hands of her parents, Cara had zero doubts that her mother and father would have squandered it away.
The trust funds had then been signed over to Tommas when the twins were still under eighteen years of age, so that he could use it for their education, if they wanted. When Lea died, Cara had been giving a letter from a Rossi family lawyer, notifying her that the details and remaining contents of her sister’s trust had been consolidated into hers after expenses were paid.
She had money.
Cara was worried about using too much of it, even for an investment like a vehicle or a more permanent home. She liked money better when she could micromanage it, budget every single red cent, and watch her portfolio continue to stay in a comfortable area for her tastes. Maybe when this final year of university was up, and she had steady income from a job, she might feel okay with spending the money, but not now.
She grew up feeling poor, living like she was in poverty, simply because her parents had not cared to look after the state of their children or their home. She had worn clothes until they were ratty and a size or two too small, shoes that didn’t work for a Chicago winter, and sweaters, instead of a proper windbreaker in the fall and spring. Tommas had filled in a lot of those things for his sisters when he could, as he had gotten older, buying them what they needed or paying their school expenses and meals.
But she still remembered what it felt like to be dirt poor, even when she actually wasn’t.
Neglect came in too many forms to count.
Cara tried to brush off the lingering sadness from her thoughts as she stepped up to the counter and placed an order for coffee and a bagel. Once she had her order in hand, she took a seat at the far end of the café, tucked into a two-seated table with her back to the wall and facing the windows.
She saw him approach the café before she even took her first drink.
Gian didn’t come right in, instead stopping to chat with her new shadow. He gave the man a handshake, and only then did he enter the café. It was like all of the nerves in Cara’s body suddenly zoned in on the one person around her that affected her the most. She didn’t even have to see him to feel him nearby.
It scared her.
It calmed her.
Cara didn’t know what to do about those strange feelings, but she knew that she wasn’t ready to deal with them. Not yet, anyway.
If anything, she needed time away from the way Gian made her feel. Time to figure out what in the hell had happened that’d gotten her into this position with a man that she had no business being involved with. Time to breathe, before Gian called her and she stupidly went running for a feeling and a fuck.
Gian smiled as he crossed the café. Unlike her, he didn’t stop for something to eat or drink. Like usual whenever he was near her, she seemed to be the only damn thing on his mind or in his priorities. He dropped a quick kiss to the top of her head before taking the only other available seat at the small table.
“How do you walk around without any sort of umbrella?”
Gian shrugged. “You get used to it, really.”
“Seven years here. I’m not used to it yet.”
“Too wet for you?” he asked.
Cara scowled at the rain pattering against the café’s windows. “It’s like we go from snow to weeks of rain without any sort of warning or break.”
“The warning is the month of April, mon ange.”
Of course it was.
Canadians.
“Summer is right around the corner,” he said, the dimple in his cheek making a rare appearance as his smile widened. “It’ll go from wet to hot just as fast, as it always does.”
“Sure.”
Gian’s easy smile melted away fast, and he straightened a bit in the chair. “You don’t seem happy. It’s not the rain, is it?”
Cara looked out the window again, noting the bodyguard standing under a small ledge to keep from getting rained on. “Thanks for meeting up with me today.”
“I’ve been trying to meet up with you all week, Cara.”
“I know. I just … needed a break.”
“A break for what?”
Cara blew out a hard breath. “To think.”
“All right.”
“To breathe,” she added.
Gian’s lips flattened into a grim line, his face betraying nothing. Cara sometimes hated how easily he hid his emotions when he needed to, as though he didn’t want anyone to know his pain or irritation, or even his joy. She was sure it was a learned trait, born out of need because of his position—she knew her brother acted in a similar way—but that didn’t mean she understood it. Not entirely, anyway.
“I don’t have a lot of time today,” Gian said quietly, “and I have to head out for a meet across the city soon. Not that I mean to rush you, but I have to, unfortunately.”
Cara nodded. “That’s okay. I have another class soon, anyway.”
“Did your … break … help?”
“Honestly? Not really.”
Gian looked away. “I’m not sure what you’re trying to help to begin with, Cara.”
“This,” she said with a wave between them. “A couple of months ago, when we first started whatever the fuck this is, it wasn’t supposed to be anything, Gian. Fun, quick, dirty, and that was it. That’s all I wanted out of it, and here I am, confused again.”
“You’re confusing me,” he said under his breath.
“I didn’t want to become integrated in your life—not to the extent that I am. I didn’t want to be seen as a target for the people you do business with. I grew up living the sort of life you live, burying people I loved because of their affiliations and business. I was sure that you and I wouldn’t … I don’t know.”
“It’s impossible to live separate lives, Cara,” Gian pointed out. “I’m not two different men. I am the same man who carries a gun and acts as an underboss for my famiglia, and the man you demanded see no one else but you. The idea that I can constantly keep you from being integrated into all of that is ridiculous, and you should already know that.”
“Gian—”
“No, listen to me. That’s an idea you rationalized to justify your feelings and why you kept coming back for more. That was your fantasy to keep from worrying too much about what might happen or could happen to someone you give a fuck about.”
“I never once hid who I was to you,” Gian continued, his voice finally heating with anger. “I never once pretended to be anyone, except exactly who I am. It’s like Lea, right? It’s the same thing, in a way. You thought you both were good, safe away from your family and their business, but you never were, Cara. You can’t run forever, and you’re always a part of this thing being born to it. A child della mafia. This is who you are, and staying away didn’t keep Lea alive. So, what in the hell would make you think pretending that I am someone I’m not would keep reality from catching up to you again?”
Cara felt like he had slapped her.
Actually, a slap might have felt better.
“You didn’t need to bring my twin into this, Gian,” Cara murmured, her voice thick with pain.
“I only told you the truth.”
“You said it to hurt me.”
Gian shook his head, sadness coloring up his dark gaze. “You’re wrong. I never want to hurt you, Cara.”
It didn’t matter, she decided. Standing from the table, Cara picked up her bag and umbrella. She left her mostly-unfinished bagel and half-full coffee on the table. Gian didn’t stand to see her out like he usually would, instead staying firmly seated with his gaze stuck on the wall behind her.
Coldness radiated from him.
Cara knew that feeling well.
She was damn cold, too.
“I didn’t want this, not to be a target again, or hurt because I’m too close to you. I don’t want to be shot at when I’m leaving my place or to turn around and see some guy shadowing my every move to keep me safe. I didn’t want those things, Gian.”
“So what do you want?” he asked.
“I need some more time,” Cara replied. “Right now, I need time to—”
“Figure out how you got here with me.”
“Yeah.”
“Take as much time as you need, Cara.” With that said, Gian stood from the table in a smooth motion, never crowding Cara as he turned to leave. “But if you want to save some time trying to figure it out, then give me a shout. I know exactly what got us here, amore. Honestly, you know it, too. You’re one stubborn fucking woman when it comes right down to it.”
“The first non-rainy day in two weeks, and you want to spend it by playing in mud,” Cara muttered.
“Not mud, my flower beds,” her aunt replied with a sweet smile. “I need to get them ready for the seedlings that I’ll transplant outside, once I’m sure the frost is going to stay away.”
Cara huffed, blowing a stray curl that had fallen in front of her eye out of the way. She resisted the urge to wipe the hair away when it fell right back down again, but that was only because she was wrist-deep in Daniele’s flower beds. Or rather, one of several mucky piles of dark soil that was too damp for Cara’s liking.
She clearly wasn’t a green thumb kind of person.
“Thanks for joining me today,” Daniele said.
“No problem.” Cara overturned more soil, making sure to pull out any small rocks or dead weeds that had been left over from the year before. “I’ve been kind of busy lately. Sorry about that, Zia.”
Daniele shrugged. “Sometimes, that’s how life works.”
“I suppose.”
Cara wasn’t going to go into the details of what had been keeping her away and busy, but she figured her aunt probably knew enough to go on without being told. Daniele—considering her husband’s affiliations to the Guzzi family—had her own connections to the rumors making the rounds.
However, it wasn’t polite conversation to ask about someone almost being shot.
Or who they were fucking.
Daniele was always polite.
Always a proper mafia wife.
It was the one thing Cara knew to expect from her aunt.
“So, how have you been?” Daniele asked.
“Busy with school. I thought that since I basically took four months off after Lea died that I would probably be behind, and not graduate on time next year, but I’m on track again now. It took a bit to get there, though.”
“Oh?”
“And I got an early spot for a co-op of sorts at a woman’s shelter, starting this summer, too. I’ll be mentoring the mothers and teen girls, and helping with the outpatient rehab program. Since it’s exactly what I want to work in, in a roundabout way, it was a lucky grab.”
“That’s good,” her aunt said absently.
Cara shot a look across the flower bed, only to find Daniele wasn’t actually paying her any attention. Her aunt was more focused on dragging the tiny hoe through the soil, overturning it to get the bed ready for planting.
She had been sure her aunt’s only reason for asking her over to visit was to pry information out of her, but so far, Daniele hadn’t done any of that.
Maybe Cara had been wrong.
Cara went back to helping her aunt clean out the flower beds, before they moved onto the railing pots that were sitting on the back deck. She was half way through filling the hanging pots with a fresh soil and mulch mix when her aunt starting talking again.
“Are you seeing anyone new, Cara?”
Her shoulders grew stiff at the innocuous question.
“Not particularly,” Cara answered carefully.
Gian wasn’t new, after all. And she wasn’t exactly seeing him, after their meet at the café the week before. They were a thing, sure, but that meant nothing for now. Or, that’s what Cara had been trying to convince herself for a whole fucking week.
“Claud mentioned you were having dinners with a gentleman.”
Cara resisted the urge to say her uncle should mind his business. “Did he?”
“Yes, and sleepovers, too.”
“Is that what you’re calling it, nowadays?” Cara asked, not bothering to hide her sarcasm.
Daniele laughed lightly. “Don’t get prickly, I’m only asking to be nice.”
“Being nice would be not asking, Zia. Personal business, okay?”
“I do worry about you, Cara. You weren’t your usual self these past few months, and then you seemed to be doing better. I still worry, though, especially if you’ve gotten yourself caught up in something of a mess.”
Cara’s brow furrowed as she regarded her aunt. “And what mess would that be?”
Daniele didn’t even blink. “Men have a way of causing all sorts of messes that we women are not prepared for. They like to blame the mess on us, of course, but that’s only because men fear the fingers pointing back at them when it’s all said and done.”
“I’m not caught up in any sort of mess, Zia.”
“For your sake, I sure hope not, Cara.”
The news program switched to the oncoming weather for the last few days of April, leading into May, and Cara shut the television off. She let out a hard breath, frustrated at herself that she had once again succumbed to her curiosity and checked the news.
She had been checking the news for three damn weeks now.
Every night, she swore that something new popped up dealing with the Guzzi Cosa Nostra family. Something violent—someone else shot, a body found, a drive-by on a restaurant—and another funeral coming up.
Cara never watched the news, if she could help it. But after her own shooting weeks ago, she had turned the television on while she ate her supper to see what was being said. It was then that she learned just how volatile and violent the streets of Toronto were becoming for made men in the city.
She stayed out of family business for a reason.
She didn’t ask questions.
She knew better.
This was exactly why …
Her curiosity once again got the better of her, and Cara watched the news over and over, checking for new stories that might be popping up. She read the Canadian news blogs, because more often than not, reporters hidden behind a screen had more information to offer about crime families and the goings on than what was offered on television programs.
The Guzzi family was in an uproar.
They had been that way for a while.
Gian had never told Cara about it, not properly. She didn’t blame him for that, because she had made it clear on more than one occasion that she simply didn’t want to know.
The death toll was piling up.
The violence was escalating.
Cara’s drive-by shooting had been just one event, amongst several attacks. According to sources—though she wasn’t sure how trustworthy those could be—the Guzzi family was struggling with an upheaval of power after their long-time boss had died. Gian’s grandfather, that was. It appeared as though lines had been drawn between the younger and older generation of men in the family, and it had violently spilled over onto the streets.
It didn’t look good.
It sounded all kinds of bad.
Cara worried.
Constantly.
It was every single reason why Cara hadn’t wanted to get too involved with Gian in the first damn place. The life he lived was not a right to have in their world. It was nothing more than a privilege that made men and their families fought to keep.
Position. Power. Respect.
That’s all the mafia had ever been.
And it scared the hell out of her.
For what felt like the millionth time, Cara forced herself not to grab her cell phone and dial Gian’s all-too-familiar number. She had asked for space and time to think, and he had been gracious enough to give it to her without argument. He had not called, not messaged, and he hadn’t sent one of his guys to her door with a gift. Even her shadow—the bodyguard that had seemed to come out of thin air—had receded to being simply a faraway annoyance whenever she looked for him. The guy wasn’t gone altogether, but she rarely saw him now unless she really searched the crowd hard.
Cara already knew that she was going to fail at staying away from Gian, never mind actually ending whatever they were to one another. She was going to fail because she neither wanted to stay away, nor end their fucking mess together.
But she didn’t know how to deal with what would also inevitably come with all of that.
The news programs.
The worry.
The violence.
Her fears …
Cara didn’t know how to deal with any of that.
Gian had been right—he couldn’t and he didn’t pretend to be someone that he wasn’t. It was her who looked the other way. There was going to come a time when Cara wouldn’t be able to turn cheek to the sides of Gian that frightened her, and once she did, there would be no way to look away. There would be no more pretending.
Before Cara fully understood her actions, she had grabbed for her phone and dialed a familiar number, but it wasn’t Gian’s. She listened to the ringing echo through the speakers as she waited for her brother to pick up the call. She didn’t entirely expect Tommas to answer, as more often than not, he called her or she left a message.
But on the fourth ring, he did pick up.
“Ciao.”
For a whole ten seconds, Cara didn’t respond.
All of the sudden, she didn’t know what to say.
She heard the speaker crackle with an annoyed huff before Tommas muttered, “Cara, is that you?”
“Yes,” she finally said.
“Something wrong?”
Cara glanced at the blank television screen, and considered how to answer that question. “How do you do it, Tommas?”
Her brother cleared his throat, and then she heard him shuffle around as though he were getting out of bed. “You’re going to need to make more sense, if you want a proper answer.”
She couldn’t help but notice how tired he sounded. Not sleep-tired, but a fuck-this-world kind of tired. It was so unlike her brother. He was laidback, cool, calm, and collected. Always.
Cara had never known Tommas to be anything else.
“Are you sure nothing is wrong?” Tommas asked, when Cara stayed silent.
“Nothing serious.”
“All right. Ask me your question again, but make more sense this time.”
“How do you care and attach yourself to people who feel like their existence in your life is not guaranteed, but more temporary than you’re willing to admit. Like tomorrow, someone gets pissed off or offended and suddenly, you’re burying your sister … or someone else you love.”
Tommas sighed. “That’s a heavy question for someone who didn’t even thank me for wishing her a happy birthday a month ago.”
“Thank you for the birthday wishes, Tommy.”
He grunted under his breath. “I don’t think about it—that’s how I deal. And I protect those people as best I can, I do whatever I need to do so that my choices and my actions don’t inadvertently hurt them or take them away from me.”
“Huh.”
“Sometimes I fail, too,” Tommas added, a sadness creeping into his tone. “And that kills me, but it’s unavoidable.”
“Yeah, but …”
“What, Cara?”
“What about people like me?”
“I do that for you, too. Why do you think you’re still in Toronto, huh? Not here, in Chicago, advancing my stupid ass in this fucking family or something?”
“I meant, what about women like me—how do I deal with it? I can’t manage it the same way you do, I’m not like you, Tommy.”
“That’s not an easy answer, Cara.”
“Try me. Give me something.”
“Why are you even asking this shit?”
“I need to know how to deal,” she said sharply, offering little else.
“I only know what I see around me,” Tommas replied quietly. “Or rather, the women around me. My cousin’s wife, or the women in my family. My friends’ wives, or famiglia daughters that bury their parents with dry faces and shaking hands. They’re strength, Cara. They are the picture and embodiment of strength all around me. They handle their shit far better than any of us men ever could. They cook dinner, wipe children’s faces, do what they have to do, and they smile when faced with their fears. I don’t know how they do it, because I am too busy trying to keep allowing them the chance to cook their dinners, love their messy-faced children, and have no fears, all the while. Do you understand?”
“But you’re part of the reason they’re in that sort of life, Tommas.”
“And all we made men do is make the best of what we know, Cara. Nothing more, nothing less.”
She took the time to absorb her brother’s words.
Tommas always gave it to her straight, after all.
He didn’t pretty shit up.
“Oh, there’s something else you need to know,” Tommas said tiredly.
“What’s that?”
“Serena’s body was found this morning by the maid. Suicide, apparently.”
Cara wished she was surprised to learn the news of her mother’s death.
She wasn’t.
Something else that was … inevitable.
“I’m sorry,” Cara said softly.
“Are you?”
“For you, Tommy. I’m sorry for you. You’ve dealt with her your whole life, longer than I ever put up with her. You would only do that—and keep doing it—because somewhere inside, you hold affection for her.”
“Not anymore,” Tommas murmured. “I can let you know when the funeral is going to be.”
“I would rather you didn’t.”
“That’s what I figured.”
“Please bury her beside Dad, not on the other side of Lea.”
Tommas mumbled his agreement quickly.
“Cara?”
“Yes?” she asked.
“I don’t know what’s going on, or what made you pick up the phone to ask me all of this tonight, but there’s really only one thing that matters in this life of ours, anyway.”
“And what’s that, Tommas?”
“Do what makes you happy. Be where, or with whom, or do whatever you need to do to be happy. Take that risk—it’s worth it. Because this life is fleeting, and tomorrow might be the last time you smile, so it’s better to spend today happy.”