“Stop hovering,” Andino snapped.
His mother didn’t stop, though. She barely even gave him one of her looks for his tone, actually. Guilt compounded in his chest even as she quietly moved to fix the pillow on his bed that he wasn’t even using, for Christ’s sake.
All she wanted to do was love him, and help. All he could do was act like a spoiled little shit.
Andino was quick to grab his mother’s hand before she could move away from his bedside. With a little tug, she turned her attention on him. There, he saw the fear she’d been hiding with her silence and gaze turned away from him. There, he saw her pain.
“I’m sorry, Ma,” he said.
Kim pressed her lips together into a thin line, and nodded. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay. I’m just … edgy.”
He hated hospitals with a passion. Every memory he had of hospitals were bad ones. No Marcello came to a hospital for good things … a baby hadn’t been born into their family for years.
His recent memories of hospitals were not ones he cared to remember. Like the time his cousin tried to kill herself, and his entire family spent the night in hard, plastic chairs waiting for word on her condition. Or back when he broke his wrist as a kid, and the doctor told his father he’d given Andino something for the pain, but actually hadn’t before he reset the bone. Gio had not been happy about that—someone died for it, he imagined. Andino never thought to ask, really.
It didn’t matter.
Hospitals meant bad things.
Usually death.
Today was not an exception to the rule except for the fact Andino hadn’t died. He had been shot, though, and the burning that was constantly radiating from his upper arm was enough of a reminder of just how close he had come to losing his life today on a quiet Brooklyn street.
And he knew …. knew without a doubt and without needing to ask … that his mother was even more aware of just how close he’d come today than even he was. He’d been there; he’d taken the bullet graze that left a jagged chunk taken out of his arm. Him.
But she was also his ma.
“You’re supposed to be safe,” Kim whispered.
“I know, Ma,” he replied. There was nothing else he could tell her that would make this any easier. No apologies he could make, not that it was really his fault. She was still going to worry, and fret. It was what mothers did. And when it was a mother of a made man? Andino suspected that only made it worse. “I’m sorry I scared you.”
Kim’s hand came up to pat Andino’s cheek with a light touch. He was acutely aware that the reverberation of her palm against his face made his arm sting even worse, but he held back the flinch. He didn’t want her to think for even a second that she was causing him pain. That would only make her worry worse, and the guilt would start.
No one needed that.
“I knew what this life meant,” she told him, “and what could happen. Of course, I knew. I don’t know anything different, my boy.”
Andino frowned. “It’s okay, Ma.”
Kim nodded. “It’s not, but it is what it is. I just … you’re my only child. Don’t make me bury you, Andino. Parents shouldn’t have to bury their babies.”
He blinked.
He was a grown man, and yet, still his mother thought of him as her baby. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with that.
Instead, he simply said, “You won’t bury me, Ma. I promise.”
Andino did his best to keep his word when he gave it for something. Being who he was in the life that he led, sometimes his word was the only thing he really had at the end of the day. Not that any of that mattered, either. This was his mother … not just someone. His word to her held even more importance.
Kim smiled. “Enough of this, huh?” She patted his cheek again, and that pain flared. Still, he held back from showing his discomfort. It was the very least he could do at the moment. “Do you want something? A drink, or your phone?”
Andino knew that he simply needed to make his mother busy. If she was busy, and had her mind focused on something other than him, then she would be just fine for a while. She needed to fret and worry, but she also needed something to do while she did it.
Not so hard to figure out.
“Water would be great,” he said.
Kim nodded. “But not from the machine, right?”
“Bottled, yeah.”
“Okay. I’ll be back.”
His mother slipped out of the room with a soft smile over her shoulder, but she didn’t bother to close the door behind her. Andino was grateful. It allowed him to listen to the conversation filtering out from the hallway that was happening between his uncles, and his father. He was quite aware that a good portion of the Marcello family had showed up to the hospital as soon as they got word about what happened.
So was their way.
No one had been allowed back to his room, though. Not that Andino was in the mood for guests, to be honest. The pain was making him snappy, and more irritated than normal. He was seriously starting to regret refusing pain medication.
And the stitches were pulling like a bitch in his arm.
Fuck.
“We need to do something to end this,” he heard Dante say out in the hallway. “This cannot happen again. Who will be next? And will the next shot be the one that kills?”
“Or,” Andino’s father said sharply, “we could fucking answer them back.”
Lucian grunted under his breath. A quiet sign that he agreed with what Giovanni said, but didn’t verbally voice the opinion.
Dante sighed heavily. “And then what, Gio? It continues. The violence escalates. More people get drawn into the mess. We start keeping a body count. Men get buried. Wives and children are left alone and without. That is not our way.”
“Our way is also not to allow a rival family to step out of bounds like they did today with my son!”
“That’s the only reason why you’re reacting this way is because it’s Andino.”
“I would have said the same thing if it was Catherine, Michel, or any one of Lucian’s four kids. And you fucking know it.”
“But that’s not thinking clearly—it’s thinking with emotions.”
Gio made a dark noise, saying, “And I am allowed to have them.”
“You get to keep your son today,” Dante returned, “but the next man might not be as lucky. Is that the choice you want me to make? Vengeance for yours at the sake of someone else’s? We talk about sacrifice and the duty we have to one another in this family, so let’s have that conversation again.”
“No fucking need. Not right now, anyway.”
Andino wondered what had made his father back down, but he didn’t have to consider for long. Soon enough, two plain-clothed detectives were darkening his doorway. He didn’t have to see their fucking badges to know who they were. He swore cops all walked the same, looked the same, and smelled exactly the fucking same to him.
So was his damn life.
Avoiding these fuckers.
Behind the detectives stood the doctor in his white lab coat wearing a frown, and just behind the doctor were his father, and his uncles. Apparently, his quiet, empty room was about to get a hell of a lot louder, and crowded.
Fun.
“I have no comment to make,” Andino told the detectives before they could even introduce themselves. “I don’t know who shot at me, and I don’t even remember the make of the car.”
“We’re sure,” the taller of the two men said dryly. “Still, indulge us.”
“Call my lawyer. We’ll set up a meeting. In the meantime …” Andino turned his gaze on the doctor. “Get my papers to sign—I’m leaving.”
The doctor pushed past the detectives. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Did I ask what you thought, though?”
Because he was pretty sure he hadn’t.
And he was not staying there one more minute.
• • •
“I don’t like Dante’s decision,” Andino told his father, “but he is right.”
Giovanni made that same angry, disgusted noise he’d been making all fucking night. “Had that been—”
“I know, had it been one of his kids, this conversation might be very different. It also might be exactly the same. He’s ready to step down, and let me take the seat. Do you really think he wants to do that during a war with a rival family?”
“Stop moving,” his cousin muttered.
Andino flinched when the needle Michel was using to fix his busted stitches went through a particularly sensitive part of his injury. “Fuck, be careful.”
“I am. You keep moving. And for the record, my father could have easily started a war for me with the Irish in Detroit, but what did he do? If anyone needs a reminder …”
Andino passed a look at his own father.
Giovanni rolled his eyes. “I’m not saying Dante doesn’t have the right idea.”
“No, you’re saying you don’t like it,” Michel replied. “We all hear you.”
The needle poked again.
“Fuck, Michel, I swear—”
“Stop acting like a baby,” his cousin bitched. “You get shot, then you get stitches. And had you just stayed at the hospital long enough for the blood to start to clot around the first fucking set, you wouldn’t need to have me here putting these ones in.”
Jesus Christ.
Andino loved his cousin. Sure, he did. Michel, John, and Andino had all grown up together. Like three thieves, in a way. He didn’t get to see his cousin nearly as often as he liked because Michel was in the midst of doing his residency as a trauma surgeon, and the man’s wife was trying to make it as a partner in a major Manhattan law firm. Michel was busy, and so was Andino. Their paths didn’t cross a lot.
Still, he loved him.
And right now, he wanted to kill him.
“They tore because he picked up Snaps as soon as he got home,” Gio said, tattling on him like a fucking baby. “The dog was in a fit, and Andino couldn’t have that.”
“Shut up.”
“Really?” Michel asked, glancing up from his work to dead stare Andino right in the face. “That dog is eighty pounds at least.”
“Ninety-two, and he’s very healthy. Thank you very fucking much.”
“You can’t pick up anything more than fifteen pounds until these stitches heal.”
“Well, that’s going to be impossible.”
Michel let out a long, slow sigh. “How many times do you want me to come here and put these fucking stitches in, Andi?”
He snapped his jaw shut in an effort to keep quiet. “Fine.”
Michel rolled his eyes, and went back to his work. Andino went back to talking to his father in an effort to keep his mind off the pain in his arm that intensified with every slip of the needle through his skin.
“They have to answer for what they do,” Gio said. “We can’t allow the Calabrese family to go unchecked when they act against us.”
“And we will,” Andino replied quietly.
“By making peace?”
“For now,” Andino replied. “For now, yes.”
His father gave him a look, and then Michel. “What are you—”
“It’s not important right now.”
And it wasn’t.
His plans would have to wait. Because he did have plans, and while he understood his uncle’s position regarding the Calabrese, and that protecting their family from more violence was what would be in their best interests … he also agreed with his father more.
Andino would never bow to the fucking Calabrese.
Not after what they did to John.
Now this, too?
No way.
Once his cousin had gotten Andino all stitched up, and he walked his father and Michel to the door, all he wanted to do was relax for the evening. Michel pulled a small baggie from his inner pocket, and handed it over. Inside were pills. Michel only shrugged when Andino gave him an inquisitive look.
“No driving when you take one. Vicodin. For pain. Don’t be a fucking hero.”
Andino laughed. “Can I take it with whiskey?”
Michel glanced over at Gio as if to say, What the fuck do I do with him, huh?
“I can’t say yes to that,” Michel settled on saying.
“But you didn’t say no, either.”
“Because what is the point?”
His cousin’s and father’s laughter followed them out of the house. Andino was quick to lock the door behind them, and go back to the kitchen. Snaps was still in his spot in front of his food bowls, and his dark eyes watched Andino as he moved around the space to get a shot of whiskey ready before he pulled one of those pills out.
He wasn’t one for meds. He could handle pain. But his agitation level was already so high that he figured, what the hell? Something to take the edge off for the night would be perfect.
He’d just popped the pill, and swallowed a shot of burning whiskey when a knock echoed through his quiet house. Snaps still hadn’t moved from his spot; the dog always alerted with a loud bark to the fact someone was approaching his house, and right then he kept staring at Andino.
Except … his tail was wagging.
Andino should have known then.
The dog only chose to not alert when it was her.
He didn’t waste time as he practically ran from the kitchen back to the front of the house. He didn’t even move the shades to look out the window before pulling the door open.
And there she stood.
Skinny jeans molded to shapely, long legs.
Hair thrown up in a messy bun.
A black trench coat.
Blue eyes on him.
Like the storm or the sea.
Fire and ice, he thought.
“Haven,” Andino murmured.
Behind her waiting at the end of the walkway, he could see the enforcer that had been posted at his house. Still fucking standing there. A precaution, his father said. No doubt, given the man was looking right at them, the fact she was there would somehow get back to his family.
Andino didn’t care.
She was there. She shouldn’t be, but she was.
More than anything, he wanted that. He also knew he should let this woman go. Turn her away, and get her the hell away from him as fast as fucking possible. He’d finally gotten her away from the mess that was him and his life, and she should stay gone. It would be better for her in the end.
He shouldn’t invite her in.
He shouldn’t keep hurting her.
“Do you want to come in?” he asked.
Famous last words …