Marco Bianchi sits at the end of a table occupied by the top guys in the Bianchi family. Smoke clouds the room, making everything smell acrid and sweet. Marco taps his ashes directly on the table and leans back to squint at me through the smoke. “What can I do for you, Leo?”

“I want your blessing to go after the Morettis.”

“It’s my understanding that you have been doing exactly that for the last four years, despite my express instructions to let sleeping dogs lie.”

I clench my jaw. “You expected the Morettis to kill us a long time ago. You would’ve preferred it, even. It would let you smooth things over with the Morettis so you can keep greasing your pockets.”

A few of the guys around the table get twitchy, shifting in their chairs or subtly moving their hands closer to their guns. Marco leans forward slowly, taking a long drag on his cigar and puffing the smoke out. “You know I’ve had men shot for less disrespect than that?”

“If you were going to have me killed you wouldn’t be wasting your time with threats.”

Marco sits back, smiling faintly. He makes a calming gesture to the men around the table. “Easy boys. This Citrione dog still has a little bite left, and it would be a shame to let his talent go to waste.”

“I’m going after the Morettis.”

Marco considers for a moment. “You do so without our formal blessing. I will not devote any manpower to this. I will not make any movement to protect you when they retaliate. But privately, I wish you success.”

Spineless prick. “Great. Thanks,” I say, leaving without a backward glance.

“They are going to make me,” says Angelo. He sits across from me in the cafe booth.

I nearly drop the cup of coffee in my hand. “They what?”

He grins like an idiot. “Yeah. Your little brother is going to be a made man. Shit man, can you believe it? I’m going to be a fucking capo. I’ll have soldiers assigned to me, and I’ll be running my own jobs, pulling in bigger cuts.”

“You have to say no,” I say.

The hurt on his face is clear as day. “Why the fuck would I say no?”

“Think about it. Why would they make you? Why now?”

He shakes his head, frowning. “Wow. I thought you would be proud, but you’re just jealous. Even Carlito was happy for me.”

I suck in a breath, pushing down annoyance. “Listen to me. They have no reason to make you right now. You’re on their shit list. Something is wrong here, Angelo. Just tell them no, or get the fuck out of town.”

He sets down his fork and wipes his mouth. “I’ll call you when it’s done. I don’t need to sit here and listen to this.”

I’ve known him long enough to know there’s nothing else I can say without pushing him even harder toward what he’s already going to do. Fuck.

Later that night, I’m cleaning my gun when I hear a loud pop and hissing sound through the wall in my apartment. It’s coming from Julia’s room. She shouts something loud that sounds a lot like “shit”. I rush out to the hallway and bang on her door. If anything happened to her.

The door swings open and she’s standing there, soaked to the waist. Her white blouse sticks to her tits, completely see-through. I can even see the dark circles of her nipples through the bra she wears. My cock hardens and I lick my lips, smirking when I see Roman behind her, frolicking in the water that’s spraying from beneath the sink.

“Do you have a wrench?” I ask.

“There was a box of tools in the closet when I got the place,” she says, showing me where to look.

I grab the tools and move to the sink, lying on my side to get beneath the counter and find the shutoff valve. A quick twist turns off the torrent of water. It’s a simple enough problem. The pipes came loose and need to be tightened.

“Want to learn how to fix this, bud?” I ask Roman.

His eyes light up and he crams himself under the sink with me, waiting for orders. I smirk, fighting an urge to hug him. I don’t know what it is about this little kid, but he makes me soft. I just don’t want to push the limits of what Julia is comfortable with, so I hold back. “Take this,” I say, handing him the wrench.

He grabs it with two hands, mouth opening slightly in awe, as if he’s never held something so cool.

“Now put it here,” I say, guiding his hands toward the loose valve. “Now if we want to make this tighter, what should we do?”

He looks at me in confusion. “I dunno,” he says.

“Righty tighty, lefty loosie. Do you know your rights and lefts?”

He nods proudly.

“Good. So if we want it tighter, we push this way,” I say, moving his hand that holds the wrench and tightening.

Roman smiles when we’re done, rushing out from under the sink and moving to jump in front of Julia. “Mommy. I fixed it!”

She smiles reluctantly, hugging the soaked little boy to her leg and looking at me. “Thank you.”

I turn her water back on and stand, realizing I’m soaked too. The white T-shirt I wear is probably just as see-through as hers, and if the way her eyes are struggling to stay on mine is any indication, it definitely is. “You know I could fix that crooked cabinet door in a few minutes.”

She looks where I’m pointing. “Oh, it doesn’t really bother me.”

“You sure? I could fix it now. It’d only take a minute.”

She crosses her arms, covering her wet tits from my view. “Let me just go get changed real quick. You can start though. Come on, Roman, let’s go to mommy’s room.”

Roman plants his feet. “I want to help Mr. Leo.”

I shrug at her. “I could use the help,” I say.

“Okay, but you make sure Mr. Leo doesn’t break anything.”

I help Roman up to stand on the countertop, holding his back protectively while I explain why the cabinet is crooked. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t understand half of what I’m saying, but he keeps nodding his little head and smiling.

“See this?” I ask, pointing to the joint that holds the cabinet in place. “This is the most important part. When you start learning to fix thing, you’ll see that everything isn’t as complicated as it looks. Break it down and it usually comes down to one piece. Just one thing that’s out of whack. It’s kind of like what your mommy does. She fixes people. That’s what makes her so special.”

“Mommy fixes people?” asks Roman.

“Sure,” I say, tightening a screw in the hinge. “She’s fixing me, whether she knows it or not.”

“You broken?” asks Roman. His little face screws up in confusion.

I nod solemnly. “A little less broken than when I moved in and met you though.”

He smiles, probably still not understanding most of what I mean.

I hand him a rubber mallet and let him whack at the bottom of the cabinet, which he loves.

It’s only then I notice Julia in the hallway, dressed in a simple black t-shirt. She leans against the wall, watching us with a small smile, but there’s something else in her eyes, something distant and pained. She’s trying to hide it, but I can still see it. What is she hiding? It still surprises me how fiercely I want to protect her, even if it’s not from a physical threat. It would be easy to write off and assume I only fell so hard for her because she’s one of the few women who have tried to tell me no before, but that’s not it.

I’ve been with women before who tried to change me, and I’ve been with women who didn’t care about changing me. Julia doesn’t fall neatly into either group. I know she’s not happy with the violence in my life, but I get the sense that if I step too far out of line, she won’t stick around to try to steer me back to the straight and narrow. She’ll just walk.

The most wild part is that I’ve actually been thinking of ways to get out of this life, or at least ease back on it so I can be more of the man she needs for herself and Roman. I want that. I just don’t know what else I’d do if I wasn’t doing this. I’ll figure it out for her though, if she lets me.

“Roman, it’s time for your nap, honey. Grab your dinosaur and let’s go.”

Roman sulks, but is apparently well-trained, because he just gives me a longing look and trots off to find a little plastic dinosaur, which he clutches to his chest as he follows Julia to a back room. I’m left standing in the kitchen, wondering if she expected me to leave. If that’s what she’s hoping, she’s just going to have to be disappointed, because I’m not leaving unless she demands it.

A minute later she’s back. “We need to talk quietly. He’s a light sleeper.”

I nod. “He’s a great kid.”

She smiles in a way that says she knows. “He’s the only thing that keeps me going.”

I lean on the kitchen island, frowning at her. “What’s going on with you? Are you upset about what happened last night still?”

“Sure, that’s on my list.”

“Your list?”

“Well,” she says, moving to sit at the kitchen table and counting each point off on her fingertips. “My boss is getting more and more out of control every day, the criminal who—” she catches herself, as if she was about to say something she didn’t mean to. “The criminal who walked into my life and left it in ruins comes back out of the blue and moves in next door, my mom’s medical bills.” She winces a little at the last, as if she didn’t mean to say it.

What was she about to say before? The criminal who what? The question burns, but it’s a selfish one, so I set it aside for now. “Your boss? That asshole, Ted?”

“Yes. Ted.”

“You said he’s out of control? What do you mean?”

“He is claiming he used my last paycheck to replace the chairs in the waiting room, and that he doesn’t have the money to pay me. Of course when I tried to fight it, he just threatened to turn me into the board and get my license revoked. Like always.”

“Leave that to me,” I say. “I’ll set the fucker straight.”

She shakes her head. “This isn’t a problem you can solve by brute force.”

“You think brute force is the only thing I’m good at? You seemed pretty impressed with my finesse four years ago when my head was between your legs.”

Her cheeks stain with red and she absently rubs her lip.

“Like I said. Leave him to me. I’ll handle him.”

She looks unconvinced, but still seems to be a little relieved at the prospect.

“And if you need money for your mom, let me help.” Regardless of what she says, I make a vow to myself that her mother is going to be taken care of. I’ll find a way to help her.

She fiddles with her fingers, shaking her head. “It’s nothing. I can handle my own problems without you. I’ve been doing it for four years now, and I’m still standing. Roman still has food on his plate every meal and and a warm place to sleep.”

Something in the way she seems to always connect my leaving straight back to Roman and how she has managed to raise him on her own has my intuition prickling. Most women would be pissed at me for what I did, but I don’t hear her talking about some other guy at all, some mystery father who's not in the picture anymore. She only talks about me. I’ve suspected it since I saw Roman, but my suspicion is growing more and more into a certainty by the hour.

“Where is the father?” I blurt the question out without thinking, but I don’t regret it. It needs to be asked. It should have been asked from the start. I need to know.

She averts her eyes. “I don’t know if I can trust you with that yet.”

“What, do you think I’m going to go kick his ass or something?”

She glares at me. “Would you blame me for thinking that?”

“I guess not. But you will have to tell me sooner or later.”

“Just because you inserted yourself back into my life, it doesn’t mean I have to tell you anything.”

I reel a little. She’s right, obviously. I keep forgetting that as far as she’s concerned, I spent the last four years fucking other women and barely thinking about her. If only she knew the truth. It’s frustrating as hell keeping it from her, but she has enough on her plate without knowing just how dangerous the people are who want to hurt her.

“As far as I’m concerned, you’re the only one with an obligation to open up. We’ve been making it fine without you, and we’ll keep on being fine if you are gone.”

“I’ve told you everything you need to know, and I’m not telling you more.”

“Then maybe you should just leave.”

It pisses me off. Even though I know from her perspective I must seem like I’m being dishonest, I wish she would just trust me, even a little. I step into the hallway, holding the door open for a moment. “I’ll stop by when you’ve cooled off.”

I close the door just in time to dodge the flying toy car she hurls at me. I can’t help smirking a little. As much as she wants to deny it, as much as she tries to tell me no, I know with a bone-numbing certainty that she wants me in her life. She wants me as badly as I want her, but she’s just trying to do what’s right for her son by making me jump through hoops. It’s fine by me. I’ll keep jumping if she’s the prize at the end of the course.

I tap on Jimmy Carmele’s window. He jolts upright, obviously dozing. He’s parked outside the apartment, and the fucker is supposed to be keeping an eye out for Morettis. It looks like the only thing he was keeping his eyes on was the inside of his eyelids.

He rolls down the window and I lean forward slowly. I need to send a message to him. He needs to know that it’s his ass on the line if anything happens to Julia while he’s on watch. Luckily, I wield fear as easily as the .44 holstered at my hip. I don’t speak for a moment, letting his mind race over all the possible ways he could have pissed me off. It’s more effective that way. He’ll remember his fuck-ups a lot more clearly if he figures them out for himself instead of me spelling it out for him.

His mouth opens like he’s about to speak, but he snaps it shut again, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. Right about now he’s wondering if I’m going to kill him. He knows my reputation, everyone does. He finally rubs the back of his neck, wincing. “Sorry, Leo. It won’t happen again.”

“Yeah. It won’t. And you’re not getting paid for today.”

I straighten, looking around the street and the crowded sidewalk. Any one of these guys could be working for the Morettis, trying to find the right opportunity to make a move against me, to hurt Julia. I almost wish they would just come out and try. Ever since those fuckers at the mini-golf place, I haven’t seen so much as a hint that they are still gunning for me. Now I have to make sure I stay hard, stay alert, and keep my ear to the ground. They may be biding their time for now, but I know it’s only a matter of time until they come after us, and I plan to be ready when they do.