“I THINK WE could have done this on any other day,” Antony said as the Marcello men headed toward his office. “The no business on Sunday rule barely exists anymore, son.”
“This isn’t business, this is—”
“Family,” Antony interrupted. “Except it falls in both categories, and you know how I feel about that, Dante.”
“All right, Papa.” Dante spun around on his heels in front of the two oak doors that led into the office. He pointed at his father, and then at Lucian, and Andino, too. “All three of you can stay outside for this. Gio can join me, but only because I think he’s neutral.”
John had no idea what his uncle meant, but Dante was the boss. He made the calls, not any of them. It was his choice to make.
“Dante,” Lucian started to say.
“No, I don’t want to hear it, brother.”
“At least allow Andino in for Johnathan, then.”
“No,” Dante said simply. “He’s another one that needs to learn a thing or two.”
Andino’s hard gaze settled on the wall, and his posture was stiff enough to be fucking ice. John saw all of those things, sure, but he didn’t take them in properly for what they actually meant. At the moment, he was too pissed off to think about anything other than his own anger.
“It’s my office,” Antony said, his old voice sharpening with a warning.
Dante nodded. “And if this is going to be a problem, then I will move this discussion elsewhere. Speak now, or don’t.”
Antony said nothing.
Dante waved a single hand at John and Giovanni to follow him. John caught sight of his father shaking his head, and scowling just before the doors closed behind them—a sure sign of Lucian’s disapproval.
Likely with John, all things considered.
Hadn’t his statements at the table been enough to tell John that?
Inside the office, Dante headed for the desk. He stood behind it, but didn’t take a seat in the large chair. “Choose some place to sit or stand, but do it fast.”
Gio took a seat next to the window. John stayed standing in the middle of the room.
“I’m good,” he said when the boss shot him a look.
“For now,” Dante replied.
“What do you want, boss?”
Dante smirked, and looked up at the ceiling like he was sending out a silent prayer. “Where is this rudeness coming from, John?”
“I think after the little show downstairs, no one should expect me to be pleasant.”
“And how about your show, huh?”
John straightened on the spot. “What show?”
“Bringing that woman to our church. Having her here for dinner with our family.” Dante pointed a single finger at him, and then shook it with a laugh. “You didn’t even consider for one second to call me and ask if that would be okay. No, you just did it. You know what kind of statement that is to bring a woman with you to church. We do not do that for just anyone, and—”
“She isn’t just anyone to me,” John replied.
In his chair, Gio cleared his throat. “That’s a heavy statement to make, John. You’ve been seeing her for how long, now?”
“On and off after I was released—steady for a couple of months.”
“That long?” Dante asked.
John shrugged. “Yeah, that long. But I guess we’re going to pretend like you didn’t already know that because you’ve had people watching me since I got out.”
“John, that was my choice to do because of your history.”
He didn’t reply, simply scoffed with a nod. What the fuck else could he do? At every turn, someone else in his family had to remind him how little they actually trusted him. It stung like nothing ever had before.
“And I didn’t know it was a steady thing,” Dante countered. “It concerns me even more to know it, actually. Why any Calabrese woman would be crawling into bed with a Marcello man is concerning, all things considered about our families.”
“Why, because she can’t want me?” John asked. “Because it can’t be just a me and her thing, it has to have something underhanded to go along with it, too?”
“Knowing them—”
John’s thin control snapped.
It had been holding on by a thread.
“Jesus Christ,” John exploded, “she is a fucking woman!”
Dante barely blinked at his rage. “A woman who apparently has a hand in the Calabrese business—albeit behind the scenes. Still, it would not be a stretch to think she is close to her father, or brothers. That perhaps her loyalty to them is far more than her loyalty to you, or even us.”
John clenched his fists so hard that his fingernails bit into his skin, and broke the surface. It was better than punching his uncle like he wanted to do.
“That’s what it comes down to—loyalty?” John asked.
“Her last name is Calabrese, Johnathan. She is their daughter—a woman from their family. How many times do I need to explain this to you before you understand it?”
Rage vibrated through John’s bloodstream. A thick, beating thrum of hot anger that filled him up, and ate through his heart all the while. It had been a long damn time since he had gotten this angry, this fast.
Yet, he embraced it.
He wasn’t scared of it.
Right then, he kind of needed it.
“You know nothing about Siena,” John returned. “Nothing to make any kind of assumption that she is feeding them information, or fucking me over for them.”
“Do you know?” Dante countered. “Would you know it if it were happening? Could you even see it happening?”
Damn.
The sharp slice of betrayal stabbed John in his chest. Over and over. Every single word his uncle said only cut worse.
“Because I must be entirely fucking incapable at anything like that,” John said, his voice quieting. “Paranoid, sure. Unstable, yeah. So much so, that you don’t even trust me to be a capable made man. So fuck it, she’s got to be one of those things, too. That’s what it is, right?”
Dante tipped his chin up. “I did not say that, John.”
“You said enough, boss.”
“Your bipolar has—”
“Everything to do with me,” John interjected. “It is everything that is me, and you know it. Except you use my disorder as a crutch—something to hold me back, or justify your shit. That stops, now.”
“John, he doesn’t mean to do that,” Gio said quietly. “None of us mean to do that, honestly.”
He ignored his other uncle.
Dante ignored Gio, too. In fact, the boss switched topics entirely.
“You have handled the Calabrese side of the business since December, haven’t you?” Dante asked. He didn’t give Johnathan a chance to respond before saying, “And you see, I know Andino barely did a thing with them. He didn’t meet them for dinners, and have private chats with the boss. He spent as little time as possible with Matteo’s two sons, and kept them at arm’s length at all times. But what do you do, John?”
Again, he didn’t give him time to answer.
“You date his daughter,” Dante said, letting out a bitter laugh. “You work hands on with the Calabrese brothers when you could easily delegate the jobs to men on the crew. You’re seen coming and going at all hours from Calabrese businesses, and I know you’ve had private invitations from that family.”
For Siena, John held back from saying.
He did a lot of that for her.
“So,” Dante continued, leaning forward with his hands splayed on the desk, “perhaps, John, you can understand why I am wary of how close you are getting to that family. Our history with them is long, and tainted. They are snakes—they cannot be trusted. Except you seem to be doing exactly that.”
His uncle knew nothing.
John felt like that was the story of his life, though. He could talk, talk, and talk more. He could explain that all of those were either situations he had been put in to, or something involving Siena, but it would do them no good.
Dante would not care.
Why?
John was a Marcello.
Siena was a Calabrese.
“You don’t know who she gives her loyalty to,” Dante said, “and you can’t trust her with it, Johnathan.”
“So says you,” he replied.
He refused to say much else, though.
“Marcellos will do a lot of things, but getting into bed with a Calabrese isn’t one of them. Or, it wasn’t. You may think that she’s a woman, and she’s fucking harmless, but the rest of them are most certainly not, John.”
Siena wouldn’t hurt a fly. Shit, she probably couldn’t hurt a fly when it came right down to it. She was pure and good and gold. Everything that John wanted.
Dante didn’t seem to care.
“You’re telling me that she isn’t going home tonight to feed her father information about us, and our family?” Dante asked. “Do you really trust her that much? You know how the Calabrese are, Johnathan. Do you know how very different your world might have been had a Calabrese not ruined it?”
John’s nerves prickled with irritation. “I bet you probably would not be sitting where you are had things been different, actually.”
Dante’s jaw stiffened.
Point made.
“Is it your loyalty that I have to be worried about, then?” Dante asked. “Not hers, but yours, John.”
At that statement, Gio did stand from his chair. “Dante, come on.”
John was over it. That one remark from his uncle had effectively ended the conversation for him altogether. Nothing else Dante said would make a difference to him, now.
“Nah, it’s fine.” John laughed, dark and hollow. “Fuck him.”
“John!”
Dante’s roar hit his back.
It didn’t matter.
He was already gone from the office.
John headed down the hallway, bypassing his father, grandfather, and cousin. He didn’t hear anyone following him, but he didn’t care. All he wanted to do was find Siena, and get the fuck out of there. Do something else with just her …. Anything except being in this house, with these people.
“John, wait, son.”
His father’s words came just as he rounded the second floor’s staircase. Lucian caught him by the back of his jacket, and yanked hard enough to spin him around.
“Look at me,” his father said.
John found familiarity staring at him from his father’s eyes. He also found a raised Marcello there, too. Not born, no, but raised.
“You’re all the fucking same,” John told his father. “Every single one of you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
Lucian looked upward in the direction they had come from. “Give Dante some time, John. Old habits die hard in this family and business—this is one memory for us that cannot be washed out in one run. You have to give it time.”
“Like you give a shit. You couldn’t have been clearer downstairs going on like you were with Siena at the table, Dad.”
Lucian frowned. “I feel people out differently than my brothers do, that’s all.”
“Bullshit. Like I said, you’re all the same.”
“Don’t you see—can’t you see—I’m on your side, John? There’s a reason he wouldn’t let me in that office. Are you even listening to me right now?”
He didn’t care. His perception of his father was colored heavily by his anger, distrust, and everything else that put distance between them.
Lucian said one thing, but John heard another.
It had always been this way.
Neither of them could fix it now.
• • •
“Where’s Siena?”
Catherine looked up from the tablet her boyfriend was showing her. “What?”
“Siena. She’s not with everybody else in the theater. Where is she?”
“Probably still in the kitchen,” Cross said, lifting a brow. “That’s where Catherine left her.”
“Did anybody think to ask if she might like to join them, so she wouldn’t be alone?”
Catherine frowned. “I was with her—we were washing dishes. She’s really nice, John.”
“Quiet,” Cross added.
John tried to soften his defensive stance a bit, but it was hard after the shit show upstairs. “Yeah?”
Catherine—his favorite cousin next to Andino—nodded. “Yeah, I really like her.”
“Even if she is a Calabrese?”
Cross scoffed. “That old bullshit again?”
Yeah, that old bullshit again.
John only shrugged.
“So, the kitchen?” he asked.
“The kitchen,” Catherine said before going back to whatever Cross had been showing her.
John left the two of them behind as he navigated the halls and rooms of the mansion. He never understood why his grandparents didn’t sell their large estate. It was far too big for them, yet they held strong and refused to let it go.
He had hoped that by the time he found Siena, his anger from earlier would have lessened. That wasn’t the case at all—more than ever, he just wanted to get the fuck away from his family. Quick, fast, and in a hurry.
John crossed through the dining room to get to the kitchen, but the sound of his mother’s voice carrying from the kitchen made him slow down.
“You have to understand what he’s like in those times,” he heard his mother say.
“He’s told me,” Siena replied.
“John saying one thing, and actually experiencing one of his episodes are not the same thing.”
“No, I get that, I just meant—”
“In his mania, he can be reckless in everything from his choices, to his behavior. He can blow through thousands of dollars in an hour, and the next day forget where the money went. We used to have boxes of things show up on the doorstep when he was a teenager because he would steal one of our credit cards, and order things online.”
Jordyn let out a sigh, adding, “And relationships—romantic ones—can be difficult for him to navigate when physical attraction adds to his mania.”
“I don’t understand,” Siena admitted.
John hated how quiet she sounded. Like the entire conversation had her backed in a corner, and she didn’t how to fight her way out of it. He should have explained more to her, so that a conversation like this one didn’t take her entirely by surprised.
It pissed him off, too.
How dare his mother do this? How dare she corner Siena and air out all of John’s history like it was her right to do so?
It wasn’t.
Siena could come to him.
Not anyone else.
The conversation in the kitchen continued with his mother saying, “Hyper-sexuality means physical expressions of attraction can often be confused for other things. And it only adds to his reckless behavior—like a high he chases. If he can’t get high, he can do things that make him feel high. It’s another way for him to self-medicate.”
“He’s not like that, though.”
“Not now,” his mother said sharply. “But I can see it—his father can see it. This is how it starts. Snappy conversations, and up and down moods. He seems productive. He bounces from one thing to another, and it looks like he’s getting so much done.
“He rarely sleeps, and he focuses on the strangest things. This is how it starts, Siena. And I don’t think you understand how it ends. It ends with the energetic him turning into a manic version of that—the snappiness and up and down changes into nastiness.”
“He’s not nasty—not to me,” Siena said.
“Yet. Not yet. His sisters? They grew up fearing John, and his mood swings. He destroyed their things, and he would call them names. Threaten them, or worse. Now, they barely speak to him despite the fact those episodes were years ago. They can’t let it go because it was awful for them. Apologies and ownership do not take away two decades worth of destruction that mania has caused in their lives.
“He becomes someone else,” Jordyn continued. “A nasty version of himself that lashes out because he wants to hurt someone else. It’s a dangerous game to play with him if you don’t know what to look for, and if you don’t understand what you’re doing. And this is how it starts. All the signs point to where it’s going, but you don’t know that because you haven’t lived an entire life with my son like we have.”
“He’s not like that right now,” Siena said, repeating her earlier sentiment.
“Now,” Jordyn echoed. “Are you helping him, or hurting him? Do you even understand the difference, Siena?”
“I—”
His mother didn’t even give Siena a chance to reply.
“That’s what I’m trying to explain to you. It’s hard to tell with John because one thing he does may look like this to you—it may seem okay—but to him, it’s something else entirely. It means something else entirely.”
Silence answered Jordyn’s statement.
John decided in that second that he had enough. This whole day had all been quite fucking enough for him.
He crossed the last few steps to the kitchen entryway, and instantly the two women inside noticed his presence. Siena looked as though she didn’t know what to say. His mother only dropped her arms to her sides, and let out a soft sigh.
“Is this why you asked me to bring her to church and dinner, Ma?” John asked. “So you could corner her like this, and tell her all the reasons why I’m such a fuckup to you, and the rest of this family?”
“John, no,” his mother said. “That’s not what I was doing at all.”
Her denials meant less than shit. He knew what he heard her saying to Siena, and he wasn’t fucking stupid.
He looked to Siena. “Are you ready to leave?”
She nodded once. “If you are, sure.”
“Let’s go.”
Siena darted for him, and discarded a dishcloth on the edge of the counter as she passed it by. “Sure, John.”
“John, wait,” his mother said.
John let Siena pass to exit out of the room before he turned and pointed at his mother. “Out of everyone, Ma, I trusted you the most. I didn’t think you would do something like this to me.”
“John, I was only trying to help.” Jordyn stepped forward, but he took one giant step back. Siena had already passed through the dining room, and was gone. “I don’t even think you realize it, but a lot of your behavior lately suggests you’re slipping into another manic phase. I only wanted to warn her, so that she would understand and know how to help.”
“You’ve got a strange fucking way of helping.”
“You’re not listening. That tells me I’m right, John. Listen to me.”
“I am fine!”
“Are you?”
“Go to hell, Ma.”
“John!”
Her shout echoed at his back. He found Siena at the front of the mansion. He helped her to slip on her coat.
“John, she meant no harm,” Siena murmured. “She wasn’t saying any of that to hurt you, I swear.”
“It doesn’t matter. They’re all the same.”
Siena frowned up at him. “What?”
“This whole family. They’re all the fucking same. They talk about loyalty, but they don’t know what it means.”
“John.”
Her whisper made him look down at her. Siena kept searching his gaze like she was trying to find something. He didn’t know what.
“They love you, John.”
Do they?
It was hard to tell when he was like this.
• • •
Siena laughed as John pulled her up the steps of a brownstone that was only a few blocks away from Fifth Avenue.
“What are we doing here?”
“Taking a look inside.”
Siena peered up at the black brick of the home. “Who lives here?”
John flipped open a keypad, and punched in the numbers to make the door unlock. “A friend, but he’s out of town. He’s trying to sell the place, and let me know the code to get in, so I could check it out.”
The door pushed open under John’s hand, and he reached back to grab Siena, and pull her inside with him. He shut the door behind them, and Siena’s laughter filled up the front hallway of the brownstone.
“Wait, shouldn’t the realtor be here, then?” she asked.
John shrugged. “Who cares?”
“Because it’s a break and entering charge, John!”
He only chuckled, and pulled her into his side. There, he could kiss her temple, and so he did just that.
She relaxed at the kiss. “At least you’re in a better mood than you were earlier.”
“Yeah, well, getting away from my family has its benefits.”
Siena frowned, but didn’t say more. John slipped his hand in with hers, and pulled her along. The first place he headed was for the stairs.
“I thought we were looking around?” she asked.
The two climbed the stairs to the second level, and then up to the third.
“Actually, there’s only one part of this place I’m interested in,” John said as they reached the top floor. It was an open concept space for what seemed to be an office on one side, and an artist’s studio on the other side. “Look up, babe.”
Siena did, and froze on the spot. “Holy shit.”
John grinned as he looked upward, too. The entire ceiling was actually inverted for an indoor pool that had been built into the roof. The pool was surrounded by heated frosted glass walls that provided privacy from the neighbors. It didn’t matter that it was February because it would feel like August inside the pool’s walls.
“Let’s go try it out,” John said.
Siena followed behind him at a slower pace as they climbed the stairs leading to the roof. “Are we really allowed to be in here?”
“Who’s going to tell, bella?”
She gave him a look. “Well, someone might.”
“Have some fun with me.”
“Kind of reckless, John.”
“Not even close to being reckless, Siena.”
She didn’t respond except to tug on his hand again. John simply tugged back, and pulled her the rest of the way up the stairs. When he opened the door to the roof where the entire pool was closed in, he got the first whiff of chlorine.
“Are you seriously considering buying this place?” she asked.
John tugged his shirt off, and then kicked off his socks, shoes, and pants. “Maybe. Do you like it?”
“I like your place in Queens, too.”
“That’s a rental.”
“I know, I just—”
“It’s temporary,” he added.
Siena gave him a look. “I like this, too, John.”
“How could you not, babe?”
Her grin made him wink when he shoved down his boxer-briefs.
And then he dove in the pool a second later. The heated pool felt like a giant bathtub as he cut through the water, and then came back up for air. It was only about twenty feet long and ten feet wide. There was no deep or shallow end as it was eight feet deep all the way across except for a small portion on the other side that seemed to go from a couple of feet deep into a slope until it met the eight-foot limit.
John sucked in air the second he broke the top of the water. Shaking his head, water droplets flew all over the place that had been clinging to his hair. He found Siena watching him from the edge of the pool in that way of hers.
Like she couldn’t stop.
Or she couldn’t get enough.
He loved it.
“Are you getting in, or what?”
“Maybe,” she said.
“Maybe?”
“Mmhmm.”
John grinned, and waded closer to her. “Get in, Siena.”
“I’m actually not a good swimmer.”
He cocked a brow. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, kind of.”
“Donna, everybody can float.”
Siena gave him another one of those looks. “Yeah, but—”
John reached up out of the water, grabbed her wrist, and yanked hard. Siena fell in the water with a shriek, coat, shoes, white dress and all. He kept his hands on her waist as he pulled her high, and let her break the surface.
“Oh, my God,” she growled at him, smacking his bare chest. “You ruined my coat!”
John kissed her lips, kept one arm around her back, and dragged the sopping wet coat off her arms. He tossed it aside to the side of the pool. “And I’ll buy you a new one.”
Siena sucked in a sharp breath. Her white, off the shoulder dress was almost entirely see-through now. Her wet hair stuck to her face. The caramel locks were darker when wet. John brushed them out of her eyes.
“I can’t believe you did that,” she said.
John smiled. “You have to be a little risky with me, Siena.”
“I told you I wasn’t a good swimmer, John.”
“You’re doing okay.”
“Because you’re holding onto me!”
“I always will,” he returned easily. “You know that, don’t you?”
Her anger melted away instantly. “Yeah, I do.”
“Good.”
Carefully, John moved them to the other side of the pool where it had that shallow slope for a good five feet. Siena rolled over to her back, and let the water lap around her while John sat beside her.
“I’m sorry about my mom,” he said after a moment.
“Don’t be. She really wasn’t trying to hurt you, or scare me off, John.”
“Doesn’t seem that way.”
“I wouldn’t ever lie to you.”
He looked down at her. “I know.”
And yet, he still had the tendrils of distrust and betrayal where his family was concerned. It was disconcerting. Like his heart was being tugged in two different directions. A familiar war that fought back and forth with his thoughts and emotions.
Overwhelming, really.
“I am worried about you, though,” she whispered.
John glanced down at her, and saw the truth in her gaze. He didn’t want her to worry at all. Not about him. He had his shit handled.
Didn’t he?
In a blink, he had rolled himself from his backside, to be hovering over Siena. She looked up at him through thick lashes, and gave him one of those sweet grins. He couldn’t help himself but to lean down and catch her teasing little mouth in a kiss.
Against her lips, he murmured, “With you, I am always fine.”
“Are you?”
Sea-blue eyes searched his gaze again.
“All the time, I feel like I’m drowning.” John dragged a finger down Siena’s parted lips and over the column of her throat. “Drowning in too much of everything. Responsibilities. Emotions. Reactions. People. Business. It never stops. Like I’m on my back in water, and it’s getting higher by the second.”
Kind of like her right then.
“But it doesn’t feel that way with you,” John admitted. “Or if it does, it’s a good feeling.”
“It’s good to drown?”
“To drown in you, sure.”
She reached for him, then, pulling him close again for a kiss that was harder, and deeper. Her tongue snaked into his mouth, and battled with his. Her hands slid down his naked, wet chest, and then her fingers slipped lower. His breath caught hard in his throat when her hands circled around his cock.
One stroke, then two.
Three, then four.
He was hard as hell in her palms, and she just kept stroking him awake even more.
“Fuck,” he grunted against her mouth. “You’re going to make me want something else, love.”
“Please.”
That was all she said.
Please.
His heart raced with want. His blood thickened with need.
He ran his hands down her sides, and grabbed a handful of her ass to grind her lower half in to him. She widened her legs even more, and hooked her heels at his lower back.
“Fuck, my pants are on the other side,” he said, dragging himself away from her mouth.
His unspoken words clung heavily in the air. They didn’t fuck without condoms. It was never a question as John always used them.
“I have the shot, John,” Siena said, stroking a finger down his lips. “I get it on time, and I’m not with anybody else.”
His gaze cut back to her. “I sure fucking hope not.”
Her eyes lowered.
He realized his mistake instantly.
“Me, either, huh?”
Siena nodded, and her lips curved at the edge. “Good to know. It’s fine, though. Just me and you, John.”
Yeah, him and her.
The way it should be.
The way he needed it to be.
John worked fast after that to drag Siena’s white cotton panties down over her legs, and toss them aside. Like the rest of her, the panties were soaked. He fit himself between her thighs, and let her pull him close as his cock slid through the lips of her sex.
Her back came up out of the water in an arch when he thrust in. Every single fucking inch of her took him in, and hugged him tight.
She was wet, sure, but her pussy was something else. Warmer than the water, and wrapping all around him. A deep ache settled in his chest as he tried to stay still for a second—long enough to feel her, and just be. Without something between them. All bare, and feeling everything because of it.
Just like that, he was inside her, and everything was right again.
He was alive again.
Breathing again.
Siena’s fingernails made red lines down his back when he drew out, and slammed right back in. Her white dress slid up under his hands, exposing more skin for him to kiss, and taste.
He liked her throat the best.
How sounds crawled from it when his tempo picked up. How her muscles and tendons strained when he fucked her harder. How her pulse raced when his teeth cut into her skin and left a mark behind.
He liked those marks.
It meant she was his
“Oh, my God, John.”
Her words were a light whisper in his hear.
Perfect and full of sin.
Blissed and high.
Fucking her did that to him, too.
Made him so goddamn high.
She came the first time with his name falling from her tongue. He flipped them over to get her on top for round two. He only let her ride him long enough to get that second orgasm, and then he was done for.
Nothing had ever felt better than coming inside her. He doubted anything would feel that good again.