JOHN SHOVED his legs into his pants. “You’re sure I got here around twelve last night?”
Siena crawled out of the bed. “Yeah, around then.”
She kept the sheet clutched to her chest. It wasn’t like she was trying to hide her body from him, or anything. Most of the night before had been spent with them in bed together. He arrived at her place looking like he was out of his mind, and without a thing to say.
He didn’t want to talk. He only wanted to fuck.
Siena hadn’t been able to turn him away. As much as it killed her to see John like that, and to let him use her like that, she let him in. She had already let him into her heart, her bed, and into her life.
What difference would last night make?
None at all.
Fact was, Siena was selfish. She wanted John. She didn’t care about the rest—those were details that they could handle at another time. She needed him close, and she wanted him with her. No matter his frame of mind, she just wanted him.
So, when he showed up at her door, she didn’t ask questions. She didn’t press him for information, or ask him where he had been. She didn’t demand to know why he hadn’t answered her phone calls or reply to any of her texts. He was there, and that was all that mattered.
“Did I smell like smoke?” he asked.
Siena frowned. “Smoke?”
“That’s what I said!”
Siena straighten on the spot, and clutched the sheet tighter in her fist. “You don’t need to yell at me, John.”
“I didn’t yell.”
“You don’t even hear yourself right now, do you?”
John hesitated when he grabbed his shirt. Instead of putting it on, he stared over at her. The two of them stood like that, staring at each other for a long while before one of them finally spoke and broke the silence.
“Have you seen your therapist?” Siena asked.
John’s throat bobbed with a swallow. “Monday, maybe. Or Tuesday.”
“You’re not sure?”
“One of those days.”
Siena nodded once. “When you did actually see her, have you told her that you haven’t been taking your meds?”
John tensed all over. In a blink, Siena could see how his entire demeanor changed at her simple question. She doubted anyone had outright asked him that lately, if at all. Had he even been around anyone who would dare to ask him that question?
“Have you told her?”
“I’ve been taking my meds,” John said.
“Have you?” Siena asked. “I’ve seen your meds, John. I counted the pills. They don’t add up to the prescription and fill date.”
His jaw hardened as his lips pulled back into a sneer. He turned on her with that look, and she knew something nasty was about to leave his mouth. A defense mechanism, maybe. Or it could have even been his mania still manifesting in a verbal form.
Siena really didn’t know.
She couldn’t let this go.
“Before you speak,” she told him, “think very carefully about what you want to say to me. Consider if I am asking these things to hurt you, or because I care, John.”
His posture softened.
As did his expression.
Siena took that as a good sign.
“My meds aren’t important right now,” John eventually said. “What I need to know is what happened last night.”
“You showed up here.”
“Nothing else? I didn’t say anything? I didn’t tell you anything?”
“No, all you really wanted to do was fuck, actually.”
John shook his head, and pulled the shirt on. “I need to know what happened last night.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Then what fucking use are you?”
Siena sucked in a hard breath. His words stabbed at her skin, and cut out her heart. He might as well have just punched her in the chest, and ripped her heart out from between her rib cage. It would have hurt just the same.
“I’m sorry,” John quickly said. “I didn’t mean that.”
And yet, even when he apologized, he was still getting dressed. He didn’t look at her, or see how badly his words had hurt when they made their impact.
He didn’t know at all.
His impulse control, judgement, and empathy was gone out the window.
Entirely.
“I know.”
And she did know.
But it still hurt.
It still worried her.
Then, John’s words came out in a ramble. A mess of thoughts and feelings that Siena could only stand there and listen to, but not do much else. It was more than he had said to her in a long while.
Too long, really.
She thought it was probably the most honest thing he had said in a long while, too.
“The bitch kept messing with my meds,” he said. “First it was I needed to try this, and then try that. Up this dose, and then lower that dose. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. All the meds put me in this goddamn fog that I couldn’t get out of. I would be sleeping twelve hours a day, and I could barely think when I was awake. I told her—I told her again, and then I would tell her again, but all she would do was tell me to give it time. Like I had to let the fucking meds do what they had to do, and let them settle. She wasn’t even fucking giving them time to settle.”
John scrubbed a hand down his face. “She didn’t seem to want to fucking listen to me when I said the one was enough. The Lithium worked for me for the last three years when I was in lockup. She kept saying this wasn’t lock up. I felt like her fucking lab rat.”
Siena came a little bit closer to him, being careful and mindful in her steps. She didn’t reach out, or try to touch him despite how much she wanted to. And oh, how she wanted to.
Her heart ached for her to touch him.
Her fingers itched to feel him.
All of her wanted all of him.
Even like this.
“Back when I went after my sister, I was without my meds for a little while,” he continued, shaking his head with a bitter laugh. “It’s strange how your own head fucks with you—makes you think you’re okay without the meds because you feel better for a split second. I got back after going after Lucia, and I wasn’t in a fog. So, I started dropping the cocktail of meds the bitch kept feeding me.”
“John,” she said, “please let me help you. I love you. You know that, don’t you? You have to know I love you.”
John’s hazel gaze drifted to her. “Do you?”
“You think that I can’t?”
“I think that maybe you shouldn’t.”
“I do.”
John reached for her then, and his arms wrapped around her. He dragged her close. There, in his embrace, she was happy again. They were fine again.
It would only last a moment.
It would never last forever.
It couldn’t.
“I love you,” he murmured against her forehead.
That was enough for Siena.
That was all she needed.
It made everything else worth it.
• • •
John kept Siena close to his side as they headed in a restaurant that looked to be in the midst of renovations. She didn’t recognize the business, and since she was always aware of when her father or brothers bought a new business, she knew this one didn’t belong to the Calabrese.
“Neutral grounds,” John said, as though he could read her mind. “This belongs to a Donati man. They agreed to allow the Marcello and Calabrese families to gather here for this meeting. That way, no one is stepping on anyone else’s toes here, so to speak.”
Siena nodded. “Makes sense.”
Inside the restaurant, she found more people than she expected waiting. She recognized almost all of them. Men from her father’s family, and several people from John’s side.
At the head of the room, her father and Dante Marcello stood toe-to-toe. The two men looked as though they were ready to brawl. She took that as a bad fucking sign.
At Siena and John’s presence, the two men finally looked away from one another. She wasn’t sure that she particularly like their attention on them, either.
“John, move to anywhere except where you currently are,” Dante said.
John didn’t move an inch. “No, I don’t think I will.”
Matteo look at Siena. “I’ve called you five times this morning.”
Her gaze drifted between her father, and her brothers standing with the other men of the Calabrese family. She could feel their judgment, and their silent opinions searing into her skin. She didn’t need to hear them say it, not when she could feel it.
“Busy,” she said.
Matteo coughed as his gaze cut to John. “I bet.”
“Why would you bring a woman here?” Dante asked.
“I brought her here because she asked to come.”
Siena’s fingers tighten around John’s. She no longer wanted to let him go. Something felt like a thorn pricking at her heart. Her worst fear was that someone would take John away from her—because of this, or something else.
It didn’t matter, because the end result would be the same.
John would not be with her.
Siena had barely finished getting dressed earlier when John’s phone started to ring again. This time, it was not Andino calling him, but his uncle. I’m eating, was all he said.
He was to be there—at the meeting.
No matter what.
That was the order.
Siena didn’t even think about what it would mean if she went with him to the meeting. She only knew that she wanted to go. John agreed, and so here she was.
“He burned down my warehouse,” Matteo said, his gaze darting back to Dante. “You will answer for that, or he will. I do not care which one it is.”
“You don’t know for sure that—”
Matteo took one more step forward, the threat blazing in his eyes. “Who the fuck else would have done it, Marcello, you? One of your men, perhaps? Did you order it because you felt I was too close? You never did like it when the Calabrese get close to your men. Did you finally have enough?”
Dante’s jaw hardened, but his face gave away nothing. Not an emotion, nothing at all.
“There’s a reason why the Marcellos and the Calabrese don’t mix business,” Dante said. “And you know very well what that reason is, Matteo.”
“And yet,” Matteo said, “you had no problem with my daughter and your nephew.”
“I had every problem with it.”
Matteo sneered, and his eyes drifted to John once more. “Who’s to say he didn’t do it? Everyone in your family knows the man is unstable. Hell, anyone who spends time with him knows it.”
John’s stiffened beside Siena. She held tighter to him when she felt his muscles tense as though he was about to spring forward. His body felt like a winding coil about to come undone.
“John,” she whispered too low for anyone else to hear, “it’s okay.”
It was like he didn’t hear her at all.
“Say that again,” John uttered.
Matteo gaze stayed firmly on John when he said, “It’s no secret that you’re crazy, John. The way you go on sometimes, and the shit you do … this isn’t a surprise. What is a surprise is how long your family was able to keep it quiet.”
Siena couldn’t keep her hold on John after that statement. He ripped away from her side like a bullet shooting from a gun. He was a foot away from her father before someone was quick enough to step in and grab him.
Actually, several people.
And just like that, a meeting that had a possibility to be peaceful and calm was now chaos and violence.
“Say that again!”
John’s words echoed above the shouting men.
Only a laugh answered him back.
Held back by his cousin, father, and uncle, they were barely keeping ahold of John. Matteo gave another one of his sneers. A signature look for her father. Something he always gave to someone when he felt above them, and he wanted them to know they were beneath him.
She was not surprised to see him use it on John.
“I think this meeting is done,” Dante said.
Matteo turned away, and waved a hand to his men. “It was done before it ever began, Dante. We both know that. We’re leaving.”
Siena moved toward John, but she didn’t make it far.
Kev grabbed her arm forcefully enough to leave bruises behind, and dragged her with him. Her protests, and her shouts to be left alone, went unheard. All she saw was the burning hazel of John’s eyes before the restaurant door slammed closed.
• • •
Siena’s heart felt as heavy as her feet. As though cement had been poured in both, and were now weighing her down.
She glanced back at the enforcer who stood with his arms crossed at the car. He kept an eye on her—a threatening eye—as she stood on the sidewalk. Her new best friend, as her father like to say.
She couldn’t go anywhere without the enforcer either driving her, or following her.
Today was no exception.
The enforcer was just one new change in her life since the week before. Her father had also taken her cell phone away, and refused to provide her with a new one. The freedom she had been given with living away from home was suddenly ripped from her grasp. She had been relocated to her parents’ home without any explanation.
Her days now consisted of waking up, working wherever her father told her she had to work, and going home to her parents’ brownstone.
She didn’t know where John was, and had not spoken to him in days. She didn’t even know if he was okay.
“Are you going in?” the enforcer asked from behind her.
Siena gritted her teeth, and forced herself to be polite. There was no need to make the man run back to her father, and report bad behavior. All that would make for was another long night with Matteo raging on.
She didn’t need that.
Nobody needed that.
She was struggling between keeping her father happy, and needing to know something—anything—about John.
“Well?”
Siena looked back at the enforcer. “Yeah, I’m going in.”
“I’ll be here waiting when you get out.”
Unfortunately, Siena didn’t doubt it.
She headed into the business, and was thankful that today, the restaurant wasn’t as busy as it usually was. Instead of heading right for the back to an office to work, she went to the bar first. The blonde acting as the bartender for the day gave her a smile.
“Want a drink?”
Siena laughed. “A whole bottle would be great.”
“Not sure I can do that.”
“How about something to make this day worth it?”
“One of those, huh?”
Siena scoffed—the girl had no idea. “One of those.”
The girl nodded. “Yeah, I got something for that.”
Less than a minute later, the bartender slid three fingers worth of whiskey across the bar in a lowball glass. Siena eyed the drink, but didn’t pick it up. She really wasn’t a big drinker, but she also really needed something to get through the damn day.
“You don’t like whiskey?”
“Not particularly.”
“Throw it back fast, and hold your breath.”
Siena did just that, but the whiskey still burned, and her chest felt like it was on fire when she sucked in a hard breath. At the same time, a deep warmth spread through her blood and body. It was enough to feel like she might make it a couple more hours today without a breakdown.
Anything to get through the damn day.
Siena pushed the glass back to the bartender. “Did you see my brothers come in yet?”
The woman nodded once. “Yeah, both of them. They’re in the back.”
Great.
Not wanting to waste any more time lest Darren or Kev get on the phone to her father, Siena headed for the back of the restaurant. She still walked a bit slower than normal to get that extra minute or two, so she didn’t have to be in the presence of one of her brothers. What a sad mess her life had become.
She heard the voices of her brothers filtering down the hall the closer she came to the office. Kev first, and then Darren.
“The Marcellos are in a fit,” Kev said.
“It worked, though,” Darren replied. “Shame we couldn’t get John to turn on them like Dad first wanted.”
“Can only do so much. Move onto Plan B, when Plan A doesn’t work out the way you want it to. Dad couldn’t get John in close enough, so he pushed him on a little bit with the file. Still didn’t get enough out of that, so we made it worse by burning the warehouse. See what all that did for us?”
“We’re going to have to be careful for a little while,” Darren said. “On the streets, I mean. I got word it’s going to be all out war once we finish this off.”
“Who would have thought the Marcello family gave that much of a shit about a fuck up like Johnathan Marcello?” Kev laughed. “As if being fucking crazy isn’t enough of a disgrace for his family with the bipolar, now they’re going to back him in this mess, too.”
“You don’t know that. You’re assuming they’ll back him here, but maybe this could be a last straw type of deal for them,” Darren said. “How long has he been like this—how many messes have they cleaned up for him over the years? John’s crazy. It didn’t take very much for us to make it worse for him. I don’t think he can count on his family as much this time around.”
Kev’s laughter came out louder the second time around. “Let’s hope that’s the motherfucking truth. Either way, they’re all going down.”
Siena couldn’t stop her footsteps if she tried. Her heart filled with rage and hate as she stepped in the office doorway. Both brothers looked her way, but neither of them seemed very surprised to see her standing there.
“You’re late,” Kev said.
Story of her fucking life.
“I’m always late,” she said. “It’s nothing new.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve got work to do,” Darren said. “So get to it.”
She had other shit to do now, too.
“How fucking dare you?”
Darren’s gaze narrowed.
Kev’s eyebrow raised. “Excuse me?”
Siena didn’t bat a lash. “You heard what I said, and I heard exactly what you were just saying, too.”
“Heard that did you?” Kev asked, waving a hand at her as if to flick her away from him. “Listen, Siena, you know enough about this business to know the Marcello family and the Calabrese family can’t mix. The fact that Dad let you go on as long as he did with John should have been a hint that something was up.”
Should it have?
She didn’t think it should.
“How did you know?” she asked. “About John’s disorder, I mean.”
Darren smirked. “We had our suspicions. Rumors travel far and wide in this business, you know.”
“And you forgot about this little thing called browsing history,” Kev added.
Siena’s heart stopped for a split second. She knew exactly what her brother was talking about without even asking for him to explain. The one time she had searched for information about her suspicions regarding Johnathan, she had used a computer in one of Kev’s offices. Sure, she had closed the browser in time, but she should have known better than to trust her brother.
Privacy was an illusion for Siena. She wasn’t actually granted any at all when it came to the men of her family. She should not have assumed otherwise. Look what happened.
Marcellos were right.
The Calabrese family was full of snakes.
And she was looking at two of them.
“Don’t worry,” Kev said, “this will all be over soon. Dad will get what he wants, and we can all move on. This has been a long time in the making, Siena, and you won’t be the one to ruin it.”
“And what does that mean?” she asked.
Kev shrugged from his position behind the desk, saying, “Well, the Marcellos are two seconds away from starting a war with the Calabrese. A war Dad thinks he can win. They just need a little shove.”
“Might as well start with John,” Darren added.
Siena’s soul slipped from her body. She swore it did. Nothing had ever felt quite so painful before.
“You’re a Calabrese, Siena,” Kev said. “You should really start acting like it.”