Empire (Eagle Elite Book 7) (19 page)

With sad eyes, Gio reached for my arm and led me out of the church, past a furious Sergio.

When the doors were nearly shut behind us, all I could hear was colorful ways to say the word ass.

Love can transpose to form and dignity.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;

And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste.

Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste. –A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Sergio

I PUT UP
with their shit the entire drive back to the neighborhood. In five minutes I was going to have to face her, yet again, and feel nothing. It was unfair to ask her to go back to the way things were.

Where I was mean, cold, available, but distant.

We’d made leaps and bounds that morning. Hell we’d made leaps and bounds since the movie theater, but seeing the guys again reminded me of too much pain.

All that progress simply dissipated when Chase and Tex started bickering, because it reminded me of
her
, damn it. Everything they did reminded me of her. She’d fit in perfectly with them.

She’d been like one of the guys.

And Val wasn’t.

She was soft. Scared. Vulnerable.

She was the exact opposite of what I needed.

If Tex pulled a knife on her she’d pass out.

Andi would have stabbed him in the throat then asked where the popcorn was.

I was being unfair, comparing them, but that was what you did when you’d already had love and lost it — there was a giant measuring stick that nobody could even stand next to because you knew, even before they did, that they’d come up short every time.

We pulled up to the house, I unbuckled my seatbelt but Nixon slammed a hand against my chest.

“Stay.” His teeth snapped into a tight clench that hinted at how pissed he was.

Everyone got out of the car except for Chase.

Nixon let out a groan. “Really, man? Don’t make me shoot you. Just go, I’ll give you details later.”

“Kill joy,” Chase muttered then slammed the door behind him leaving me and Nixon in a super fun tense silence.

I just loved being alone with him and his twitchy finger. Hell, he probably had three guns on him and, at least two of those, magically trained on me just for shits and giggles.

“Cousin?” I licked my lips. “Do we have a problem?”

“We?” His eyebrows shot up. “You’re a piece of shit, you know that right?”

“Fully aware but it’s always nice to hear compliments from family.”

“And a jackass.” He pounded my chest with his hand, shoving me against the seat.

“Noted.”

“And an idiot.”

“Yup.”

With a sigh, he released me and ran his tattooed hands through his unruly hair. “My wife’s pregnant. I don’t want to be here. Phoenix is one phone call away from needing to fly a red-eye back to Chicago because Bee’s in her last trimester, and I had to physically restrain Mil to keep her from hopping on a plane to kick you in the nuts.”

“We needed one boss to stay behind.”

“Right, you say that to her and see where it gets you.”

I smirked.

“None of this is funny. They’re initiated, fine, they’re in, the blood’s been spilled… but we need a decision, and we need to get them out of here, and we need to do it in a way that doesn’t seem like we’re putting them back in hiding. Add in your whole ‘Xavier wants to meet with Tex’ information you dropped on us this morning, not to mention the irritating fact that the very girl you’re supposed to be helping looks like she wants to put a bullet between your eyes, and well…” He leaned his head back against the seat. “Hell, Frank needs to stop keeping information from us.”

“More Phoenix than Frank.”

“Damn Phoenix.”

“Nixon, this job is mine, not yours.”

His mocking laugh wasn’t helpful. “And you think you’re doing a bang up job? A promise is a promise, you need to marry her.”

“I know that.”

“And the other part?”

I stared down at my hands.

“Sergio, you’ve told her the other part, right?”

I bit down on my lower lip and looked out the window at all the ignorant people who passed our car. If they only knew.

“She deserves to know what she’s getting into, Sergio.”

“And she does.”

“But does she know what else Luca said? What he demanded? For her protection?”

My chest was so tight it was hard to breathe. “No.”

“She thinks your marriage will be in name only.” Nixon said it like a statement. “Doesn’t she?”

“A simple business agreement.” I felt numb, from head to toe, numb.

“Aw, hell, Serg, your days are numbered, man.”

“I was going to tell her after we were married.”

“So she could kill you in your sleep?”

“She’s not violent.”

Something white fluttered out of the window and landed on our car.

I blinked, my mind struggling to make sense of what my eyes were seeing.

A wedding dress.

That had been shredded with scissors.

“Not violent, hmm?”

“Son of a bitch.” I punched the leather seat with my fist and reached for the door.

“Sergio, tell her before we leave.”

“Tonight?”

He nodded.

“And Xavier?”

“Tex means to poke the bear. We bow down now or later, he chooses later. We’ll deliver a message and gauge his response.”

“What kind of message?”

“Sorry, Frank already called dibs.”

“Nixon!” I groaned. “You know it would be helpful if I shot something.”

“Shoot Chase, he’s still a pain in my ass, but this demonstration is all Frank’s. Besides, it’s his mess. Let him clean it up.”

“Fine.” I opened the door just as a shoe box fell directly in front of my face colliding with my boots.

The heels popped out of the box.

I froze.

They were Andi’s

I’d recognize those shoes anywhere.

Barely noticeable grass stains marred the spiked heel, and a piece of blue fabric had been sewn across the open toe.

Without thinking, I gathered them in my hands and charged into the house, ready to toss Val over my knee if that’s what it took to get a confession.

Maybe I’d shoot something after all.

Her.

For wrecking yet another memory of my dead wife.

How can these things come to pass? O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now! –A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Frank

SERGIO DAMN NEAR
took off the door. His aggression was palpable, the air tinged with his bitterness, his anger. I let out a sigh as he rushed past me and took the stairs two at a time.

The rest of the men communed in the kitchen.

I stayed back.

The sound of wine pouring and Sergio yelling at Val filled the air.

I leaned against the stairway, wincing. My bones ached. There used to be days I would go without sleep, where the sunlight and darkness melted into one another in consecutive hours, time slipped away.

And now, time it seemed, was doing the exact same thing.

“Bless him, Father,” I mumbled under my breath. Was that my sin then? To bear the weight of poor choices on my shoulders, while Luca toasted to Andi in heaven?

It was as if each jagged piece I tried to pick up and put back together again embedded itself into my skin. I bled, I bled, I bled some more, and then the piece would finally attach itself. The process would repeat.

Because where there was pain.

There was also healing.

I shut my eyes just as Phoenix rounded the corner. “Do you hear that?”

“I hear everything. I’m not deaf.” Not that old either, but I was tired of arguing my point every damn time one of the young ones opened their mouths to bitch.

“He’s yelling—” Phoenix’s voice lowered “—at an innocent girl.”

“That’s life.” I opened my eyes and stared him down. “That’s her lot in life, Phoenix. Sometimes we yell, not so others will listen, but because we hurt so deeply within — screaming is the only option.”

“It’s a shitty option.” Phoenix’s eyes were wild. “She can’t defend herself, not like Andi did.”

“She isn’t Andi.” My voice was calm, because even I, the eldest, the one who had seen the most death was, still, in my own way, mourning a life that Luca had deemed worthy of the Family, a life was still a life, and it meant something, even to me. “She will never be Andi.”

Phoenix pointed up at the stairs. “But does he know that?”

“Of course.” I slapped Phoenix on the shoulder. “It is why he yells.”

He swallowed, looking away as the weight of my hand pressed into him.

We were silent.

I was often silent with Phoenix.

He wasn’t a man who talked through things, but, oh, how he thought. He thought with the best of them, his brain calculating, his judgments swift.

“Do you remember?” A sad smile started at the corner of his right cheek and spread across to his left, the motion making him look more human. “All her little… tasks?”

I chuckled, and removed my hand. “I remember she was a pain in your ass as much as she was a pain in mine.”

“Frank!”

I stood, trying to escape, Phoenix gave me a helpless look as Andi breezed into the room carrying a giant box, papers fluttered out of it. “Shit!” She stomped her foot and grabbed the papers then nearly fell across the table until Phoenix rescued her and sat her in the chair. She was losing strength too fast.

When you loved someone, you wished for death to be swift, not slow with uncalculated highs or lows that the human brain couldn’t possibly keep up with or manage.

“Okay, so here’s the deal.” Andi stood, even though she should be resting, since she’d just gotten out of the hospital. “Sergio’s kind of a jackass.”

Phoenix rolled his eyes. “Yes, let’s keep making true statements all day long. That sounds like fun.”

“And…” Andi said, holding up her hand. “…he’s going to revert to his jackass ways once I’m gone.”

Phoenix opened his mouth then stared at me as he whispered, “I’d rather not talk about you… being gone.”

“Tough shit.” Andi punched him in the shoulder. “Now, open the box and let me explain.”

I eyed the wine, Andi caught me staring and, with an over-exaggerated sigh, she poured us both two healthy glasses and then whispered, “It’s going to be epic.”

“What is?” Phoenix asked. Brave man.

“His story,” Andi whispered. “His love story is going to be epic.”

I rejected the thought.

And then I saw the tears well in her eyes. To be peaceful about one’s death, to plan for your spouse’s happily ever after, knowing you would never get one.

It took guts.

It took bravery.

And I vowed right then and there, I would do everything in my power to help her.

Until I was killed.

Or God took me from this earth.

Because finally, I’d found something worthy to live for.

Funny how it had been staring at me all this time without my knowledge. Joyce would have laughed at me. Luca would have said something cheeky about knowing all along.

I was going to fight.

Not for my own love.

But for his.

Because, God, if anyone on this earth deserved it…

It was Sergio.

“You can’t say a word beyond what I tell you…” Andi pulled out a journal and began to write. “From Russia, With love.”

“You okay, Frank?” Phoenix frowned. “You look a little, pale.”

“Memories,” I said in a gruff tone. “It appears they age me.”

He let out a snort. “They age us all.”

Sergio’s voice rose again. I nodded in the direction of the stairway. “Give him a warning, enough to jar him out of his insanity, don’t kill him.”

Sergio yelled louder.

“You sure about the not killing part?” Phoenix reached for his gun.

“Are you?”

Phoenix gave an eye-roll. “Fine.” He took the stairs slowly.