“Ma, what are you doing here?” I steeled myself, acted normal, and led Sloane past the threshold.
My mother’s eyes fell on Sloane. Her nostrils flared and her jaw tightened. “You’re a friend of Bianca.”
“Yes. Sloane Scott.”
“We’ve met,” she replied. “Briefly.” Her gaze grew more disdainful when I lowered the cat carrier to let Ginger out. “What is this I’m hearing that you’re sleeping at The Grindhouse and got booted out of this penthouse?” She scrunched her nose and stepped away from Ginger when the cat circled her warily like Ma was an intruder.
Double fuck.
“No one booted me out. I wanted Sloane to stay here even when she offered to stay somewhere else.”
“Oh.” She reared back, appearing a little relieved, but her eyes drifted to the elaborate dahlia arrangement. “What’s your relationship to each other?”
After the initial shock of seeing my mother here, I gave her a peck on the cheek. “Ma, you know I love you with all my heart, but it’s none of your business.”
“Dominic!” she exclaimed my name with an Italian accent and offended tone.
“What? It’s not,” I replied in a teasing but firm manner.
Sloane laughed. She actually laughed, but she stepped to my side. “What Dom is trying to say is he wants us to be more, but I’m saying no.”
“You’re saying no to my son?” I worried about Ma’s blood pressure. Her entire face said how dare you reject my son, you commoner.
“But I’m hoping she’ll say yes.” I turned to Sloane. “Baby, can you give Ma and me a minute? And if you see my dear sister, please send her my way.”
“The problem, Dom, is this penthouse is massive, and it’s hard to tell if someone is around,” Sloane called as she sashayed away with her head held high.
My mother had the manners to at least wait until Sloane was out of sight before she leaned closer and hissed, “Dom, she’s the cleaner.”
I was prepared for her snobbery, but it still pissed me off. “So?”
“I don’t like to look down on people’s jobs—”
“Yet that’s what you’re doing—”
“And you don’t think she’s a gold digger?”
“Ma, do you know how hard I had to convince her to live here? You have no clue what happened to her because of my fuckup. She can take all this”—I waved my arm around the penthouse—“and it wouldn’t matter. I want her back. I’ll crawl on my knees if I have to.”
“What did you do?” she whispered.
“I. Fucked. Up. You’ll be ashamed I’m your son.”
“Moretti men always fuck up.” She said it in a way that everyone was supposed to forgive Moretti men, anyway.
“At least I got my head outta my ass sooner than Zio Luca.”
She harrumphed. “I don’t know what people will say. My son. A Harvard grad, a billionaire. A Moretti!”
“Ugh, Mamma, who cares?” Lucy came down the stairs looking like she just rolled out of bed.
“How are you feeling, stellina?”
“I’m better.”
Huh, since when did Ma start calling Lucy her little star again? It momentarily suppressed the rise of my temper, but my mother continuing to pile on her prejudice against Sloane was making it a struggle not to lash out at her.
In my years as don, I’d learned the art of negotiation. I was the even-tempered one among my De Lucci cousins and Luca. One would say handling my mother prepared me to be the statesman when it came to family. But I never had someone storming in from the outside like Sloane who I valued above the threat of losing the even hand I employed to running the crime family.
Protect that choice with your life.
I was choosing Sloane, but until I came to grips with how to deal with Sloane and my mother, I needed to tread carefully so one didn’t resent the other.
Resentment poisons relationships. Sloane knew this would happen, and she didn’t force me to choose a side because family was everything in the mafia.
Lucy was a welcome distraction. “You’re sick?”
“Just exhausted,” she mumbled, giving our mother a kiss before heading to the kitchen.
“I brought pastina,” Ma called.
“What are you exhausted over?” Suspicion entered my tone. Sequestering Lucy to this penthouse and vetoing her return to DC didn’t keep her out of trouble. She did most of her “fixer” work through the web and on her phone. Which, surprisingly, she didn’t have in hand. She must be really sick.
“This and that.”
“Lucy…” I warned in a sterner voice.
Ma intervened and joined Lucy in the kitchen. She lovingly swiped the disheveled hair from my sister’s face. “Just no more mischief, huh?”
Mischief? She nearly started a war between the Italian and Russian mafias, and Washington. But I let her focus on Lucy.
“Mrs. Einhorn says I should marry you off, so you will stop meddling in her son’s business.”
Ma had been furious at Lucy when she said Mrs. Einhorn’s son lost a position in the attorney general’s office because she’d exposed his drug use in college where a coed died.
I grew up in a life of privilege and my mother gave a lot of passes to men because she still subscribed to a patriarchal society. Pop balanced her out and so did Aunt Ava, who wasn’t afraid to call out my mother on her shit when she was letting her spoiled-mafia-princess upbringing of the eighties derail decades of hard work for us to become the most modern crime family in the northeast.
“You’re just annoyed because you can’t marry off Dom.” Lucy shot me a snarky look. “Sorry, bro. Heat’s on me, so back to you.”
I couldn’t even be pissed at her. Ma had been lamenting the unmarried state of her children ever since Cesar and Ava’s brood started falling like flies. Matteo and Sera, Bianca and Sandro even got married twice.
My mother’s eyes followed the path to where Sloane disappeared. “Now, about the cleaner.”
“Her name is Sloane.”
Ma scrunched her nose. “Awful name.”
“It’s a badass name,” Lucy piped in, serving herself a bowl of pastina.
“Thank you.”
“She’s got exquisite features,” Ma admitted slowly. “But she’s not very cultured.”
My mother’s euphemism for uncouth.
Lucy must have sensed the stiffening of my body.
“Sloane is just rough around the edges.” Lucy swallowed a spoonful of pastina and sat at the table. “This is good, Ma. Why don’t you guys sit and eat? You’re looking long in the tooth there.” She eyed me slyly, recognizing how it was costing me not to go off on our mother’s attacks on Sloane.
“Sloane doesn’t need much to knock a man on his ass,” Lucy continued. “I think that’s why brother here is afraid to show her off in public.”
“She was at the New Year’s Eve party,” I reminded her.
“But it’s mostly our family and close associates, then. People you can control. Imagine if it was at a gala?”
“Oh,” my mother interjected, walking over to the kitchen counter and picking up a fancy-looking envelope. “This is for the Russian masked ball benefit.”
When I made no move to accept, she put it down, mouth tightening. “It’s something I’m helping Irina Zahkarov organize. It’s an exclusive event like the Met Gala. Think about it. It’s three weeks from now.”
She gave an annoyed exhalation and closed our distance. She leaned in, as if not wanting Lucy to hear, but my sister was within earshot, anyway.
“She’s a lovely woman, but I don’t want you to make a mistake.”
My jaw clenched. “And I’m not going to welcome your interference.”
“I’m not interfering,” she gasped. “I’m your mother.”
“And you’re done.” I put my hand at the small of her back and nudged her toward the foyer. “I suggest you leave before we both say something we’ll regret.”
Her eyes softened. Aunt Ava once told me my mother had a good heart, but she was just too pampered by the people around her.
At the door, she turned pleading eyes to me again, “Dominic—”
I cut her off. “Do you remember how Cesar’s boys are with their obsession?”
She scoffed, “That’s a myth to explain their recklessness.”
She was talking about Renz, of course, as if that was her barometer of how the De Lucci obsession myth only led to bad decisions. But Renz and Liz were ridiculously happy in their bubble.
“I think I have it,” I said just as my mother’s mouth curved into a sneer I loathed seeing on her face. It revealed her petty personality that I detested. “Except my Moretti side also preordained me to fuck up first.”
“Why is your Moretti side always the problem?” my mother asked. “We have been a respected Sicilian family, and that is why the Zahkarov dynasty has always picked us as first choice. I just feel bad we keep turning them down.”
“Are you afraid of losing status?” I asked my mother bluntly. “Does it even matter? You’re happy with Pop. Maybe you should hang around a less snobby crowd and turn your attention to family. I mean, there’s Luca. He’s happy with Natalya. And Elias is your nephew.”
“Oh, now you put grandkids in Mamma’s brain,” Lucy groaned from the kitchen.
And just like that, Ma’s face softened. She cupped my jaw and squeezed. “I love you very much, caro, and I trust you’ll know what to do. What’s right for this family.” She kissed my cheek, and even if I couldn’t see her, I could feel Lucy roll her eyes, but I was glad she kept her mouth shut because I needed Ma to get gone.
I closed the door behind her but was only relieved when I heard the elevator.
When I turned around, Lucy’s head was bent over her soup, but she was shaking her head.
“What?” I snapped.
She glanced up. “You know that’s Mamma being passive-aggressive, right?”
“Trust me, I know. I’ve handled her enough times to know. And what’s the deal with you being loving one moment and antagonistic the next? Don’t play with Ma’s feelings that way, Luce.”
“Who’s the grown-up?”
“She’s fragile, you know that.”
“She’s manipulative is what she is.” And I was about to snarl at her when she added, “But…I’m learning because, hey, I’m twenty-six and more mature, right?”
“You still want to do things to get her blood pressure up. You know she has that condition.”
“I know! I’m trying, all right? I just get so pissed when she turns that privileged nose at people. Her health doesn’t give her a pass to do that.”
I walked toward her. “You know, she’d be more agreeable to your point of view if you didn’t antagonize her at each turn.”
She laughed, lifting her bowl and finishing her soup. “Your strategy, I presume.”
“Yeah, you won’t make a good lawyer.”
“Hey…”
“Is the coast clear?” a voice spoke from the stairs. Sloane must have been eavesdropping. Not that I blamed her. My mother was a lot to take for people not used to her. She was standing midway down the flight of steps that led to the second level of the penthouse. She was wearing cute blue pajamas that set off her mass of red hair. I could see the green of her eyes. My chest tightened. I wanted to come home to this. And this penthouse wouldn’t be my home until Sloane made it hers.
I met her at the bottom of the stairs. “I’m sorry my mother ambushed us.”
“Why are you sorry?” she said. “This is still your penthouse. Looks like she’s the one who owes you an apology.”
“What?”
“Boundaries,” she said. “You asked me to stay here. I’m not feeling guilty about that anymore.”
“You shouldn’t.”
She nodded to the foyer. “Your mother was civil enough not to call me a gold digger to my face, even if that sentiment is closed-captioned over hers.” She laughed in a way I wasn’t sure was mocking or pure humor. “Aaaand, judging from the look on yours, she did say it to you, and no, I didn’t hear it.”
And as though the subject was closed, she walked to the kitchen. “That looks good.”
“Here.” Lucy slid a bowl toward her. “I’m still hungry, though. I’m not sure pastina is going to cut it.”
“We can order takeout.” Sloane fished out her phone from her pajama pocket.
“For fuck’s sake,” I growled and walked toward the fridge and opened it. “The fridge is full. I called in a whole grocery order.”
“Yes, and we’ll have to cook it,” Lucy retorted.
“What do you feel like eating?” Sloane asked.
I forgot I was in the presence of two women who didn’t like to cook unless it was simply to boil water. “Put that phone away.”
I grabbed the marinated short ribs and broccoli from the refrigerator. “I can bake it or fry it.”
“Fried,” Sloane and Lucy piped up in unison.
After dinner of Korean short ribs, rice, and steamed broccoli, Sloane shooed me from the kitchen, insisting that Lucy and she were on cleanup. My sister protested that she was sick, but I now knew she was full of shit. She was exhausted because she’d been eating crap when I wasn’t around. I wondered how she survived in DC, probably on delivery and eating out.
I’d finished packing more clothes into a duffel and several suits into a garment bag. When I returned to the main living area, the women were already browsing streaming channels.
“What are we watching?” Sloane asked.
“Action,” I suggested.
“There’s this new political thriller about an ambassador,” Lucy said. “It’s two seasons. I’ve been avoiding it since I already worked in DC, but I’ve been missing the rush.”
“I’m game,” Sloane said.
“You don’t have to go with what Lucy wants,” I told Sloane.
“Sit your ass down, bro.” Lucy pointed to the comfy armchair.
She was using her phone to control my home theater system. What the fuck? “You reconfigured my shit?”
Lucy laughed. “What did you expect? You own a high-end club, yet you’re still relying on so many remotes for your different crap.”
“I change my phone all the time.” I sighed, resigned to let my sister take over. “And I wasn’t good about backing things up.”
“Don’t say that to me,” Lucy teased. “Or I can use that against you.”
“Have at it.”
I glanced at Sloane to ask her if she wanted a drink before settling down for the show, but the warm look on her face gave me pause.
“You two are so cute when you argue,” she said.
“Cute?” I drawled, but if it was something that would change her mind about what she thought of me, that I was a regular guy, an older brother joking around with his kid sister, then I was all for it. I caught Lucy’s secretive smile.
The little she-devil knew what she was doing. She wasn’t blatant about it, but she was giving me a chance not to fuck up and to show Sloane I wasn’t simply a ruthless crime boss.
Just don’t mess with my family, or my woman.
“Okay, enough with the flirting.” Lucy took over the coveted chaise seating of the sectional. Sloane sat in the middle, tucking her legs under her. Ginger jumped up on her side.
Sloane glanced at me. “You can sit beside us if you want.”
I raised a brow.
“I trust you enough not to try anything with your sister around unless…” She eyed Lucy. “Do you have a habit of falling asleep while watching television?”
“I slept all day, which means I’ll be awake all night, so you’re safe.”
It seemed like a courtship, complete with a chaperone.
I moved to Sloane’s side, just enough distance to feel her warmth, but not too close I was crowding her.
Ginger transferred from her lap to mine.
“Traitor,” Sloane muttered.
“I’m warmer, that’s all.” I shot Sloane a heated look. “If you’re feeling cold…”
Her cheeks pinkened.
“Stop flirting!” Lucy yelled. “Show is starting.”
“How many episodes is this?” Sloane asked.
“Eight.”
“We can binge it all tonight!” the woman beside me said.
I kept quiet, just enjoying the camaraderie between my sister and Sloane. The first episode started rolling and I could already tell that this wasn’t a show Sloane liked to watch. Before the end of the first episode, Sloane had already fallen across the couch, fast asleep. She tucked her cold feet under my thighs.
Normally when we were watching TV, she’d have them on my lap, and I would massage the soles of her feet. Ginger didn’t seem amenable to that and resisted my attempts to push her off my lap.
After the first episode ended, I rose to my feet. Ginger gave an annoyed meow.
“I’m taking Sloane to bed,” I told Lucy.
“No funny business,” my sister said. “Five minutes, or I’m coming to check on you.”
“What do you take me for?” I asked, half offended.
Lucy laughed. “Go! You’re no fun when you’re in love.”
I didn’t deny it. I watched Sloane sleep for two heartbeats and an ache stabbed me in the chest. I missed this. Missed watching her sleep. Missed admiring the freckles on her face. How they added to the unique beauty that was all her. Ma said Sloane’s face was exquisite, but what my mother hadn’t seen yet was the strength beneath that beauty.
I gently lifted Sloane from the couch and started walking. A few seconds in my arms and she started stirring. “Show’s over?”
“You fell asleep, baby.”
“It’s boring.” She snuggled into my chest.
Fuck. I didn’t want to put her down. I slowed my ascent on the stairs, my eyes drinking in the woman in my arms. Entering her room, I didn’t turn on the light and let the hallway lighting illuminate my path to her bed.
Laying her carefully on the mattress, I wanted to crawl in beside her. It wasn’t even about fucking her. Her body was soft and warm in my arms and I just wanted to wrap my whole body around her and sleep.
Soon. After you unfuck what you fucked, Dominic.
I had my duffel and garment bag the next time I walked into the living room.
“You’re leaving?” Lucy asked.
“Yeah.”
To my surprise, my sister got off her ass and walked over to give me a hug.
A tight squeeze.
Tighter than her normal squeezes.
She stepped away and stared up at me. “You’re doing good, brother.”
My brows drew together. “I’m not sure what you mean?”
“Sloane is a tough cookie with a lot of pride and a mile-long streak of independence.”
I huffed a short laugh. “I guess it takes one to know one.”
“You have good instincts for this,” Lucy said. “Your family trained you.”
“They have,” I deadpanned. “De Luccis and Morettis are tough customers.”
“Thanks for dinner.” She rose on tiptoes and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I needed my brother’s company.”
Emotions backed up my throat. Lucy and I hadn’t seen eye to eye in a long time. She thought I was an overbearing asshole, but she’d witnessed my panic attack and finally realized her brother was also human.
