“Yes, he’s just joining the party late,” Nate reaches across the boy and grabs a basket of rolls, depositing one onto both of our plates. Nate pretends to lower his voice, “But you’re not allowed to think he’s cooler than me, I am the cool one here. Obviously.”
Little laughs snort around the table and conversation carries on comfortably between us.
All the while, Marianna sits at my side and I sit by hers, ever aware of the fight that lies unaddressed between us. She plays nice for the children, but does she plan to stay here again? I idly debate on staying here myself if this is the case, but determine that would be too clingy of me.
Lord, I’m so out of practice dating that I don’t even know how to navigate a disagreement with my wife.
“How old are you?” Angel asks.
“Angel, don’t be rude.” Sean scolds.
“It’s alright. I’m thirty-eight,” I say, and it’s excruciating to admit. If they’re disgusted by our age difference, though, the kids don’t let on.
“So four years older than Mom and Dad,” Artie says.
“Did you go to school together?” Angel asks.
“No, but I believe they know my brother Alexei.” I’m relieved they didn’t follow the line of comparing my age to everyone else’s.
Sean nods. “Good guy.”
Conversation veers to topics more interesting than my age, and before long, Willa returns with the baby now fed. Nate scoops her out of Willa’s arms so she can eat, and I’m reminded of what Marianna said in passing after visiting her sister last week. Ababy hog, she called him.
When the table is cleared, the kids waste no time rushing back to the living room, and Sean, Vanessa, Marianna, and I are left sitting at the table, tea and coffee steaming in front of us. Marianna’s chin rests on her fist, her eyes somewhere beyond us as she’s lost in that mind of hers which is so unbearably unknowable to me.
“Your cousin is a fucking piece of work,” Sean says, only to be met by a stern “Language,” called from the other room. Sean sighs and lowers his voice, repeating the sentiment again, this time while pressing his pointer finger against the wood surface for emphasis.
This snags Marianna’s attention. “Nikolai? What’d he do?”
“Nothing, but that’s the problem. With the new alliance, new lines have been drawn all over town, and today he’s still giving lip to one of my guys about staying on our side of town.”
“Nikolai is. . .spirited,” I agree, holding back from my own choice words I have for him. “I’ll speak with him.”
“I offered to take care of him,” Marianna says, not exactly wordstome, but I still count it as a step forward.
“Nah, his goons will claim it was unprovoked and cause a riot,” Sean says. My sentiments exactly.
“You think they’ll have any muscle with him dead?” Marianna asks. “And whatever, I’m bigger than them.”
Vanessa snickers.
I say, “They don’t know what they want, or who they stand behind. They’re idiots. They don’t care that it’s him leading, so long as it’s not me.”
“What did you do to earn all that?” Sean asks.
“Probably the same thing your family did to earn your brother’s ire.”
“Marry a Morelli?”
“No, clean up shop.” Everyone bobs their heads in understanding. From what I heard, Cillian was just biding his time, playing good criminal until he could get Vanessa under his thumb and start back into the kind of shit that makes me sick to my stomach. Little did he know, Vanessa Morelli was not one who could be kept.
“Nikolai feels entitled to lead,” I say. “Thinks I shouldn’t have been the one to inherit.”
“How do you plan to deal with him then?” Vanessa asks.
“We wait him out,” I say. “He’ll mess up, preferably very publicly. We will make an example of him.”
“A baby would probably help with the whole line of succession thing,” Sean says, and everyone shoots him a look, but he’s right. It would help and we all know it.
