The shitstorm meant nothing if Mia left, because I knew I wouldn’t recover. I wouldn’t be able to be the man I needed to be for Franny or anyone else without that woman in my life. “I’ll never forgive Lex for this.” I shook my head and shut my eyes to try to block out her betrayal.
“I know, Jameson. We all know.” Cal sighed and removed his wingtips from my table without me having to tell him or shove them off.
I sat down beside him, letting go of my anger and instead feeling the weight of the world bear down on my shoulders. “And if Mia doesn’t forgive me …”
“We know what happens in that case too.”
“What?”
“Even if Miadoesforgive you, the East Coast need a …” Cal cracked his knuckles. “… reorganization. You also need to figure out what you’d personally like to do with Lex and Paolo. Sooner rather than later. I realize Mia’s your priority, but—”
He was focused on the nation and our connections, but I was only focused on my family. That’s who Mia was to me and Franny now. I had to make her see that. “She’s not understanding what I did. It wasn’t about her trust.” I pulled at my hair and slouched inward, disappointed in myself that I hadn’t done the one thing she wanted. She wanted me to be real with her, to not hide a damn thing. And why wouldn’t she have wanted that when her parents had hid her turmoil from everyone?
Fuck. I wanted to tear them apart too. Everyone who’d hurt her needed to pay.
Including myself. She was making sure I suffered by not letting me see her, though.
“Are you listening to me?” my brother asked.
“I just need her to know that I’m fucking sorry, but it was for her own—”
“Good? Safety?” He leaned back and put his feet back up, all relaxed without a damn care in the world. “Mia doesn’t care. She wanted your trust and love rather than your protection. Relationships 101, don’t hide your very alive wife from your girlfriend, you dumbass.”
“Shut the fuck up.” I shoved his feet off hard.
Nothing fazed my good-for-nothing brother, though, because he went on irritating me. “Fine. I don’t want to deal with you anyway. Just give me a decision on what we’re doing with Lex and Paolo. Especially Lex, since the senator’s holding her.”
Killing the mother of my child wasn’t something I could do. I knew it and so did she, though a bullet in her head was what she deserved. Instead, she’d been thrown in a holding cell after a call to the senator.
“Or I’ll never give you a decision on her. She can fucking rot in there.” Her lies and deceit were worth a death sentence, and she knew it.
Lex’s plan fell through over and over. She’d left me, hoping Paolo would help, but when that fell through, her only hope was removing herself from the picture. I wasn’t going to partner with Paolo while she was alive, and she knew it.
Yet her pivoting and faking her own death in hopes Paolo could sway me then didn’t work either. And she was so wholly committed to saving her family’s legacy that she willingly yanked half her teeth out to disguise another burn victim as her.
All with the help of Paolo, who she’d strung along since high school. His love for her would be his demise. Paolo was never good at hiding a damn thing, and his fear of losing her and the remnants of his cartel caused him to fumble and slip up in his meeting with me with just that line.
Had they stayed quiet, I would have left them to their own downfall and devices. Now, I only cared about getting her out of my life and out of Fran’s.
She had been here, had talked with Franny, had upended everything I’d built for my daughter and myself in the last few years while showing no remorse at all except when she thought it would sway me.
“Look, the senator wants us to figure out a solution with her and Paolo.” Cal smirked at me as he asked, “Sure you don’t want to take your wife back and just smooth out all the waters?”
“Fuck. You.”
Cal shrugged. “Figured. Start a war for Mia, then?”
“She’s worth it. I’d burn down the damn nation and all our ties too if it meant keeping her, Cal. I love her.”
He nodded and let the words sink in. He glanced over at me and smiled. “Happy for you, bro. Don’t keep messing it up with her then. Be real and be honest. Mia needs that.” Then,he clapped his hands together. “Enough of this emotional shit now. Paolo’s done, and Lex should be too. We’re going to have an issue with the whole East Coast by the time you’re done.” Cal was considering the fallout. “And international trade. The Ruiz family has ties even now.”
“You think I should care?” My eyes were closed as I asked the question, but I opened them just to take in my brother.
The smile across his face was now diabolical. “I think I’m going to enjoy watching them be destroyed. I intend to go East to rub it in their face too.”
“What happened to diplomacy?”
“I lost it back somewhere between a knife being thrown at me and Fran thinking that Lex has any place near her in Paradise Grove.”
