Yeah, that probably wasn’t a good look.
“Whatcha building, little man?” I ask, falling to a knee on the blanket Cormac must have laid out for Lucky to build on.
“This my tower,” he says, planting another three-prong block on top of the one-prong under it. “The dinosaur lives here. He’s gonna find the princess and take her back.”
“Is that right?” I ask, chuckling.
“Yep! Gonna save her from the bad guys.”
“And here I thought it was dragons who rescued princesses from their tower.” I laugh, grabbing several of the longer blocks. “If we swap this one out for a two- or three- prong, it’ll make it more stable.”
“Don’t know what that means,” he replies, his nose scrunching. “I guess…”
Ahh, it seems like he got the gist after all.
I take his words as permission, swapping out the blocks to help it keep from toppling over.
“You did it!” he squeals, nodding frantically. “Good job.”
“Thanks, but you did all the hard work.”
God.
He’s cute.
He has short blondish-brown hair that falls over his forehead and big blue eyes that are almost too big for his face. Not to mention, the adorable smattering of freckles on his cheeks. He looks a lot like Charlotte, but there are some features that must have come from his father.
My gaze moves to my brother.
What the hell has he been up to? Charlotte is beautiful, but I’m worried he might have fixated on her.
The two of us need to talk, but that can’t be hashed out when little ears are around. Although, it does make significantly more sense why he spent hours decorating the house for Christmas.
His sorry ass could have been with me staking out her apartment. If they know each other, I bet our introduction last night could have gone a fuck of a lot more smoothly. At the very least, I probably wouldn’t have gottenshot.
My phone rings, and I frown as I pull it from my pocket.
Emory Moretti…
Why the fuck is he calling me?
“Emory,” I say, answering the call as I kick the door to the downstairs office closed.
“Patrick,” he says, chuckling. “Long time no speak.”
Yes, that’s by design.
Unfortunately, when dealing with the other Boston Syndicate families, I have to maintain a friendly baseline. It’s easier to play nice with the assholes so I don’t always have to be on alert.
“Agreed. It has been a while. Care to tell me why you’re calling so early?”
Emory chuckles. “How are things with Vanessa? Is she still giving you trouble?”
My teeth grind together, and I briefly consider whether Emory and Vanessa have a romantic relationship going on behind the scenes.
Malachy mentioned the way she looked at Emory. If they do, it would make our lives a thousand times easier. Moretti has more than enough money to pay the penalty to break the contract.
However, I don’t see him settling down anytime soon.
