When the door shuts behind him, I drop into my chair and cover my face with my hands.
The problem is not Gavin. Gavin is doing everything right. The problem is that ‘doing everything right’ is apparently not the variable that determines whether I feel anything, because I feltmore standing on a cold sidewalk in my pajamas watching Vin’s black SUV pull away than I felt kissing Gavin.
I’m not marrying Ashlyn.
I dig my fingers into my hair and stare at the floor. It doesn’t matter. It does not matter. Vin has hurt me in ways I can count on both hands. He ended us without a real goodbye and then keeps showing up to fuck me like I’m his toy. He called me a whore at a party in front of our friends and his fiancée. He spent a year treating me like an afterthought and months before that not even knowing I was alive.
The fact that he’s not marrying Ashlyn does not undo any of that.
A man can love you and still be wrong for you. My nonna said once, “Some loves are real and still impossible. That doesn’t make them less real. It makes them more painful.”
I turn to the security monitor on the corner of my desk, the little grid of camera feeds showing the front of the restaurant, the kitchen, the alley entrance.
No black SUV.
I pull up the dinner reservations on my screen and force myself to be present. Vin Demonio is not marrying Ashlyn MacCuinn, and that is absolutely, completely, 100 percent not my problem. The Arsenal is my problem, my one and only focus.
I almost believe it by the time I tie my apron and head back to the kitchen.
29
VIN
The war room smells like stale coffee and stress. Usually the air would be thick with cigarette smoke too, but I haven’t smoked in days.
The table is strewn with maps, inventory lists, and personnel rotations, the kind of paperwork that used to land on my father’s desk back when I was pretending I didn’t give a fuck about the family business. Now it lands on my desk, and no one around me is pretending anything.
Matti has his sleeves rolled to the elbow, pen moving fast down a column of numbers. Tommy sits back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, staring up at the ceiling and thinking. A handful of empty espresso cups dot the table between us plus a few full ones we haven’t touched.
“We move before they can coordinate against us,” Tommy says,still looking at the ceiling. “That’s the window. Maybe 72 hours once word gets back that the wedding is off.”
“Word will get back fast,” Matti says. “Ashlyn isn’t going to sit on it.”
I grunt. “She might. She’s in no rush to announce that the engagement is off. But I’m not banking on a woman to make a rational choice.”
“So we use the 72 hours.” Tommy finally looks at us. “We need to move the girls and babies somewhere secure.”
Matti clenches his fists at that. He doesn’t like the idea of being away from Siena and Emilia, but it’s better than the alternative. A wave of guilt hits me, but it is what it is. He’d do the same thing if he were in my position and he was about to lose Siena. And I’d back him up the same way he’s showing up for me.
“Grit can coordinate the additional men.” I flip a page on the inventory sheet. “We’re light on the north side. I want that fixed before the end of the week.”
“Already called him.” Tommy slides a separate sheet across the table. “He started last night.”
I look at the paper, and nod.
We go back and forth for another 20 minutes on weapons storage, rotation schedules, which of the allied families can be trusted to keep quiet and which ones will sell out to the Irish for the right price. It’s basically the same conversation we’ve beenhaving since I was 18 with different variables plugged in. The machinery of this life is always on the grind.
When we’re done, Matti gathers his things and Tommy follows suit, both moving with purpose but at pace. The work is just getting started.
Siena appears in the doorway and Matti stands, alarmed. “I’m okay,” she says. “I’ll meet you out front in a minute. Go.”
I reach for my jacket and glance at Matti. He doesn’t look convinced but she says something to him I can’t hear and he presses a kiss to her temple and leaves with Tommy.
When I try to walk past her, she blocks me. I sigh and drop my chin to my chest. Why does my brother’s woman have to be my fucking problem?
“Stay,” she says.
Fuckingstay. I narrow my eyes at her, then look over her shoulder out the door, plotting an escape. But Matti is standing a few yards away, arms crossed over his chest, glaring at me. Whatever this is, it’s a team effort.
