Top Dog

I wasn’t getting dressed to the nines, but I sure as hell was going to project confidence in case work came trudging through the front door.

I went downstairs. The smell of breakfast infiltrated my nostrils. Mom was in the kitchen, per usual, cooking up a damn storm for a fucking army. She was whirling around the kitchen, cooking toast and frying bacon and scrambling eggs. Pads of butter melted on the toast already on the table, and Antony was pouring freshly-squeezed orange juice the chef had left in the fridge.

“You know I hire a chef so you don’t have to do these things, right?” I asked.

“Your chef doesn’t come until ten in the morning. Who eats breakfast so late?” my mother asked.

“The man of this house does.”

“Then tell him to get his ass out of bed and get downstairs at a proper time.”

Antony chuckled as he sat back in his chair. He propped his feet on the kitchen table as he sucked down his juice. I shot him a look, and he gave me his little shit-eating grin, but soon something caught my peripheral.

A spatula was flying through the air and landed right against Antony’s forehead.

“Get your nasty feet off the kitchen table. What did I raise? Animals?”

I threw my head back and laughed as I reached for the pot of coffee on the table.

“I take it you slept well, Mom?” I asked.

“That new mattress you bought is way too firm,” she said.

“And yet you have the energy of five bulls.”

“I usually have the energy of seven,” she said.

“Good morning,” I said as I walked over and kissed her cheek.

“That’s more like it,” she said.

When my father died, Antony and I moved in with my mother to look after her, make sure she was okay. My mother was full-blooded Italian. Most of her extended family was still back in Sicily. My father flew her out two times a year to see them, but I was hoping to up that to four. She was getting older, and her family was dying off faster than we all anticipated. She was one of nine children, but only four remained.

And with my father gone, I could see the toll all this death was taking on her.

“I have your ticket purchased for Sicily,” I said.

“I’m not supposed to go for another few months,” my mother said.

“Romeo and I talked,” Antony said. “We think you should go see them in a couple of weeks.”

“And when were the two of you going to tell me this?” she asked.

“When we were shoving you through customs with your suitcase thrown across the line,” I said with a grin.

“I swear I’ve raised a pack of animals. You want to know why I want grandchildren before I die?”

“So you can take a second stab at raising children who aren’t animals?” Antony asked.

“I’ve got more spatulas,” my mother said.

I sipped on my coffee and watched as my brother blew my mother a kiss.

I wanted more than anything to tell her about Matteo. I’d been very discreet with the resources I’d used to track Julia down. To keep tabs on my son. I knew it would make my mother’s world to have a grandson. I knew she wanted her and my father’s house filled with the comforting sounds of children’s laughter. It was on the tip of my tongue. Swirling around in the darkness of my coffee. I helped my mother carry everything to the table so we could sit down to eat, and as I swallowed the last of my coffee, I swallowed the urge to tell her.

It wasn’t enough to tell her about him.

I wanted to be able to introduce her to him.