Top Dog

“I promised Matteo a movie,” I said, before turning and heading up the steps.

CHAPTER 4

ROMEO

A knock on the door led me from my office, but the person standing behind it left me surprised. Julia was there, standing in a beautiful dress whipping around her luxurious thighs as the breeze filtered into the house. Her red-streaked hair was sparkling in the sunlight and floating around her breasts, fanning out along her face and pulling her hazel eyes to the forefront.

“Are you going to let me in?” she asked.

I opened the door and stepped to the side, but soon there was a commotion coming down the stairs. Antony and my mother were laughing at something as they traveled down the staircase, and I shut the door as Julia’s eyes glanced up to take them in. I stood behind her, my hands in my pockets, as Antony’s eyebrows shot up to the damn crown of his head.

My mother gave her a once-over, then smiled as she leaned over to my brother.

“They’d make beautiful babies together.”

“You’re a terrible whisperer, Mother,” I said.

“Luisa. It’s good to see you again,” Julia said.

“And you as well. You look beautiful. Doesn’t she, Romeo?”

Julia looked back at me with a healthy flush in her cheeks, and my cock jumped between my legs.

“Always,” I said.

My brother and mother made their way outside and shut the door quickly behind them. Julia turned to me with her bright hazel eyes and began wringing her fingers in the excess fabric of her dress.

I guess old habits die hard.

“I came over to apologize,” Julia said.

I cocked my head and studied her as she cleared her throat.

“At the restaurant. I shouldn't have gone off the way I did. But I’m worried about my son.”

I clenched my jaw as she drew in a deep breath.

“Our son. I’m worried about our son,” she corrected.

“I would expect nothing less from you,” I said.

“Romeo, I spent the last six years of my life shielding that boy. From everything. From seeing my father come home with his hands covered in blood, and the worry I felt whenever my father didn’t make it home after two or three nights. I shielded him from the clothes I burned, and the shoes I shined, and the blood I wiped off the floor when my father tracked it in.. I made sure he never knew anything that went on in the family. I explained his missing uncles and his grandfather’s death as accidents

, and luckily for me he’s too young to really know anything else. But he’s getting to that age where he’s going to start noticing and understanding things and I need to keep him away from all of it.”

I watched her struggle, and my heart reached out for her. I knew that struggle all too well. I’d watched my mother go through it for years. Bandaging my father’s wounds so he wouldn’t need a hospital. Stitching him up with sewing needles sterilized in alcohol and thread from her sewing cabinets. Clothes burned in a wood stove in the basement that puffed death-tainted plumbs of air into the sky over our house.

I wanted to change that for my family.

For good.

“You now being in charge of your family business scared me,” Julia said. “I never expected you to take over. I always saw you passing that down to Antony.”

“Would it help you to know that I’m trying to make things better?” I asked.

“What does that even mean?”

“That I’m trying to make our operations more legitimate?”