Top Dog

And that rushed anger through my bones.

I knew Romeo was going to fight like hell to see his son, but if he thought he could lie to me and get his hands on his child, he was sorely mistaken. If he thought he could paint an image I wanted to see and still be the conniving, bloodthirsty hound dog his father was, then he had another thing coming. I didn’t want to believe it was true, but Enrico was a professional. He had committed his life to protecting people and sniffing out what others didn’t want to—or refused—to see.

And if he thought Romeo was somehow involved in all this, then he was most likely right.

Suddenly, my coffee didn’t seem appetizing any longer. I didn’t know what came next. Stefano wanted me to go see Romeo, and all I wanted to do was twist his groin in my hands and rip it off his body. Peace? While slaughtering gun runners on the docks of our home city? That wasn’t the way to maintain or create peace. The only saving grace in the entire damn article was the fact that the guns were still in the harbor, but that could be for any number of reasons.

Though Romeo’s father still would’ve taken the guns.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go back home?” Enrico asked.

I panned my gaze back over to him, my hands wrapped around the now-cold mug. My eyes fell to Matteo’s empty breakfast chair and I closed my eyes. I heard the blocks upstairs tumbling to the floor before giggles fell from his lips. It pulled a smile across my cheeks at the heart-warming sound and, for a brief moment, I pictured us going back, leaving all this behind again and heading upstate to where my father had dragged me off to at eighteen. The home was mine now to do with what I wanted. I could sell it, buy something much smaller and better suited to Matteo and I, and bank the rest of the money for college –though I knew that was already funded. But that house was my last connection to my father, and though we’d spent a few years being angry with one another, the last year of his life had been wonderful for us.

Tthe hopeful part of me still wanted to believe Romeo was good. That he was the man I’d fallen in love with all those years ago. And if that was the case, then there had to be another side to this, an explanation for what went down even if he was involved. The only thing I had to go off of was Enrico’s gut.

But his gut was never wrong.

“I need a moment,” I said.

“Are you leaving or do you want me to leave?” Enrico asked.

“I’m going to go sit on the porch,” I said.

“I’ll be here if you need anything.”

I took my coffee out onto the porch and let the sun pour over my features. I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath, taking in the familiar scent of the city. I loved this place. I loved everything about New York. It was home to me and coming back after all these years felt good. I didn’t want to go back upstate. I wanted to live here. With my son. Among the family that wasn’t tainted by all of this bullshit. I wanted Matteo to grow up in the area I had grown up in, experience all the things about the city I loved. I wanted to raise generations of my family in this very city and continue the traditions that were settled into my bones by my own mother and father.

But I couldn't stay if the horrors of my family were going to haunt us. I couldn’t stay and subject Matteo to the sins of his father if this was the path Romeo had chosen for himself. No matter what had happened, Matteo’s safety was my number one concern.

And I knew the only way I was going to get real answers was to talk to the source.

I had to see Romeo again.

CHAPTER 9

ROMEO

I’d tossed and turned every night since the shootout with the gun runners. The police were nowhere near our tail, but what made matters worse were the local gangs they were roughing up. Innocent men taking the fall for what I’d done. I was doing everything in my power to avoid anything remotely close to that. I was trying to make the family business and the blood that came with it a thing of the past.

And I had three men slaughtered in cold blood.believing it was a gang related shooting. That worked in our favor and also helped clean the city up of some of its festering gang problem. I didn’t feel too bad about those thugs being rounded up for my crime. They were hardly innocent.

But I still couldn’t get the looks of the men’s faces when I’d fired my gun out of my mind. The thought of it made my stomach roll with self-loathing. I kept telling myself it had been a necessary measure in order to ensure we could go legit, but it still didn’t sit right with me. Especially now that Julia was back in my life.

I stood with my hand pressed against the glass window of my bedroom. I had many people who applauded me for how I handled things, and then I had a few people that were irate at destroying a decades-old connection that took my father years to cultivate. I kept trying to tell them that the connection wasn’t necessary any longer. Not with what we were doing.

Then I had to command they stand down when they got angry and put their fists in my face.

“Romeo?”

Antony knocked on my door as his voice drifted through the painted wood.

“What?” I asked.

“Got breakfast.”

“Not hungry.”

“Tough shit. Open the door, or I’ll take it off its hinges,” he said.