First Love Only Love (The Life 2)

“I hope you feel the same when it’s the twins’ turn.”

“That won’t be for another ten or twenty years; no need to mention it.” Nothing is going to put a damper on my day.

I’ve been butting my head against the wall for months trying to beat the clock and get ahead of this thing in Sicily before Gabe makes a move, but now, I don’t have to. I have enough breathing room now to continue the search for my father-in-law without having to worry about my son making an end-run around me.

I danced my wife around the room, genuinely happy for the first time in a while. I wasn’t sure, even after the afternoon’s theatrics, but the look in his eyes when he thought something was wrong with his Gia cinched it for me. That boy is well and truly claimed. Now all I need to do is deal with Fontane’s shit before my son does, and we’re straight.

Pop already had a sit down with him, but I don’t know what happened there because he’s not talking, and Gabe got the word out to the towing companies in the area not to pick up the car that he torched, which means that any minute now Fontane is going to pull up in his driveway and find a luxury hull parked in front of his door.

Gabe’s team already told me about him picking up the tow, and I put two and two together, figuring that’s where he’d gone the night before when he disappeared. The fact that he dropped it off in the early evening with no fucks to give tells me that he’s going all in. Now with his grandparents having his back, if the shit they were saying at my dinner table the night before is any indication, things could get ugly.

Pop plays by his own rules, and Ma, well, Ma is the boss of bosses when it comes to the Russo family. Between those two and my son Fontane might be wishing he’d had only me to deal with. None of that was important right now though, all that mattered is that I’d bought myself some time.

The girl works fast; then again, hadn’t Sofia zapped me the same way almost twenty years ago? That’s why I have so much hope. The look I saw in my son’s eyes earlier is one I’ve worn. I know the look, I know the feeling, and I know that there’s no way I would’ve jeopardized my happiness with Sofia or given up on life, not when I had her.

I’m going to ignore the fact that my son has some kind of code that I never even knew existed for now. I shouldn’t have let him study all that shit at a young age and wouldn’t have had I known that his mother would divulge her past the way she did or that he would use what he’d learned to build a strategy of revenge that would make Genghis Khan’s march through the plains look like a cakewalk.

GABRIEL

“I’ll be right back; you good?” I’d reheated her water once already, and she seemed more relaxed, but at my announcement, she gripped my wrist. “Where’re you going?”

“Just into the bedroom. I won’t be long, I promise.” I kissed her head and left to go take care of the bed. I stripped it, my guts twisting at the sight of even more blood on the sheets.

I called downstairs to Ma because she’s the only one I trust to take care of what I needed. I wanted to spare Gianna as much embarrassment as I possibly could. She came with Sheila in tow since I guess they didn’t trust me to know how to make the bed myself when all I asked for was the sheets. I just rolled my eyes and went back to Gianna, who looked like she was ready to get out of the now tepid water.

Her after bath care took a little longer than was necessary since I took my time in order to let them finish what they were doing in the bedroom. Besides, I needed to make up for not being here when she woke up, so a few more strokes of the brush through her hair wasn’t a hardship, and she did seem to appreciate the effort.

“Babe, I can go to your room to get you something to sleep in, or you can wear something of mine.” She blushed and pointed at me, so I headed for my closet and grabbed some boxers and an old tee for her to sleep in. I made her eat upstairs with me, sitting up in bed on the new sheets that she noticed and blushed.

I made her eat just a little bit more than she wanted to, which wasn’t much. “What did you do with Greta?”