Shielded Wrongs (Bellandi Crime Syndicate 4)

"What happened to Allyson?" I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.

"Allyson was about three women ago, Sadie," Mom inserted behind me. "Duke refuses to bring any of them here. His mother says she doesn't get to meet any of them either. I assume that means he's enjoying the single life and not really committing to any of them," she lectured, and he grimaced in response.

Mom was a shark, rarely mincing words and never bothering to dance around subjects. There was nothing that made her uncomfortable. For someone who'd been born in a Catholic nation, under strict expectations because of the influence religion had in the Philippines, she'd adapted to the more open ways of the States thoroughly in her years with my father.

"Can we not?" Duke asked, eyeing her like she might snap and proceed just to torment him with discomfort. I snickered, pressing my lips together to hide my smile. I didn’t want to draw her attention to my dating life instead.

She was a demon, after all.

She scoffed, heading into the living room to gather the rest of the boys and the kids for dinner, and I took a seat next to Duke. Arranging the napkin on my lap just so, I ignored his knowing eyes studying the motion. We’d never talked about it, but since he’d known me since high school, he was well acquainted with my more unusual behaviors.

As soon as the others settled around the table, we each dug into the dishes that my mother and the others had artfully arranged so that everybody had their favorite within reach. I went straight for the Chicken Adobo as Duke scooped rice onto his plate and topped it with Mechado.

"How's the gym?" Dad asked, breaking the silence and making me swallow down my first bite of piping hot rice and chicken. I mourned the fact that I'd swallowed too quickly to enjoy that unique salty and sour flavor that I could never replicate.

"It's good. Everything is good," I said, smiling at him blandly and trying to quell the rising anxiety from the disorder in the kitchen. The urge to fidget became more overwhelming with added desire for his approval. Something that I still felt after three decades of passive assumption that I may be happier in another career.

He nodded his head vaguely, stirring the sisig so that the eggs on top of the pork, onions, and pepper mixture cooked as it blended with the rest of the ingredients on the hot plate at the center.

"Nobody's giving you any trouble?" he asked, and I frowned down at my food and poked it.

"Why would anybody give her trouble?" Oliver asked, always coming to my rescue. Of all my brothers, the oldest one was the only one who knew just how much it bothered me to have Dad ask questions like that.

He'd never ask that question if Oliver ran the gym. Or if Ethan or Lucas ran it, for that matter. The only reason it was an issue for him was because I was a woman running a gym full of men. A woman in a business he’d always planned on his sons taking over.

"Yeah, Dad. Sadie's terrifying," Lucas laughed sarcastically, staring down at me from across the table. Even as the baby of the family, he was the tallest.

I was fairly certain he'd been dropped on the step as a baby, since there was literally no way he'd come from either of my parents. My dad wasn't short, not like mom and I, but he wasn't 6'2" either.

"You better hope you never have to come stay with me again," I sneered, slicing another bite of chicken off the thigh on my plate.

"And just why is that, big sister?" he asked, that face somehow always looking playful and bright even though it had long passed the time for him to have serious concerns as an adult.

I didn't suspect Lucas would ever grow up.

"I'll shave your head while you sleep." I gave him a bright smile, biting the chicken off my fork. "I don't think your little girlfriends will think you're so adorable when they can see that cone head of yours. Did it ever go back to normal after they vacuumed you out of Mom's vagina?"

"Sadie Anne!" Oliver scolded, though his voice trailed off into the affectionate laughter I was so used to from my older brother. The one who would have been protective if I'd ever needed it, compared to the quiet middle child, Ethan, and the wild child younger brother who drove me crazy.

"It's true. He always had to have his hair cut just so because otherwise he looked like a traffic cone," Mama giggled, digging into her ensalada with a vigor that could only come from the fact that she'd spent the entire day in the kitchen.

"Well, is his hair still cut the same way?" Joy asked, leaning in to the table to nudge Duke like he might reveal the answers. He'd known me a long time and had probably known Lucas long enough to say.

But she should have known better than to expect a man to notice another man's haircut. That was a sister's job.

Especially when it could be used as beautiful blackmail material.

"He has not once, in all the years since he was born, cut his hair any other way," I teased.

"Shut up, short shit," he spat back, but his lips tipped up into the barest hint of a smile.

Family was strange sometimes.

But it was everything all the same.

4

Enzo