Until I had to give her back.
It was the middle of the day when my father called.
I was sitting in my office, taking some privacy away from my prisoner.
I wasn’t even sure if I should call her that anymore. She seemed like a sexy roommate that I was constantly fucking. When I dated women, sometimes they would stay at my place for the weekend, but their stay never lasted longer than that.
Mia had been there for an entire month.
From the day she arrived until the present moment, our relationship had changed so drastically.
It was hard to believe I’d ever chained her up in a room to begin with.
I cleared my throat. “Hey.” I’d been avoiding speaking to my family for a few weeks. Only Conway knew about my situation. Since he was so loyal to me, he would take the secret to the grave. But I felt awkward talking to my family, especially my parents. My father was a very candid man, speaking his mind with such bluntness, people thought he was an asshole most of the time.
Well, he was an asshole.
“Hey?” he asked. “We haven’t spoken in two weeks, and that’s all you have to say to me?”
“Hi?” I asked sarcastically. “Is that better?”
“Same shit, different word.”
“Alright, what do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know,” he snapped. “But a lot more than that.”
He turned aggressive when he was emotional. He wasn’t good with words, and he was even worse with feelings. The response turned him into an asshole…even more. I hadn’t understood any of that until my mother explained it to me. “Alright. How are you?”
“Pretty pissed off since we haven’t spoken for two weeks.”
I rolled my eyes. “We’re talking now.”
“I haven’t seen you in almost a month. I know you’re a hotshot with your cars and shit, but don’t forget where you come from.”
If only I could tell him the real reason for my absence. “I’ll be done with this project in a few days. Then I’ll be all yours.”
“That’s more like it.”
“I’ll take a trip down there. Sapphire is gonna have the baby soon anyway. I’ll help out at the winery, see Mom for a bit, and see what Carmen is up to without me. I’ll stay for a week.”
“Make it two.”
I tried not to grin. “A week and a half.”
“Two and a half.” All my father wanted was to spend time with me. Conway had been around a lot, so he was probably jealous he wasn’t spending as much time with his own son.
“Two.”
The victory in his voice was obvious. “Two, it is. Can’t wait to see you. Your mother and I miss you.”
“I know. I miss you too.”
“Maybe you should think about moving to Florence. Conway and Sapphire are doing it. You work from home a lot, and you can just fly out there when you need to. Makes sense to me…” My father would do anything to get me back to Tuscany. Carmen was still there, but that wasn’t enough for him. He wanted both of us.
Not having Conway around had already affected me. I used to see him all the time, but now that he was married and living five hours away, I missed him. He was my closest friend, not just my cousin. “I’ll think about it.”
“Great. Your mother would be so happy if she got to see you more often. And remember—”
“You won’t always be around.” He said the same thing to me all the time, for the last decade. “Yeah, I know. I said I would think about it.”
My father finally backed off, knowing he’d made his point. Now he just had to hope that I would take his words to heart and move there. I was the last Barsetti who wasn’t living in that vicinity. Being isolated from the herd had never bothered me because Conway was here, but without him as a neighbor, I really did feel separated from my family. I would think about it more seriously when I had time. Right now, I still had Mia to deal with. “Anything else new?”
“Actually, that’s the reason why I’m calling. Well, the main reason.” His tone changed, simmering down to a serious coldness. “Your uncle and I had a chat with Griffin.”
I’d come to accept that Griffin was a part of our lives now, as strange as that seemed. “Yeah?”
“This issue with the Skull Kings isn’t buried yet, so Griffin and your uncle are going to take a trip to the Underground to have a conversation.”
I sat up straighter in my chair, the muscles hugging my spine tightening.
“We killed the men they hired to take out Conway, but we have no way to know if the war is actually over. Instead of taking that risk, we want to bury it. Crow will meet with them to establish peace, to present them an offering to make them forget about us.”