The rookie driver texted me her address as soon as he dropped her off, and I’d hopped in my car and driven by to make sure she had gotten in okay, but it was fucking impossible to tell. She lives in a shitty highrise apartment, and I had no way of knowing which window was hers.
Even so, I sat for a moment and stared, my wipers working hard to keep the rain off of my window as I watched.
Fuck.
This damn girl has me all twisted up in knots, and there are bigger problems for me to worry about right now than when I’m going to get to dip my cock in her pussy again.
“Roque!” Ma always greets me with a hug and a smile, and tonight is no different. Pops must already be in the dining room ready to eat. I’m the last one, as usual, but I had some business to attend to.
“Where the hell have you been?” Arlo is already eating bread, stuffing his face full of the garlic knots that Ma made, and I snatch one out of his hand when I walked by to my seat.
God, it’s was good. Butter drips down my fingers, and I have to lap at it to keep it from reaching the cuff of my jacket. “Not all of us have jobs that end at 5 o’clock, asshole, so I was working.”
He grins at me and takes another bite of a garlic knot. “You being late have anything to do with that sweet little pussy you found last night?”
“None of that.” Pops gives us both a look that shut us up. Whenever he speaks, which wasn’t terribly often, everyone else in the family listens up, especially now that he’s the new don of the family. Hell, grandpa is barely in the damn ground, but Pops has moved smoothly into his new role. That’s good, though. If he hadn’t, then the whole family could easily fall apart. We’d seen it before with other families, but there wasn’t any way that we were going to allow that to happen to us. “Your Ma doesn’t want to hear about that. You know the rules.”
He was right. No work talk at the table, especially if it involved killing someone. Or pussy. Ma didn’t want to hear about any of that, and the way she cooked, none of us were going to push it. Sunday dinners with the family were sacred, and we’d all learned that.
This time last year, not only had our grandpa been sitting at the head of the table, but it was packed with cousins and our uncle. Now, though? After everything that went down between the two sides of the family, there weren’t as many of us.
That was okay, though. As Pops said, we were stronger now than we ever had been before, and there wasn’t anything that could tear us apart.
Slipping into my seat across from Arlo, I nod to Matty. He and his brother, Valentino, are as different as they could be, but they are both loyal and true. We’d all grown up together, and their dad, Marcello, had worked for the family as long as I could remember.
They may not be real blood relatives, but they are closer to us now than our own cousins were.
Across from them are their wives, Gina and Kelly. Kelly is the only one who didn’t grow up here in the city, and none of us really know where Valentino found her. I guess it doesn’t matter, because she knows how to keep her mouth shut, and now that she’s pregnant, she’s more tied to the family than ever before.
Before she got knocked up, she ran her mouth a little too much. Arlo had told me that Valentino had a come to Jesus meeting with her. Nobody wants to end up on the wrong side of our family. Nobody.
Since then, she’s been a good little wife. She keeps his bed warm, makes sure to keep her mouth shut, and doesn’t ask any questions that would get her into trouble.
That’s one of the other rules of the family. The women aren’t involved unless absolutely necessary. The men take care of everything, and that way, our women can’t be used against us. It’s been like that for generations, and nobody has ever really bucked it.
Well, Kelly tried, but she got put in her place, so she gave that up really quick.
At the other end of the table is the one cousin we still talk to. He’s a cousin on Ma’s side, not Pop’s, so it makes sense that he’s still around. When his folks died, Ma and Pops took him in, so he basically grew up with us as a brother. Ricky’s a single dad, which would be hard as hell, but Ma helps him out as much as possible. Emilia is five now, and a damn good kid.
Pops caught Ricky telling Ma one time that he’s glad she’s a girl because she can’t get too involved in the family business. I’m not sure how the conversation went after that, but ever since then, Ricky’s been at the far side of the table, so that tells me something.
“So, how was the weekend? Anyone get into anything good?” Ma starts passing platters of food around and we all begin to load up our plates before speaking. Arlo catches my eye and winks, and I think about kicking him under the table.
Probably not a good idea, though. Doesn’t really scream future leader to my pops. It’s just that the thought of anyone – even my brother – looking at Eva makes me want to kill them. She’s mine, even though she may not know it yet. Even though she practically ran out of the back room last night after we fucked.
The thought makes me frown for a moment. I guess that it’s fucked up of me to
