“Family meeting this morning?” Cherry leans back a little and looks up at me.
“Yes.” I sigh. “We should get moving. We have a lot to work out, and then later on, we can start applying to universities.”
“I’d like that.” Cherry smiles and I wipe the tears off her cheeks.
“I love you,” I say softly.
“I love you, too, Nate.”
We get in my car and head back to the house to talk to my family…or should I say her family? My former family? Whatever it is, we need to talk to them. There are a lot of decisions to be made, and everyone will want their say. A few minutes later, we drive up to the Orso house.
The Orso house.
I realize that it no longer feels like my family home. I’m apprehensive about showing up, unsure if I should just walk right in or if it would be more appropriate to knock on the door first. All of my personal things are there, and I wonder if I should get them and move in to Cherry’s apartment, as opposed to her moving to the house. What about my office? Was it still my office?
“That’s what we’re here to decide,” I mutter.
“What was that?” Cherry asks.
“Nothing.”
As soon as we get out of the car, Antony is right there.
“Boss, we gotta talk.”
“Did Kate explain everything to all of you?”
“Yeah.”
“Then stop calling me ‘Boss.’”
“Fine.” Antony sighs. “Can we just hold off on all of that for a minute? That new hacker guy found something on the web. It’s news from Seattle, but it’s not public knowledge yet.”
“What is it?”
Antony glances at Cherry.
“Spit it out,” I tell him. “She’s more a part of the family than I am.”
“Okay.” Antony takes a deep breath. “Joseph Franks was killed yesterday. A sniper got him while he was on the deck of his boat in the Puget Sound.”
Cherry wraps her fingers around my arm, tightening her grip.
“A sniper?” Taking a hit out on a mafia family member might be a common thing, but a successful hit on someone so high up in the organization is not. An actual sniper doing the job is almost unheard of. In fact, it points to a single individual.
“Direct hit through his eye,” Antony informs me. “No trace of the shooter.”
“Did Moretti take out Franks?” I speak in a hushed voice and look over my shoulder as if I’m going to find a gun pointed at my head just for saying the words.
“Moretti’s enforcer was killed in the last tournament, remember?”
“Oh, right.” I don’t personally keep up with the tournament information, but Threes does, and I remember him talking about the death match in question. “I forgot about that. So, who did it?”
“No idea, but it’s apparently creating complete chaos, and Landon Stark is nowhere to be found.”
“Where is this information coming from?” I ask.
“The new hacker guy.”
“The one who set up all the new algorithms? Ron Phillips’s kid?”
“Will Phillips, yeah. That’s the one. He set up some program that monitors police band radios or something. He’s been getting information from all over the place. Threes had him do it so we’d have some heads-up if there was ever any trouble headed our way.”
“Is he here?”
“Threes is inside.”
“I mean the Phillips kid.”
“He can be.”
“Get him.”
“Will do, boss.” Antony pulls out his phone and types a quick message.
“Let’s get some of this other shit out of the way while we wait for him.”
Everyone gathers in the office, and I sit at the chair behind the desk. I can’t decide how I feel about being here, in this seat. Just when it had started to feel like my place, my world was turned upside down again.
After Cherry and I announce that we are still getting married, I turn the meeting over to Kate. I shift in my seat a little as she goes over everything about the treaty in front of everyone. Nora asks a lot of questions, looking at me but getting her answers from Kate.
“I don’t care,” Twos suddenly blurts out. “What difference does it make now? Nate’s in charge, and that’s good enough for me.”
“Me, too,” Antony and Threes say together.
“We were already planning on Cherry becoming a member of this family,” Nora says, “so that’s a moot point. Nate, you are my brother—period. I don’t care what genetics or the treaty says about that.”
“As much as I appreciate the sentiment,” I say, “things are still going to change.”
“We definitely need to have all of this sorted out,” Antony says. “Nate is a Ramsay, and we can’t just ignore that.”
“Well, he’ll be an official member of this family as soon as he marries Cherry,” Nora says. “He’s an Orso one way or another.”
“This actually would make things better as far as our reputation goes,” Antony says. “Cherry still needs to change her legal name, of course. From the outside, nothing looks like it’s changed.”
“Who cares?” Nora replies. “Nate’s a part of the family. As the eldest child of the family, I say so.”
“Thanks for stepping up, Nora,”—I grin at her—“since I do not plan on continuing my position as the decision maker around here.”
“Nate, you don’t have to do that,” Threes says. “We want you right where you are. You gotta know that.”
“I do know that, and as much as I appreciate it, this is the decision I’ve made. It’s not about me being a Ramsay or an Orso—this is about me doing what’s best for Cherry and our baby.”
Everyone goes quiet as they all take turns looking at each other’s expressions.
“Yes, Cherry is pregnant,” Nora says, “and it’s fantastic news. In fact, it’s just what we need in this family, but that doesn’t mean you
