by Bethany-Kris
At least this way, the two were not young children now left without a father. They were already adults into their own lives, and would not be left feeling abandoned and alone. Or … that was her hope for them.
She suspected it still hurt them, of course. Grief was a lot like the ocean—wide, sometimes clear and sometimes murky, and always dangerous. It could swallow someone whole, and drown them in pain.
Siena stepped up to the family when her brothers moved away. As Kev and Darren moved to speak with a couple of their men gathered close by, she and her mother took to comforting the family.
It was also their job.
Another one added to the pile.
And what did they say to these poor people?
“We’re so sorry.”
Sorry our family has taken from you.
“We’re here for you.”
So long as you are here for us.
“He is with God.”
And more men will soon join him.
Because that was the way of war, and that was all that could be guaranteed for these people, and their pain. More deaths would follow, and it would be all the Calabrese family’s fault.
Why?
Siena’s gaze drifted to her brothers again. Sure, they looked as though they fit the part of mafia principes turned kings in their black suits, shined shoes, slicked back hair, and straightened postures. Their cold eyes held little warmth, and their tones delivered orders with a sharp flatness that could both chill, and slice at the same time.
Matteo—during the years that he lived—had certainly trained her brothers well. They stepped into the positions they needed to without hesitation, and without batting an eye. The rest of the Calabrese organization didn’t think to question the brothers when they moved up in power, and replaced others that might have been a better fit. No one said a thing when they first tried to strong-arm the Marcellos into a peaceful deal, and then turned on them when said deal went sour.
Fingers pointed.
Bullets were readied.
Blood spilled.
The city tasted like war now.
Nothing could stop them. Kev and Darren were obsessive in their desire and assurance that the Calabrese family would soon be the one running New York City with an iron fist.
Well, that’s how it felt, anyway. They still had to get the little issue of the Marcellos out of the way. The Marcello family made it very clear that would not be an easy task.
Siena patted the hand of the Capo’s widow, and offered her a smile. A forced smile, sure, and one that didn’t reach her eyes, but who could tell? It was a funeral, after all. No one was supposed to be happy or true.
“Anything you need, I promise,” Siena repeated.
The woman nodded. “Thank you, Siena. You’re such a sweet girl. Your brothers must be so proud of you.”
Siena smiled a little more honestly at that statement. Bitterness coated her tongue with the taste of bile, and she patted the woman’s hand once more.
“You have no idea,” she murmured.
As quickly as Siena had greeted the woman and her adult children, she turned away from them, and followed behind her now-moving brothers. Kev and Darren weaved through the group of men who had come to talk to them, and made for their designated seats.
Only because this was not their family’s funeral, and this was not their church, did they sit in the pew directly behind the family. Unfortunately, while sitting, there was no chance for Siena to hide her displeasure or discomfort behind her brothers’ backs. She was forced to take a little more care with her appearance, and the mask she put forth.
Darren looked over at her. “Did you really have to pick a purple dress?”
“It’s a dark color.”
“Black is appropriate.”
“I’m fucking sick of black, Darren.”
All she ever seemed to wear anymore was black.
Once this was all over—she had not forgotten what Andino Marcello told her months ago when she was ripped away from John, after all—she was never going to wear black again. Not unless someone fucking forced her into the color.
This won’t be forever.
Those words rang and rang.
They echoed and echoed.
She kept them close.
What else could she do?
A few minutes before the service was supposed to start, murmurings passed between the people in the pews. Heads began to turn in the direction that the whispering started. Hot, humid heat from the outside slipped up the church’s aisle.
Siena turned, too.
She wanted to see, too.
There, at the back of the church dressed in black on black and standing in a close line of at least ten men, were Marcellos.
The boss. His men. John’s father.
Dante Marcello—the boss of the family—smiled and ticked a finger forward. His men moved behind him as he took a step forward, and then another. Slow, purposeful strides. A confident, uncaring stroll.
Beside Siena, her brothers and mother hissed back and forth between one another. Clearly, they had not been expecting this move.
Siena was kind of impressed.
“How fucking dare they?” Kev asked.
“Stop sitting there—do something,” Darren snarled.
“What should he do?” their mother asked. “He cannot make a scene in this church.”
No, Kev certainly couldn’t.
Once again, it looked like her brothers were bowing down to the Marcellos. It seemed as though not every battle was started and finished with bullets, blood, and funerals. Some battles were won with killer smiles, and a simple show of power.
Siena was starting to believe she should keep score.
Calabrese family—zero.
The Marcellos—one.
It was almost funny how one simple action could change all kinds of circumstances. Suddenly, the enforcers that rarely left Siena alone when she was outside of her brothers’ sights were now fully distracted by the show happening inside the entrance of the church.
With the funeral over, it seemed Siena’s brothers had finally decided to take action with the Marcellos.
Better late than never.
Siena hung back behind the crowd—her interest in watching men verbally spar over their growing feud was nonexistent. None of this would do her or the cause she was silently fighting for any good at the end of the day.
She kept one eye on her mother as Coraline edged along the crowd. Her mother’s eagle eye was fully pointed on Kev, Darren, and the Marcellos.
Siena never would have taken her mother for a woman who involved herself in mafia politics, or the business of men. And yet, there Coraline was on a daily basis. Doing exactly those things with her sons, and never thinking twice about it.
Who knew why.
The name she carried.
The man—now dead—she had married.
The legacy behind her.
The promise of one ahead of her.
Siena didn’t know.
It wouldn’t matter when this was over.
A form slid in beside Siena. She stiffened a bit at the man’s presence, and the scent of his familiar cologne. He wouldn’t typically be so bold, but it seemed like everyone around them at the moment was currently distracted.
Andino smiled a bit when Siena looked at him. “What do you have for me?”
This little game of theirs had started months ago. It started with nothing more than a single sentence in passing from Andino—perhaps you should take up a hobby … like yoga. Back when there had seemed like a chance of settling this feud between their families with something like a marriage was possible, he had given her that line, and she ran with it.
Yoga it was.
It was the only time—two hours twice a week—that her brothers allowed Siena any kind of privacy and peace. The enforcers stayed outside the complex. She slipped out the back. Andino was always waiting.
John’s cousin was fighting this war in a far dirt
ier way.
Siena respected him for it, really.
“Well?” he asked again. “What do you have for me?”
“A west end warehouse,” Siena said. “An attack in a couple of days. Retribution for Arty’s death. That’s all I know.”
Andino’s face cleared of emotion, and his gaze hardened. “All right. You don’t know what, or how many—”
“I would tell you if I did. You know that.”
Andino’s hand touched her shoulder lightly. “I know.”
She glanced back at him again. “I miss him.”
John.
She always missed him.
She hadn’t seen him in months.
Andino nodded once. “I know that, too. Soon, Siena. I know he’ll be getting out soon. He made the choice to stay in the facility for this long because of his own health. He chose stability. That’s the thing about John, and being bipolar. I don’t think he’s ever really chosen stability before now. And with that comes taking a hard, long look at a lot of things in his life. I don’t think he felt it was good for him mentally to try handling his personal business while dealing with everything outside of it, too.”
“I want him to be good.”
She wanted John to be healthy, and happy.
Safe.
He was not going to come out to stability, or safety.
Not now.
“He’s going to be fucking great,” Andino said with a grin, “as long as you’re still waiting for him when he’s ready to come back, then nothing else matters.”
“Of course, I’ll be waiting.”
She loved John.
Nothing was ever going to change that.
Andino nodded. “So, hey, what’s the thirtieth looking like for you?”
“Of this month?”
“Yeah.”
Siena shrugged. “Yoga.”
Andino chuckled. “Thought so. I’ll be waiting. We should really go visit John.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, girl, really.”
That made everything so much better.
“Okay, go before someone sees you with me,” she said, flicking her hand at him.
Andino rolled his eyes. “Trust me—they’re all too stuck up their own asses to even think about you right now. You didn’t seriously think this whole show was just about fucking with their heads, did you?”
“Well …”
Yeah, kind of.
Andino smirked. “I will always find a way to get my message in, Siena, no matter how protected they think you are. Do you have a new phone?”
“Yeah, Kev changed it again last week.”
“Same old, same old.”
Siena nodded once. “Random wrong numbers, I know.”
“This whole thing isn’t forever, remember. Soon, you’ll have what you want.”
Not what.
Who.
She reminded herself daily that this wasn’t forever.
No, it was just for right now.
Forever was going to be far more beautiful.
TWO
The red circle around July twentieth both taunted and promised Johnathan Marcello. It was just a date—a single date among many on the calendar. One of the nurses at Clearview Oaks had given him the calendar months ago when he first arrived. Each month showcased a different picture of the facility’s grounds.
The older nurse had suggested that crossing off dates on the calendar would give him some sort of satisfaction. It hadn’t, of course. Not until he knew his release date.
Now, every little black X in permanent marker felt like another chain coming undone from his body. And yet, the closer he got to that big red circle, the tighter the invisible rope became around his throat.
Strange how that worked.
“Nervous, John?”
He spun on his heels to find his therapist leaning in the doorway of his private room. Patients weren’t allowed to have their doors closed unless the doctor was also in the room, and only if the patient was nonviolent. On a suicide watch, the door was never closed. Ever.
“Well?” Leonard pressed.
“For what?”
“Your chosen release date is coming up. Three weeks away.”
John passed the calendar one more look. “I like how you posed that as if I chose when I could leave, when actually—”
“You did choose.”
Leonard smiled when John glanced back at him.
“You made it clear you didn’t think I was ready to go,” John said pointedly.
The older man shrugged. “Yes, well, you weren’t. Every little medication change sent you into another round, and we had trouble getting you settled with the right dose of Lithium. Never mind the actual therapy, John.”
“I am, though. A little nervous, I mean.”
“All normal, considering.”
“I’m looking forward to it, too.”
“As you should,” Leonard replied. “I’m curious, though, what has you the most nervous.”
John laughed under his breath. Running this fingers through his hair, he once again turned to face the calendar. Leonard had a way of pushing John into talking about things beyond the surface of what he presented to the world. The therapist had no problem with really digging into the crux of John’s issues.
About life.
His family.
Being bipolar.
Out of the many, many therapists John had gone through in his life, Leonard was—by far—the best for him personally. Sure, he didn’t always like what the older man had to say. He didn’t particularly appreciate being forced to drag out old issues and dirty laundry to reexamine. That didn’t mean Leonard’s tactics were useless.
They weren’t.
They worked.
They worked especially well for John.
What more could he ask for?
“Well?” the therapist pressed when John stayed quiet. “What has you nervous—reentering life, integrating with your family again … her?”
John swallowed hard.
Her.
Siena.
John chuckled. “Not her. Never her.”
Leonard returned John’s smile. “You haven’t seen the woman in … well, almost four months, now. You sound very sure of that statement, though.”
He was.
It wasn’t like he had a reason to be.
He also didn’t have a reason not to be.
John shrugged. “It’s not her.”
“The rest, then?”
“It’s a mixture of the rest, I think.”
Leonard closed the door behind him, and stepped further into the room. He waved a hand at John, and then gestured toward the seating area next to the windows. So was the therapist’s way when it came to a session. He liked to make John sit, while he remained standing, or pacing. Sometimes Leonard would also sit, but it wasn’t particularly often.
John’s private room was more like a very expensive, yet also clinical-feeling, bachelor pad. He had his own small kitchen with a two-person table. A double bed, and private bathroom. A sitting area with bookshelves and a flat screen television. The walls showcased photographs of mountains and colorful flowers set in clear frames. The floor was a marble stone that somehow never felt too cold in the mornings.
If anything, it was comfortable. Clean, which he appreciated. Simplistic in design, and catered to his private needs. He had a private phone line to make calls out if he needed to or wanted to, but other than a few calls to his mother, he had not used the phone a lot. After all, he was here to get better, and to focus on himself. Besides, the person he wanted to talk to the most—Siena—he had not been able to. For whatever reason, her old number was dead. No one had given him a reason why.
John had been able to make his room at Clearview Oaks feel somewhat like home in different ways.
John opted to sit in one of the white leather recliners next to the window. Leonard leaned against the wall beside the flat screen, and gazed out the window. Next to the back
drop of crisp white walls, the therapist blended in with his stark white hair and jacket.
“Let’s talk, John,” Leonard said.
“You are aware I know why you like to stand and pace while I stay sitting, right?”
Leonard’s gray eyes cut to John with amusement dancing in his thick, lifted brows. “Oh, do tell.”
“When you sit, then I can zone out. I know exactly where you are, and I feel safer to focus my attention elsewhere. The wall, or the clock. Maybe a picture. My hands. Whatever it is, then I don’t have to keep an eye on you because you’re no longer moving around and keeping my attention on you.”
“Keep going.”
“When you move, the kind of man I am, means I have to keep an eye on you constantly. I can’t let you move behind me, or too close to my side. I need to see your hands, and what they’re doing. It takes up a great deal of the focus in my brain, and that makes my mouth vulnerable to letting things slip. If I can zone out, I am far less likely to talk. Or if I do, it’s … as you say, surface things.”
“What people see, not what really is.”
John nodded. “Although, if you would sit, I would talk, too. For you.”
The man’s smile softened a bit. “Would you?”
“I would, Leonard.”
“I thought so,” Leonard replied as he moved to take a seat across from John. “And well done on figuring that strategy of mine out. It only took you … a few months.”
“A couple,” John shot back. “I knew about a month in.”
Leonard chuckled, and wagged a finger at John. “Talk, now.”
“It’s different.”
“What is?”
“Here, to there. Being inside here, and then going back into the outside. One of the first things you told me was that I had to choose stability. Not just for now, or for a while, or even for a few years. I had to choose stability for the rest of my life.”
Which meant meds, even when they made him feel like shit. It meant choosing to get up every single day and take medications regardless of how he felt about it until a better medication could be chosen. It also meant never excusing himself because of being bipolar, but accepting and being honest about it. It meant being honest to those in his life about what was happening inside his mind, and keeping himself accountable.