by Bethany-Kris
And damn, didn’t she look good acting a Queen.
Then again, Cara always looked amazing.
Surrounding their mother in the portrait were her boys—five of them. Gian had commissioned the piece when their last boys were only nine. Those same boys were fourteen now, and he still looked at the painting every single day.
Nearly nineteen-year-old Marcus shuffled past his father in the hallway with a cigarette tucked up behind his ear, a sly smile as he glanced down at whatever was on his phone, and swinging a set of Mercedes keys in his hand all the while. Gian let his oldest son pass him by, but only because this was nothing abnormal for Marcus.
Or any of their boys, really.
Gian was not the most important person in the room, not when his children were just coming home after being gone for days, or even a few hours to school. Marcus no longer lived with them—he hadn’t since he turned eighteen—but he knew better than to stay away from the Guzzi home for too long. Three days, four at the max, was enough.
Then, Cara started to miss her son.
Marcus didn’t like those phone calls from his father when Cara started complaining. To be fair, Gian didn’t like her complaining.
Gian headed after his son, ready to eat.
No, Marcus didn’t greet his father first. He moved across the dining room floor quickly, dropped his phone into his pocket, and then bent down to kiss his mother’s waiting cheek. She sat at the head of the table—a spot that should have been reserved for Gian only.
It wasn’t his spot to have.
It had never been.
It was Cara’s spot in their home.
Head of the house.
She always had the floor.
The only Queen of his family.
Gian made sure not a single fucking soul ever forgot it, either. Including their five sons.
To be a Guzzi principe, those boys were never allowed to see their mother as anything but the queen that had birthed them. They worshipped Cara, the ground she walked on, and the very air that came out of her body. In their eyes, their mother did no wrong. Each one of their sons would defend their mother to the fucking death, and they wouldn’t think twice about it. They didn’t let anybody say a bad word about her, not without some kind of apology that usually included blood.
When they walked into the house, Cara was who they looked for. Cara was who they greeted first in every situation—their father second. Cara was served before them, him, and guests alike. She never had to ask a second time for anything, not when she had five sets of ears listening the first damn time. She wanted for nothing in their home.
His sons’ greatest fears?
Failing their mom.
They didn’t know it, but they could never fail Cara. She loved them too much to see their faults. Gian saw their flaws, occasionally, because he was their father and he had a different role to play, at times, with his boys. But no matter what, he was damn proud of his sons.
Gian liked to think he had a big hand in how his sons treated, loved, and respected their mother. Fact was, his boys just loved Cara. And all he needed to do was occasionally remind them why as they’d grown up. They did the rest themselves, honestly.
“Hey, Ma.”
Cara preened up at her oldest son, happy as could be. “How was your week?”
“Busy.”
“Not too busy, though,” his wife said, shooting Gian a look.
Marcus shrugged. “It’s good, Ma. I like being busy. Keeps me out of trouble.”
Cara pursed her lips. “Mmhmm. I’m sure. Sit, your brothers are almost home from school.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Gian had only taken his seat at the other end of the table when four pairs of footsteps echoed down the main hall. Two sets were closer than the others. Loud, raucous laughter followed his four other boys. Nearly seventeen-year-old Christopher and Corrado moved through the dining room first, going straight for their mother. Seniors in high school, the two boys were often more different than they were alike. Which was strange, considering they were identical twins. One was more daring, the other reserved. One was louder, the other quiet.
Perhaps it was just how his first set of twin boys fed off one another. One helped the other to stay calm, the other pushed his brother to take risks.
Gian wasn’t entirely sure.
He let his boys figure out this life thing all on their own.
“So, wait, she tried to—” Fourteen-year old Beni—short for Benito—quieted when he realized the entire dining room was looking in his direction. He shrugged off the dirty look his twin brother—Benedetto—gave him, especially considering Cara was now interested in whatever she had heard.
“You’re an ass,” Bene grumbled. “Told you to drop it.”
“She?” Cara asked quietly. “Who is this she, Bene?”
“Ah, Ma. It’s nothing.”
Bene—said with an ‘ay’ sound at the end—and Beni—said with a hard “e” sound—were the complete opposite of their older twin brothers. Where Chris and Corrado made a great effort to be different from one another, Bene and Beni did not.
From a young age, the younger twins had stuck to one another like glue. They spoke alike, dressed similar, and rarely allowed people close enough to understand their strange bonds. Gian could bring forth a dozen memories of his youngest twins having conversations with one another in a babbling language as babies and toddlers that no one could understand. Or how one would always know the other was sick or hurt before anyone else did. It took Cara and Gian years—until the twins could speak properly and communicate—to understand why one would wake up in the middle of the night in a terror, only to figure out the next morning, the other twin was sick with some bug or other.
Cara had quietly mentioned once that she had shared a similar—albeit less intense—kind of bond with her dead twin. It scared the shit out of Gian, not because his boys shared something so strange and wonderful, but because what if. Cara had never thought her twin would be taken away, and he didn’t want to consider that might happen to one of his boys, too.
Because what if it did?
He did not think Bene or Beni were like their mother. He did not believe one could survive without the other, not like they currently were. They were too close, too dependent, and their lives were too intertwined. Cara told Gian all the time not to think about it. Live and let live, she would tell him. Love and let love.
Some thought the boys were a little odd or strange, but Gian didn’t. Then again, he had watched his boys grow from the day they were taken from their mother’s body and put into his arms. Of course, he didn’t find anything odd or strange about them.
There were some who could not tell the two apart, although their parents had never had that trouble.
Gian would never forget Cara’s tired laugh when the ultrasound technician very quietly informed them that their pregnancy was once again a multiple. Not one baby, but two, and identical.
Cara had turned to him and muttered, “You got your baseball team, Gian.”
They hadn’t even known the genders.
Cara always seemed to know.
She also got her tubes tied after that pregnancy.
Cara smiled, took her kisses from her youngest boys, and waved them off to their respective seats. “I will be asking about this she later, Bene.”
Gian chuckled, his attention going to the maid as food was brought in.
“It’s just some girl that he—”
“Beni, shut up,” Bene barked, tossing a piece of garlic bread and hitting his twin straight in the forehead.
Beni answered back by throwing a handful of croutons, peppering his twin.
Chris and Corrado laughed, already stuffing their faces, despite grace not having been said. Marcus, on the other hand, rolled his eyes like it was any other day. The only singleton Guzzi brother, with no twin to share, Gian sometimes thought Marcus felt left out in times like these. He certainly couldn’t have grown up lonely with so ma
ny siblings, but did he sometimes wonder why he had been the only singleton?
Gian didn’t wonder at all.
Marcus was still a principe working his way into being a king, sometimes stumbling a bit on his way to the top. He never could have shared that kind of spotlight with someone else. He was too focused, too driven, and way too goddamn competitive.
But that was good, too.
Gian thought to correct his sons before they got out of hand, but he found himself distracted by the amused, soft smile Cara shot across the table at him. He couldn’t very well correct his boys when their mother enjoyed their antics.
Head of the house.
She always had the floor.
Queen of his family.
Sitting right where she belonged.
Always.
Bethany-Kris is a Canadian author, lover of much, and mother to four sons, two cats, and three dogs. A small town in Eastern Canada where she was born and raised is where she has always called home. With her boys under her feet, a snuggling cat, barking dogs, and a spouse calling over his shoulder, she is nearly always writing something ... when she can find the time.
Find Bethany-Kris at:
Her website www.bethanykris.com,
or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bethanykriswrites,
on her blog at www.bethanykris.blogspot.ca,
or on Twitter - @BethanyKris.
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Renzo + Lucia
Privilege
Harbor
Contempt
Andino + Haven
Duty
Vow
John + Siena
Loyalty
Disgrace
Cross + Catherine
Always
Revere
Unruly
The Companion
Naz & Roz
Guzzi Duet
Unraveled, Book One
Entangled, Book Two
DeLuca Duet
Waste of Worth: Part One
Worth of Waste: Part Two
Standalone Titles
Dirty Pool
Effortless
Inflict
Cozen
Captivated
Dishonored
Donati Bloodlines
Thin Lies
Thin Lines
Thin Lives
Behind the Bloodlines
The Complete Trilogy
Filthy Marcellos
Antony
Lucian
Giovanni
Dante
Legacy
A Very Marcello Christmas
The Complete Collection
Seasons of Betrayal
Where the Sun Hides
Where the Snow Falls
Where the Wind Whispers
Seasons: The Complete Seasons of Betrayal Series
Gun Moll Trilogy
Gun Moll
Gangster Moll
Madame Moll
The Chicago War
Deathless & Divided
Reckless & Ruined
Scarless & Sacred
Breathless & Bloodstained
The Complete Series
Maldives & Mistletoe
The Russian Guns
The Arrangement
The Life
The Score
Demyan & Ana
Shattered
The Jersey Vignettes
Find more on Bethany-Kris’s website at www.bethanykris.com.
Copyright © 2017-2019 by Bethany-Kris. All Rights Reserved.
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted material is illegal and punishable by law. No parts of this work may be reproduced, copied, used, or printed without expressed written consent from the publisher/author. Exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in reviews.
eISBN 13: 978-1-988197-91-3
Editor: Nina S. Gooden
Cover Design © Mignon Mykel at Oh, So Novel Designs
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, corporations, locales and so forth are a product of the author’s imagination, or if real, used fictitiously. Any resemblance to a person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.