by Bethany-Kris
“Is it weird,” Haven started, “that even though I know being done after this round is the right thing to do for us, I’m still sad about it?”
“Well …”
“Give it to me straight. You always do.”
Catherine laughed, and bumped her shoulder with Haven’s. The two women let one another go and resumed their previous sitting position on the bench overlooking the park. “I mean, honestly, after Nazio … we were done, too, but I was still sad about it. And then everything that he did for the first time, I knew it was the last first time a baby of mine would ever do that. Not to mention, when he stopped doing something, you know?”
“Except …”
“Hmm?”
Haven looked over at Catherine. “That would mean Emily was my last baby—she wasn’t supposed to be the last one. I didn’t take the time to notice all those last first things, or even when—”
“Haven.”
She stopped her rambling instantly, and dragged in a burning lungful of air. She knew it was partly the stress of the whole situation, meds that she had to take for this process to have its best chance at succeeding, and just … hormones in general. That was all making her more emotional than she would normally be and willing to share.
Not that it mattered.
She couldn’t control it.
“You’re a great mom,” Catherine said, “and you know it.”
“But—”
“No buts. Not about this.”
Haven found her three girls near the swings. Lynn, their oldest, was currently helping Emily climb up to a large slide while Rose stood at the rear in her cute yellow dress. All of her daughters were kind, oh, so sweet, and perfect. They were everything she wanted and more. Somehow, and though they were still young, she had managed to raise some pretty decent humans so far.
“If it doesn’t work,” Haven said, settling herself on the chance that it might not, “then I’ll be okay. We’ll be just fine.”
Catherine nodded with a smile. “Yeah, I think so, too.”
“But it’s still okay to be sad, right?”
“Absolutely. Nobody gets to tell you how to feel, Haven.”
She would remember that.
Definitely.
Haven had just finished buckling in the last of her children and closed the door of the SUV when a man rounded the front of the Mercedes. She might not have noticed him on another day—there were often many people at the park on any given day, and they usually were a good mix of different kinds of people, too.
Some had kids.
Some jogged.
There was even a dog park.
Andino used to like that for Snaps, but the rescued pit bull had fallen ill the year before due to age-related complications that he hadn’t been able to pull out of at the end of it. He hadn’t suffered, which was one of the only things they were grateful for about the pup’s passing, because everything else about it had been fucking heartbreaking.
Still was, really.
It wasn’t unusual to see a man wearing all black—from his tie to the shined shoes on his feet—in the park. Hell, Haven had met her husband in a park just like this where he walked his mean-looking dog while wearing a suit.
But this strange man?
He looked right at her.
Not like a passing glance, or even like it was the first time he’d seen her face. No, he stared at her as though he knew exactly who she was and that he had something to say to her.
Haven looked over her shoulder as the man came closer to the rear end of the Mercedes where she’d just shut her kids into the back—where were her enforcers? Did she even need them?
Something told her she did.
Maybe it was the aura the man gave off.
She didn’t really know.
But something was wrong.
“Haven Marcello,” the man said, not even posing it as a question. “I have a message to pass along to you, and then I’ll be on my way.”
Her hand slipped inside the bag at her side, and she palmed the small handgun that she always kept on-hand because Andino made it very clear she didn’t have a choice. The same way she didn’t get an option on whether or not her enforcers would follow close behind daily.
So, where the fuck were they?
“What do you want?” Haven asked.
She’d just grabbed tight to the gun, readying to pull it out.
The man’s next words stopped her.
“Tell your husband that Mr. Moshka would like another meeting. It’s not a request.”
What?
She didn’t get the chance to ask.
The man turned and left.
SEVEN
“They had guns pointed at him, boss,” Nate said.
Andino nodded, but continued to stare over the front property of his home. Darkness had come, cloaking everything in blackness that matched the current undertones of his mind and soul. There was never a time when the mafia wouldn’t touch someone if they were in the life—it didn’t matter if he was the most powerful man in New York with a hundred guards on constant watch, these things would always happen.
It was just a matter of when, why, and how.
He had most of those answers this time which was better than he could say for other times. Did it make this any easier or would he be able to go inside and calm his wife’s nerves? That she had been raging on and off for the last several hours?
Absolutely not.
Yet …
Andino chose this life.
All of it.
“My wife still didn’t see her guards,” he noted. “Which is part of the problem. How close were they to Haven and the girls that she couldn’t even see them when she needed them?”
Nate cleared his throat, and glanced over his shoulder. Andino didn’t miss the way the man shifted from foot to foot, either. A damn good sign of the man’s nerves. He was Andino’s best enforcer, and one he trusted the very most ever since Pink had moved onto other things. Because of that, he tended to take note of things that made Nate tick.
“What aren’t you saying?”
The enforcer sighed. “It’s what I don’t want to say—I’d rather not offend my boss. Not only do you sign my paychecks, but you also get gun happy when people piss you off.”
Well …
“Just say it,” Andino muttered, giving the man a look from the side.
“She was scared. The girls were there and all. It was just her. She rarely notices her enforcers anymore anyway, which was what you wanted. For her to feel as normal as possible while she went about her day, right?”
Andino let out a hard breath, already knowing where this was going. “And?”
Nate cleared his throat. “She probably had tunnel vision—focused in on the threat. It’s what most people do in that situation. Hell, she couldn’t even tell you what color the car was that was parked beside her own. Tunnel vision.”
“And all of this leads to you telling me what, exactly?”
The man shrugged his shoulders under his leather jacket. “Listen, I know you’re pissed and all, boss, but I don’t think you should go off on the boys for today. They did their job. They escorted the guy out of there only to find out he was a paid messenger. He didn’t even have a weapon on him. They’re good enforcers.”
They were.
Usually.
Andino didn’t want to argue that.
“What makes you think my first reaction is to punish the enforcers who were watching her today?” Andino asked, honesty curious.
For a few reasons …
Nate gave him a look. “It’s your wife, man. And your girls. Anything happens to them, and you see fucking red. We all know it. And those guys? They’re terrified of it.”
Hmm.
Andino nodded. “Good to know. Keep an eye on the house, yeah?”
“Got it, boss.”
The enforcer waited until Andino had opened the front door and stepped inside before he exited the safety of the porch and
headed out onto the walkway. Andino wasn’t sure where Nate would stay on the property for the evening. Sometimes he just walked around the property line, and other times he sat in a car. It wasn’t every night that Andino required Nate to watch the house, but on a night like this one?
Yep.
Other nights, someone else did it.
Not tonight.
After Andino closed the front door and toed off his leather loafers, he heard the first slam of a cupboard door. A hard sigh left him as he shoved his hands in his pockets, stared up at the ceiling of the entryway to his home, and took a moment just to breathe and think. The girls were all in bed and none the wiser about what had happened today. Both he and Haven made sure of that—if he had any say, it would be a good many years before his daughters knew the truth of who he was and their life.
Tonight was not the night.
“Are you just going to stand there?” Haven asked sharply.
God.
The last thing Andino wanted to do was fight with his wife. Or rather, let her rage at him because she was scared and didn’t know how to handle it.
“Haven—”
“You still haven’t even told me what all that was about today!”
“Because it doesn’t matter,” he returned, finally meeting her gaze. “And it’ll only piss you off even more than you already are. Does that seem like a smart route to go down to you?”
“You’re an asshole.”
Yep.
No news was good news, he supposed.
“I’m going to handle it, Haven. It won’t happen again. I promise.”
She looked like every inch the hurricane she truly could be. Tattooed, beautiful, angry, and entirely his.
“He got past my enforcers,” she said softly.
Yeah, and that was the real problem.
“And the girls were there,” she added.
It would not matter to his wife that the guy who accosted her at the park was practically harmless considering he didn’t even have a weapon on him when it happened. All that mattered to Haven was that it happened in the first place.
He understood that well enough.
It pissed him off, too.
Andino nodded. “I’ll handle it.”
Before his wife could reply or start another argument—it really depended on which way her mood swung, frankly—a cry from one of their girls echoed overtop their heads. Both of them looked upward at the sound.
Being parents never stopped.
Not for anything.
“I have to make a call,” Andino said, “but then I’ll be up to help.”
Haven gave him another one of those looks—one that stung like nothing else. “Whatever, Andino.”
He understood her anger.
She could have it.
John was the person Andino called first. As soon as his cousin picked up the call, he muttered, “Did you hear the news about what happened today at the park?”
“Unfortunately,” John muttered. “What are you going to do about that?”
“Handle it.”
“How?”
“That’s why I called you. I need a plan.”
John chuckled. “I love making those.”
Yeah, he knew.
EIGHT
“And the pretty little unicorn flew away …”
Haven leaned her head against the doorjamb of their master bedroom, listening to her husband down the hall reading yet another bedtime story to Rose because their middle child just did not want to go to bed. It wasn’t as though she had nightmares, and since the kid didn’t even know what had happened that day, it couldn’t be anxiety from that, either.
Certainly not what her mother was currently feeling.
No, the girl was just impossible to put to bed. Even when she was younger, Haven swore Rose would switch her days and nights around from week to week. As a toddler, she rarely had a proper nap which often led to a clingy, grumpy little girl they still loved no matter what.
And then there was Andino …
Rose loved her daddy. All he needed to do was give her five minutes of his attention, like reading a nighttime story, and the girl would be snoring away sooner rather than later.
On another night, Haven would have enjoyed listening to Andino read to one of their daughters. It was the quickest way to make her heart swell with every emotion possible that was good and great and wonderful. All the love in their home was everything she dreamed of, and her girls had the best father.
Except right now, she felt none of that.
How could she when she was scared?
The bigger problem was that Haven didn’t know how to explain that to Andino, and she couldn’t be like him, either. She wasn’t capable of being a mother in one moment, pretending everything was perfectly fine, and then flip a switch to be the kind of woman who just doesn’t bat an eye at something like what happened that day.
She couldn’t do it.
She wouldn’t apologize for it, either.
Not that he ever asked her to.
Shaking her head, but not getting free of the heaviness weighing her down like nothing else, Haven began to ready for the night. She had no doubt that once Andino was done with Rose, they wouldn’t have to run for one of the girls again for the rest of the night. Changing from her day clothes into one of Andino’s shirts that were huge on her, she then sat down at her vanity to begin removing her makeup and the rest of this godforsaken day.
Even after she finished her nightly routine, Haven still didn’t move from her vanity. Instead, she hugged her arms around her middle and knees once she drew her feet up to the edge of the chair. She stared at the reflection in the mirror, letting her thoughts race through her mind one after another, warring for space and attention, while she did nothing more than watch the battle in her eyes. Soon, a familiar figure stood behind her in the mirror.
“Did you not hear the phone?” he asked.
Haven rested her chin on her arm. “Did it ring?”
“Yeah, it was your mom. She said they got their tickets for that trip here in a couple months.”
A slow, steady stream of air left her lips in a long sigh.
Andino kneeled down as he put his hands to her chair. A soft kiss found the back of her neck while he murmured all the words she needed to hear—words she loved to hear him say. It wasn’t any different than the things he’d been telling her all day or even the shit he said downstairs. He would fix it. He was sorry. It wouldn’t happen again.
She didn’t doubt it.
She also knew it very well might happen all over again—time and time again, in fact, over their life together. Because that was the thing. This was their life. The one she decided to spend with him. Still, knowing all those things and settling herself with those facts didn’t change that Haven could never prepare for these days.
“I just …”
His lips hesitated against the soft, sensitive skin behind her ear when her words trailed off. Lifting his gaze to meet hers in the mirror, he arched a brow to silently urge her to continue. It took her a moment, but she did. Somehow.
“I just don’t know how to be the person who has moments like those happen and doesn’t bat a lash at it, and then can turn around and be a mom and a business owner and a wife. It’s a little too much. I always fuck up at something, don’t I?”
“Do you?” he asked.
“Andino—”
“I’m not sure what you want to hear from me here, Haven.”
“How do you be that man so well—how am I supposed to always be that woman, too?”
“I don’t have an answer.”
“At all, or just right now?” she returned.
“I just do it—I just am.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know.”
He would eventually give her an answer. She knew it—it simply might take some time.
Haven tipped her head a little to the side, letting him go back to loving her neck with soft kisses that had
lust swelling in her gut and heat traveling straight down to the spot between her thighs. Right now, she needed that, too.
Him.
Closeness.
Them.
He gave her that, too.
Like everything else.
Sometimes, she had to be patient enough to wait for it, though.
NINE
John’s voice rang through the Bluetooth of Andino’s Rolls-Royce as he parked in a familiar parking lot. “Bit early for you to be calling, isn’t it? I didn’t think you rolled your ass out of bed before ten anymore, man.”
Andino scoffed at that. “I have three kids—girls, by the way, in case you forgot. Two of which think they need to be up making as much noise as possible in my bathroom because they won’t even use their own. Their mother’s makeup isn’t in there. Oh, and the youngest one? I think she wakes up at the ass crack of dawn every morning. Before ten. Right. Don’t joke with me today. It’s not one of those.”
On the other end of the line, his cousin chuckled. That was probably the only reason Andino didn’t default straight to his usual asshole mode. He knew John was only trying to lighten him up—one of the few people that knew what today was and how important it was to Andino and Haven.
“You and Siena are still good to grab the girls from Mom and Dad’s place later, right?” he asked, eyeing the empty row of seats in the back of his vehicle. Usually, they would be filled with empty car seats, but he left those at his parents. “I dropped them off about an hour ago.”
And took his time saying goodbye.
Hugs and kisses for each of his girls.
Andino didn’t mention that.
“Absolutely,” John replied. “We planned to grab them right before lunch, make it an afternoon, and bring them home when they’re too tired to think.”
Andino laughed. “Sounds good.”
“Yeah, and uh, hey … about today?”
“What about it?”
He found his reflection in the rearview mirror as he waited. The thing about Andino that a lot of people didn’t really know was that, when needed, he could put on a good front. Today was one of those days. He figured that his wife had enough stress and worry of her own about what was going on that he really didn’t need to add to it with his own. So, just by looking at him, one couldn’t tell that his stomach was in knots and his chest grew heavy with every breath, but he was also fine with that.