by Bethany-Kris
Beside him, his twin stiffened.
Beni ignored that.
He didn’t know what the fuck was wrong with Bene—or how it tied to August, because it wasn’t like this was the first woman Beni messed around with—but his brother needed to get over it. And if he couldn’t, then he needed to fuck off and handle his shit elsewhere.
That was his opinion.
“How about you mind your business?”
He swore he could feel Cory’s smirk when the man murmured, “Got your dick tied in a knot over her already, huh?”
“Knock it off,” he warned.
“Have you seen her again?”
Beni was going to punch him in the throat. “No, I let her text me when she wanted to instead of messaging her.”
Because he would have texted her the next damn day, but August didn’t seem like the type of woman who would appreciate a man asserting his presence onto her just because he wanted to. Some chicks liked that, and for others, it made them run.
He figured, better for her to tell him what she wanted.
He could work with that.
“Shouldn’t do that,” Cory said, “because women are smart, you know? You can’t keep their attention, and they quickly find something else to entertain them, man.”
A hot ball of something burned in Beni’s gut. Not that the emotion made any sense, and he really wasn’t interested in indulging the jealousy he suddenly felt. He didn’t have a claim on August, and he wasn’t about to make a fool out of himself by trying to prove differently.
“Drop it,” he said.
“But—”
A throat cleared across the room, thankfully ending Cory’s questioning, but bringing Beni’s attention to the other men who showed up for this meeting. Well, two men, and a woman, even if she was currently downstairs having tea with Abriella Rossi.
His mother, father, and oldest brother, Marcus.
Beni was not expecting to wake up that morning to find his parents, and oldest brother, knocking on his apartment door. Bene, on the other hand, didn’t seem at all surprised by their presence, which told him at least one of them knew they were coming.
His father and brother, for the meeting.
His mother because she missed them.
Gian gave Beni a look, raising his eyebrows in a silent comment to knock it off. He didn’t need to be told twice, because frankly, he had no desire to discuss his situation with August. Not with Cory Rossi, or anybody else, either.
That was for him to handle.
Simple as that.
“Beni,” Tommas said, bringing his attention back to the boss, “how has the last week gone on the east side?”
“I’ve just integrated as a new man for the crew, so no one is really talking ... and it’s been quiet on the gang side of things. Like maybe they’re just trying to let the club incident blow over, or whatever. Wait it out, I guess.”
Tommas nodded. “Likely right. Gian, you wanted to discuss ... the twins?”
“Mmm.” His father folded his arms over his chest where he stood next to Tommas’s large desk, but his attention was only on the twins across the room. “Given the situation here and your mother’s concern ... if you would both like to come home to Toronto, at least until the problems here have blown over, in Beni’s case—because I don’t know if you plan to continue working here for Tommas—then I would understand why.”
“And no one would blame either of you,” Marcus added, “if you wanted to step away.”
Beni didn’t even have to think about it. “I’m staying in Chicago.”
Again, his twin stiffened.
He continued ignoring the odd behavior, and the heaviness that seemed to be constantly resting on his shoulders and heart lately. He knew that wasn’t his emotions—it felt different, a bit foreign in his body and mind, if that made sense. It was how he knew whatever his twin was feeling, it projected into Beni.
So that heaviness?
Whatever that was?
Bene was feeling it.
Beni was just getting the tendrils from it.
“I told the boss I would help to figure out what was going on with the crew, and I intend to do that,” Beni said.
“And to get your dick wet.”
Beni’s head snapped to the side so fast, the fucking room spun. His gaze nailed to the side of his twin’s head, and if it were possible for someone to die from a glare alone, Bene would be on the floor with a still heart.
“What did you just fucking say?”
Bene chewed on the piece of gum in his mouth, staring at his father, unaffected. “I’m going home like the original plan.”
Gian nodded. “All right.”
Beni didn’t give a fuck. “Seriously, what is your problem, Bene?”
“Hey,” Marcus was quick to say.
He ignored his older brother.
“What, you won’t look at me, or ...?”
“Let’s end this meeting here,” Tommas said, “and Gian, I will let you handle ... that.”
“Yes, what is that?” Gian asked. “Because that is not normal for them, not at all.”
“I don’t know. Ask them.”
Great.
Beni forced his gaze away from his twin.
The problem?
Now everyone was looking their way.
Including his father.
Perfect.
• • •
“What in the hell was that?” Gian demanded, slamming the door to what seemed to be a spare bedroom behind him after he entered. When neither of the twins opened their mouths fast enough to answer their father, he snapped, “Someone better start talking—now.”
Marcus cleared his throat, finding a chair in the corner of the room to sit in while Beni and Bene did their best to avoid staring at each other. That heaviness on Beni’s shoulders, the projection from his twin, and turned into something else. Something sharper, and warmer. He knew exactly what that was—rage.
Beni felt it, too.
Except that was his own.
He was ready to snap.
“Ask him,” Beni muttered, pointing a finger to his right. “Because I’m just as fucking lost as you are, and he’s making a problem out of something I don’t even understand. All right? Ask him.”
Bene scoffed, shaking his head.
“Tell me I’m wrong, then!”
His twin glared his way, replying, “What you are is a fucking—”
“That is enough.”
Gian’s order silenced the bedroom. Even Marcus stopped fiddling with the button on his suit in the corner chair, and glanced with concern writing heavy lines on his brow. It was not often their father lost his patience, but especially not with his children. And here they were—fucking adults, twenty-one-year-old men—and at least one of their parents were still stepping in when they had problems.
Jesus Christ.
“Now, someone,” Gian uttered, his jaw tensing with every word, “had better explain why my sons are acting like foolish boys in front of another organization when I know they are aware of how to behave. Speak.”
“I told you,” Beni started to say.
“You didn’t even look for me,” Bene snapped.
Beni’s head whipped to the side, his gaze locking onto the mirrored stare of his twin. “What?”
“The club—that damn night, Beni.”
“Are you talking about the shoot—”
Bene turned his entire body in Beni’s direction, his finger pointed at his twin like a gun ready to blow as he took one step forward, closing a bit of distance between the two of them. There was pain in his features, and rage, too.
God, he was so mad.
Beni felt that.
Like an echo in his chest.
He felt it.
“I was looking for you,” Bene snarled. “I called for fucking you, Beni. I was on my feet, hearing the shots, looking for you because that’s what we do. And where the fuck were you, huh? What were you doing, yeah? Because you s
ure as fuck weren’t trying to help me like I was doing for you.”
No.
Because he’d been on the floor.
Protecting August.
“Didn’t give a fuck about me, right,” Bene said, his voice rising as he came close enough to shove his brother back a step, “because you were too busy fucking with someone else.”
He shoved him again.
Beni came right back for more.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Gian was quick to yell, crossing the space to step in between the boys. One hand to Beni’s chest, and the other on Bene’s. Their father, and even their mother, had never been afraid to step in when something physical went down with their sons. Maybe it came with the territory—boys fighting, that was—but they weren’t scared of it. “Stop it, this is shameful, you two. Look at yourselves, huh?”
Marcus was up out of his seat, too, that concern still as clear as day in his stare. “Come on, Bene, we’ll go—”
“Fuck off,” Bene muttered Marcus’s way, and then to Beni, he pointed a finger and uttered, “Fuck you, too. You know what you did, Beni.”
Just like that, his brother backed away from the altercation, and his father’s hand on his chest.
“Two days,” Gian told Bene, “be packed and ready to leave with Marcus, all right?”
Bene nodded. “Fine.”
Just like that, he was done with it all. Spinning on his heel, he left the room, slamming the door behind him, and leaving Beni with his father and oldest brother. He said nothing, instead absorbing what had just happened, and what it meant.
All at once, this past week of hell with his twin made a hell of a lot more sense. The silence in the room, and in Beni’s mind, was deafening. It might seem petty or silly—Bene’s problem, that was—but he knew better.
Jealousy was a monster.
And they weren’t good with it.
Neither of them.
Jealousy had followed him and his twin for their entire lives. A friend that just got too friendly. Someone they spent more time with than their twin. A girl that took up too much of one of their attention.
It wasn’t just Bene.
Beni had been that way, too.
The difference was, he had grown out of it as they got older, or it seemed like it. Jealousy wasn’t something that reared its ugly head with his brother, not as often as it used to, anyway. Apparently, Bene had not gotten past that like he had.
“Figlio,” Gian murmured.
He glanced at his father, saying, “Sorry, I know better than to behave like—”
“It’s not about that right now.”
Beni swallowed the ache in his throat. “What is it about, then?”
“It’s okay to learn how to be two different people, and not just extensions of the same soul, Beni.” His father lowered his hand from Beni’s chest, too, and fixed the button that had come undone on his jacket in his haste to get in between his feuding sons. “Don’t feel badly that you are at a different place than Bene right now, that you have moved into a new space in your life. That’s what happens to people. It’s normal. You are not the same men.”
“Aren’t we?”
Gian looked to Marcus.
Marcus only shrugged, openly frowning.
“Beni, you are not the same people. You only look the same. Let him figure it out, too.”
Right.
Yeah.
But how?
• • •
Yeah.
The following two days were about as uncomfortable and awkward as Beni suspected they would be. It was made worse by the fact that once his mother learned the twins were fighting, Cara decided she was going to stay in Chicago with Marcus to help Bene pack his things, and at the same time, try to get the twins to talk.
Wasn’t happening.
“Beni?”
“Yeah, Ma?”
Standing at the end of the hallway, his mother bent down to pick up her Hermès bag from the floor, giving him a soft smile. “I wish you two would just talk ... at least before we leave.”
His brother’s bags littered the hallway. A good portion of shit had already been shipped out the day before, through a company that would deliver it to the penthouse in Toronto for Bene. He hadn’t even bothered lifting a finger to move his twin’s shit out.
If that’s what Bene wanted, then he could do it.
Alone.
He got that his twin was going through some shit, but it wasn’t something Beni could fix, even if he had been the cause of it. That much was painfully clear.
Cara sighed, and gave Beni a look. “Well, when are you planning to come home for a visit?”
“Soon,” he promised.
“When?”
He laughed under his breath.
This was his ma in a nutshell. Her boys were the loves of her life, next to their father, and she was their greatest supporter, and defender. She hated being away from them for any length of time, and already, he had been here for six, going on seven, months now. Sure, he went home for a weekend occasionally, but he knew it wasn’t enough for his ma.
“Or ... do you like it here?” Cara asked.
Beni had to think about that one. “It’s easier, Ma.”
“What is?”
“Business.”
Cara tipped her chin up, her gaze widening. It wasn’t like the mafia was hidden in their family, but there were a few unspoken rules that they all tried to follow. Like not talking about the business with women, unless it couldn’t be avoided. Their ma included.
“How so?”
Beni shrugged. “Marcus ... Chris, and even Corrado, though he’s not in the business like we are because he does his own shit, they never had the problem I did.”
“Which was ...?”
“I couldn’t separate him in my mind. I couldn’t ... differentiate, Ma.”
“Your father, you mean.”
Beni nodded once. “I couldn’t switch back and forth with him—my dad, my boss. It was fucking me up, but here, it’s easier.”
“But do you like Chicago?”
“I do.”
Cara gave him a soft smile. “Well, then I suppose that’s what’s most important. I want you to be happy, Beni. You know that, don’t you? No matter what you have to do to be happy, that’s all I want for you.”
“Yeah, I know, Ma.”
She came down the hall, then, arms already outstretched to take her son in her embrace. He let her, soaking in the familiar warmth and smell of his mother, even as her arms squeezed tightly enough around his neck that he thought she might take away what remained of his air.
“I love you,” his mother said.
Beni kissed her forehead. “Love you, too, Ma.”
It was at that moment Bene and Marcus decided to come around the corner, a bag in each of their hands. The last bit of shit that Bene had left in his bedroom. Cara stepped away from her son with another smile, turning to her other boys with a nod.
“I will be in the car, then,” she said.
“We’ll be right down, Ma,” Marcus replied.
Bene cleared his throat, passing a look back at his twin at the end of the hallway. “Actually, I think I’ll walk down with you.”
“You should have a minute with—”
“I’m good.”
“Bene.”
Beni said nothing, simply arched his brow at his twin, and waited Bene out. One way or the other, his twin was going to have to work this shit out, and if he was going to do it alone, then so fucking be it.
Coldness stared back.
Shocker.
“Later,” Bene murmured.
Beni nodded. “Drive safe.”
Without another word, Bene snagged up a handful of bags in his empty hand, and stepped out of the opened apartment door with their mother leading the way. That just left Marcus, the one bag he held, and the three others left sitting on the floor which he easily managed to lift.
“You all right?” his brother asked.
; Beni folded his arms over his chest. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Change is hard.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Marcus gave him a look.
Beni’s expression didn’t falter.
His older brother gave one last look at the apartment hallway before saying, “Be safe here, huh? Don’t make me come back here just to collect your fucking remains. I wouldn’t forgive you for that, Beni. Ma, either.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”
Always would be, too.
Marcus exhaled long, and slow. “Think you’re going to be bored here without Bene?”
August flashed in his mind. Her sweet, but sly smile, and the way it darkened her brown eyes even more when it turned sexy in a blink. Pretty skin flushed for him, or because of him. And their date to meetup that afternoon.
“You know what,” Beni replied, “I think I’ll be okay.”
“Right.” Marcus headed for the door. “You need something, you call me, okay?”
“I will.”
Without a doubt, he could always count on Marcus for that. It was everything else that was currently up in the air. Strange how that worked sometimes.
8.
“What can I get for you, Miss?”
“I can’t believe you just got up this morning and left before I was even awake.”
August smiled at the girl behind the cash at the café while also rolling her eyes at her friend on the phone. “Just a coffee—two sugars, and cream.”
“Sure.”
“August?”
She stepped to the side, giving the guy waiting in line behind her a nod at his patience in waiting for her to move before going forward. Off to the left of the counter, waiting for her order, she could finally give her attention to the very impatient Camilla on the phone.
“First of all,” August said, “it’s almost noon, Cam. You act like I woke up at six and snuck out of the house before the ass crack of dawn.”
“Well ...”
“Seriously, I can’t sleep in like you do.”
“Couldn’t you have woken me up?”
August figured that, since her time in Chicago was about halfway finished, Camilla was starting to show it. She had called in sick to work twice, to follow her around while she finished up some things for the magazine spread. On more than one occasion, she demanded August stay at her place, even though she had a perfectly fine hotel room in the city.