Us Morellis hadn’t been so successful.
“I told them I wouldn’t be able to help them again without jeopardizing my position.” Santo’s voice took on a faraway quality as he looked into the past. “I wanted to make something of myself so I could take care of Aida and the kids myself.”
“You were a kid yourself,” I noted, because Santo was even younger than me, only twenty-seven years old.
He shrugged. “Sometimes, being a kid’s got nothing to do with your level of responsibility.”
I thought of Bianca laying upstairs, how innocent and young she looked in sleep. It was such a contrasted to the wisdom she wore on her soul like battle scars and the slope of her shoulders carrying too much weight from too young an age.
My heart stopped and restarted in my chest as I thought how lonely she must have been all her life.
Almost as lonely as I’d been.
“How did you lose touch?” I asked, shaking myself momentarily loose of Bianca’s hold on me. “Obviously, you weren’t around of I’d never have been next in line for guardianship.”
“When they moved, Lane decided not to tell me where he’d placed them just in case my loyalty to Monte outweighed my loyalty to my own sister,” he spat the words.
“So, no one knew where they were in Texas until I found them,” I concluded.
“Not quite. Lane told his best friend––”
There was a knock at the door then that had me glowering at Hank when he stuck his head through the opening.
“Sorry to interrupt, sir, but Mr. Fairchild is still here and he’s asking to speak with you urgently.”
“Tell him to fuck off,” I barked, before turning back to Santo. “If you’re so loyal to Bianca and Brando, where the fuck were you when Aida died?”
“I didn’t realize she’d passed away until a few weeks ago,” he admitted. “I found them a few years ago and had a man check in every few months, when he went this time, he reported they’d been taken into foster care. I was still searching for them in Texas until Gabriella told me her new friend Bianca was a ward of Tiernan Morelli.” He glared at me. “I think it should be me playing the protective older man here, Morelli, what the fuck have you been doing with my niece and nephew?”
Sudden exhaustion settled into my bones. I sagged against a metal table set against the wall and crossed my arms. “Making a fucking mess of things, of course.”
He continued to glower at me for a moment before humor twitched in his upper lip. “You always were good at that.”
I shrugged. “I’m humble, but you’re right.”
This prompted a laugh from my old friend before he sobered. “These kids are all I have left of my sister. They should be with me, Tiernan. Even you should understand, kids are off-limits in our games.”
“They should be, but they aren’t,” I said darkly. “You and I are both examples of that. It doesn’t matter, they’re in it, now, and they’re in it with me. I won’t give them up for anyone, even their uncle.”
“Do I have to fight you on this?” he countered, as if he sat in a throne and wasn’t hanging suspended in my interrogation room.
I shrugged. “You can, but I’ll win. For the first time in my life I’ve got something I’m fighting for myself instead of for Bryant or the family. Have you ever seen me lose a fight over anything less than that?” When Santo’s lips thinned, I flashed a predatory grin. “Exactly. They’re mine. And before you say something fucking asinine about being their blood, need I remind you that you abandoned them for years? That you’re a known criminal without even the veneer of a civilized family like the Morellis to protect their reputation? That you can’t protect them from harm either, not when you’re a member of the Belcante Outfit?”
To my right, I was aware of the door creaking open, but Santo’s next words stole my attention.
“Are you insinuating I can’t keep my own family safe?”
“I’m stating it as fact,” I said mildly. “I got to them, didn’t I?”
“They should be with family,” he stated like the stubborn Italian he was.
“They should be with someone who will make them happy,” I exploded, stalking forward to grab Santo fiercely by the throat. “They should be with someone who bleed when they bleed, who will put them first for the first goddamn time in their lives. No one, and I mean not a goddamn, motherfucking person, will do that better than me. So, if they should be with family, Santo, you better fucking believe that family is with me.”
“As entertaining as it is to see to grown men having a pissing contest like animals, I think I should have a say in who I belong with, don’t you?”
I stilled at the sound of Bianca’s voice, only an undercurrent of sleepiness in the strong tone. When I looked over at the door she stood with her arms crossed over her pretty velvet dress, her hair a cloud of tangled white golden around her face and her pouty mouth red-bitten by my own. The sight of her alone hit me like a sucker punch to the gut.
Would I ever get used to looking at her? Was this how she felt about her art? That no matter how many times she might study it or look upon it, the subject would continue to fascinate her, even with her eyes closed, even far removed from it.
If I felt anything less for her than this all-consuming passion, I could have let her go. But the intensity of my longing for her drove me to madness. After all, only a mad man would think to take on the two most powerful families in New York for one lowly teenage girl. Only a mad man would threaten an underboss in the notorious Belcante crime family for the right to call her his own.
And there I was, mad and happy with it.
I stepped away from Santo and crossed my arms in a mimicry of her pose, raising a brow. “Do I need to remind you that you belong to me?”
Even at a distance, I could see the delicate shudder roll through her.
“No,” she said primly, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I don’t think that’s necessary. I just want to remind you that I’m not going back to Lion Court with you. And I just want to say to you,” she said, frowning at Santo for a moment before she went to stand beside me, in front of him. “I haven’t seen you since I was a girl. You’re not even a stranger, you’re a danger to the life Brando and I should be able to choose freely. So, if you care about us at all, I hope you’re step out of the ring, because you aren’t even a part of this fight.”
“Fight for custody?”
“Fight for our freedom,” she countered. “To pick our own family and circumstances. We’ve been shuttled here and there, hidden and taken against out will, but I won’t let that happen again. I might not be old enough to drink and vote, but I’m old enough to decide what’s best for my little brother and me. And, Santo, you aren’t it.”
A triumphant voice inside me pronounced, I am, but I had the sense not to crow about it. Instead, I grinned cruelly at Santo from over Bianca’s shoulder.
When she twirled to face me, I schooled my features into impassivity, but she still peered up at me suspiciously.
“And you,” she said, drilling a finger into my stomach. “You said we would talk later. Later is now. But first, get my uncle down from there.”