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“You’re gonna make a wonderful dad, Uncle Blaine. You’ve already got enough worry for ten kids.”
Bruno was waiting by the SUV with Bennie when they left the trailer. Selestino stopped Dante on the top of the metal stairs. “Uncle, if I am to have any power at all, I’d like to choose my bodyguard.”
“Bennie’s not good?”
“It’s not that. I just don’t like him, and that isn’t just petulance. If I don’t like him, I don’t trust him. I remember your old bodyguards, Nick especially. You had a friendly relationship, if not friendship, with all of them. You trusted each other.”
Dante loved that Sel was becoming comfortable in his own skin. “Okay. Well, you don’t know everyone yet, so wait a day or two and take your pick of our guys.”
“Thanks, Uncle Dante.”
“Right now, in meetings and around others, call me Dante. It’s no disrespect, and you won’t be seen so quickly as my relative, and therefore only shown respect for that reason.”
“That won’t be easy, but I will. Dante.”
“Sel. Let’s go start your education.”
They drove to the farmhouse where Marius Monarco lived with his two partners, Dallas and Ruben. They’d gotten together after Dante and The Kings arrived on the property. Dante knew from the minute they all saw each other, it had begun.
When Dante first saw the original Cowpokes in Colorado and the group of men that helped bring it to fruition, he saw more. The love each couple and throuple had, like they’d finally found their forevers, like he had with Blaine.
Maybe it was his romantic side. Maybe he knew hard times were on the horizon and only that kind of love would get the men through it. Whatever it was, he wanted to help to make another place that gave that same vibe, and maybe bigger.
That was how it was born, and watching it grow, like he’d watched his brother’s children grow, he wondered how many loving, committed families would bloom from it, like his own would soon.
Bruno and Bennie in the front of the SUV left him in the back with Sel, who was staring out of the window at the scenery. Dante could relate. He did it each time they drove anywhere on the land.
“Pretty, isn’t it?”
“That’s not big enough a word, Unc–I mean Dante.”
Around the mountains that dipped down into the land from the northern border, the stream trickled from the still-melting snow runoff. “That water there. Blaine wanted to stop one day and dip his toes in it. He nearly got frostbite from how cold it was.”
“I bet, but it’s so beautiful. I don’t blame him.”
“I did the same thing, but he outlasted me. He didn’t care about the cold, just the smell of it, he said. It smelled fresh.”
“Like the air after a big snow, I bet,” Sel whispered.
“Exactly.”
“When we go to Sweden, it always snows. Every time, and when it does, I’ll go out on the balcony of our flat there. There’s this scent in the air that cleans everything. Every thought, every fear, all of it. They’ll never make air freshener that comes close. Nothing can.”
Dante reached for Sel’s hand and squeezed it. “No matter your business acumen, Sel, you have a poet’s heart.”
“That’s in my blood too, Dante. It’s the romantic in us.”
The farmhouse was a beautiful place. They’d done a great job restoring it and it currently housed more than the three men who made the triad. A few of The Kings stayed there and a few of the bikers in town. It was all of them Dante was there to meet with.
Marius let them inside the house, shook hands with each, then waved to the couch that was vacant. The other chairs were filled with bikers and Kings, and Dante went to each, shaking their hands, introducing Selestino without disclosing their relationship.
“Brutus, hello,” he said to the Azteca that had come the previous week. He was an older man, hair completely white that clashed with his still black beard. “How are you? How is your president?”
“Eight is busy. Three kids and the club. The poor guy never has time to breathe.”
“I’m sure. Send my love to him and his Kale.”
“I will.”
