Page 134 of Loyalty

“For now,” Dante replied.

“What do you want, boss?”

Dante smirked, and looked up at the ceiling like he was sending out a silent prayer. “Where is this rudeness coming from, John?”

“I think after the little show downstairs, no one should expect me to be pleasant.”

“And how about your show, huh?”

John straightened on the spot. “What show?”

“Bringing that woman to our church. Having her here for dinner with our family.” Dante pointed a single finger at him, and then shook it with a laugh. “You didn’t even consider for one second to call me and ask if that would be okay. No, you just did it. You know what kind of statement that is to bring a woman with you to church. We do not do that for just anyone, and—”

“She isn’t just anyone to me,” John replied.

In his chair, Gio cleared his throat. “That’s a heavy statement to make, John. You’ve been seeing her for how long, now?”

“On and off after I was released—steady for a couple of months.”

“That long?” Dante asked.

John shrugged. “Yeah, that long. But I guess we’re going to pretend like you didn’t already know that because you’ve had people watching me since I got out.”

“John, that was my choice to do because of your history.”

He didn’t reply, simply scoffed with a nod. What the fuck else could he do? At every turn, someone else in his family had to remind him how little they actually trusted him. It stung like nothing ever had before.

“And I didn’t know it was a steady thing,” Dante countered. “It concerns me even more to know it, actually. Why any Calabrese woman would be crawling into bed with a Marcello man is concerning, all things considered about our families.”

“Why, because she can’t want me?” John asked. “Because it can’t be just a me and her thing, it has to have something underhanded to go along with it, too?”

“Knowing them—”

John’s thin control snapped.

It had been holding on by a thread.

“Jesus Christ,” John exploded, “she is a fucking woman!”

Dante barely blinked at his rage. “A woman who apparently has a hand in the Calabrese business—albeit behind the scenes. Still, it would not be a stretch to think she is close to her father, or brothers. That perhaps her loyalty to them is far more than her loyalty to you, or even us.”

John clenched his fists so hard that his fingernails bit into his skin, and broke the surface. It was better than punching his uncle like he wanted to do.

“That’s what it comes down to—loyalty?” John asked.

“Her last name is Calabrese, Johnathan. She is their daughter—a woman from their family. How many times do I need to explain this to you before you understand it?”

Rage vibrated through John’s bloodstream. A thick, beating thrum of hot anger that filled him up, and ate through his heart all the while. It had been a long damn time since he had gotten this angry, this fast.

Yet, he embraced it.

He wasn’t scared of it.

Right then, he kind of needed it.

“You know nothing about Siena,” John returned. “Nothing to make any kind of assumption that she is feeding them information, or fucking me over for them.”

“Do you know?” Dante countered. “Would you know it if it were happening? Could you even see it happening?”