Page 135 of Loyalty

Damn.

The sharp slice of betrayal stabbed John in his chest. Over and over. Every single word his uncle said only cut worse.

“Because I must be entirely fucking incapable at anything like that,” John said, his voice quieting. “Paranoid, sure. Unstable, yeah. So much so, that you don’t even trust me to be a capable made man. So fuck it, she’s got to be one of those things, too. That’s what it is, right?”

Dante tipped his chin up. “I did not say that, John.”

“You said enough, boss.”

“Your bipolar has—”

“Everything to do with me,” John interjected. “It is everything that is me, and you know it. Except you use my disorder as a crutch—something to hold me back, or justify your shit. That stops, now.”

“John, he doesn’t mean to do that,” Gio said quietly. “None of us mean to do that, honestly.”

He ignored his other uncle.

Dante ignored Gio, too. In fact, the boss switched topics entirely.

“You have handled the Calabrese side of the business since December, haven’t you?” Dante asked. He didn’t give Johnathan a chance to respond before saying, “And you see, I know Andino barely did a thing with them. He didn’t meet them for dinners, and have private chats with the boss. He spent as little time as possible with Matteo’s two sons, and kept them at arm’s length at all times. But what do you do, John?”

Again, he didn’t give him time to answer.

“You date his daughter,” Dante said, letting out a bitter laugh. “You work hands on with the Calabrese brothers when you could easily delegate the jobs to men on the crew. You’re seen coming and going at all hours from Calabrese businesses, and I know you’ve had private invitations from that family.”

For Siena, John held back from saying.

He did a lot of that for her.

“So,” Dante continued, leaning forward with his hands splayed on the desk, “perhaps, John, you can understand why I am wary of how close you are getting to that family. Our history with them is long, and tainted. They are snakes—they cannot be trusted. Except you seem to be doing exactly that.”

His uncle knew nothing.

John felt like that was the story of his life, though. He could talk, talk, and talk more. He could explain that all of those were either situations he had been put in to, or something involving Siena, but it would do them no good.

Dante would not care.

Why?

John was a Marcello.

Siena was a Calabrese.

“You don’t know who she gives her loyalty to,” Dante said, “and you can’t trust her with it, Johnathan.”

“So says you,” he replied.

He refused to say much else, though.

“Marcellos will do a lot of things, but getting into bed with a Calabrese isn’t one of them. Or, it wasn’t. You may think that she’s a woman, and she’s fucking harmless, but the rest of them are most certainly not, John.”

Siena wouldn’t hurt a fly. Shit, she probably couldn’t hurt a fly when it came right down to it. She was pure and good and gold. Everything that John wanted.

Dante didn’t seem to care.

“You’re telling me that she isn’t going home tonight to feed her father information about us, and our family?” Dante asked. “Do you really trust her that much? You know how the Calabrese are, Johnathan. Do you know how very different your world might have been had a Calabrese not ruined it?”

John’s nerves prickled with irritation. “I bet you probably would not be sitting where you are had things been different, actually.”