Page 3 of John + Siena: The Complete Duet

John frowned at the mention of his uncle ... and boss. “It’s my first day out. Are you seriously urging me to irk Dante? Dante, who has a shorter fuse than even I do?”

The older Dante Marcello got the less tolerable to bullshit he seemed to be. John was smart enough to know that his uncle, the Don of the Marcello Cosa Nostra, would kick his ass first and then ask questions later if need be.

Gio smiled. “It’s not him you should be worried about.”

“Oh?”

“No. Worry about when your mother gets her hands on you for not calling her for three months.”

Shit.

Family first, John. Always.

His father’s words were a mantra John couldn’t forget.

John’s mother, Jordyn, had gotten progressively more concerned the closer his release date loomed. She voiced her worries about his release, and a possible relapse into another one of his episodes enough that it started to grate on John’s nerves. His focus was simply getting out of prison and what he was going to do after he was out. To do that, he had put a block of sorts between him and his mother.

It probably wasn’t the right thing to do.

“Maybe we should stop at a flower shop on the way to Tuxedo Park,” John murmured.

Gio nodded. “Maybe we should.”

“And the jewelry store.”

“Now you’re getting it, man. Lucian taught you well, regardless of what you think.”

John laughed. “I know my mother worries because she loves me.”

“But?”

“She suffocates me,” John admitted. “I’m an adult, not a child. She acts like I’m seventeen and not thirty. She still thinks I’m a boy.”

“For the record, all mothers see their children as their babies. Jordyn isn’t a special case. Cecelia still thinks she has to fix my damned tie if it’s crooked.”

“You know it’s not the same.”

Gio sighed heavily. “Or maybe you just don’t understand your mother and father, John.”

“I think I do.”

“Do you? They almost lost you twice. Have you ever thought that letting you go too far ahead where they can’t reach makes them feel suffocated? That being unable to keep you close takes away the security they have?”

John didn’t answer his uncle, but he knew Giovanni had a good point. When he was just a baby, his aunt, Catrina, had been involved with a cartel that had taken John as a way to draw Catrina out. He’d nearly lost his life, as had his father, uncles, and aunt when they’d made the attempt to save him.

Clearly, his family won that battle.

The Marcellos always won.

And then John’s first episode had happened when he was seventeen. In the process of losing himself in the manic chaos of his brain, and the torrent of his uncontrollable, rash decisions that led him to a bad place, he nearly died again. Self-medicating, living fast, and almost dying young.

He might as well have been a walking cliché.

Except he wasn’t.

His life was real, and so was the manic bipolar disorder he had been diagnosed with at seventeen, and then severely failed to manage as an adult.

“John,” Giovanni said quietly. “I’d like an answer.”