Page 58 of John + Siena: The Complete Duet

John didn’t know how to answer that. “I’m sorry, Lucy. Really, I am. I didn’t think that it was all going to lead to him being put away for—”

“Shut up,” Lucia spat. “I bet Daddy had that planned, and you knew about it, too.”

“Dad didn’t plan anything. I just came after you to bring you home. The rest was circumstance, and shit.”

Lucia turned away from him, refusing to even grace him with her attention again. It burned, but John took it. Seemed he had managed to ruin the last good relationship he had with someone in his immediate family.

This time it wasn’t even because of his bipolar.

Funny.

“Why don’t we talk about you, John?” Lucia asked dryly.

Nope.

John didn’t talk about him.

His defenses always flew up at the idea.

People probed, and it felt like needles swimming in his bloodstream.

“No, I’m good,” he said folding his arms over his chest.

Without even looking at him, Lucia said, “Then we have nothing else to say here. Daddy and the rest of them are upstairs.”

The rest of them.

He didn’t miss the contempt in that, either.

John left Lucia to her thoughts and anger, though.

What else could he do?

“So that’s it for us, then?” John asked. “You’re going to go back to California in a couple of weeks, and you won’t even bother with me at all while you’re here? Nothing at all?”

“Don’t take it personally, John. It’s all of them, not just you.”

Well, then …

John walked in the home office of his father to find there were more men sitting around the room than he expected. John’s father, and Giovanni and Dante, his uncles. Andino, too, sat on the edge of the desk. A place Andino shouldn’t be sitting considering Dante—the boss—was behind it.

It was sometimes strange and difficult to grow up in the world of Cosa Nostra. Made men with an entire family dynamic that was governed and controlled by the rules of the mafia sometimes created complexities that no one could understand.

John’s father had never been able to be just his father, after all, not when he had also been an underboss. The same went with his uncles—Gio and Dante. They, too, had always held positions of power.

Family was family.

Cosa Nostra colored them up.

And now …

John gave Andino a nod, and a grin. “Don’t you look comfortable, just like a spoiled little underboss should.”

Chuckles passed around the room.

Had it been anyone else, John never would have disrespected the new underboss of the family with that kind of a joke. However, this was Andino. It wouldn’t be normal for the two of them not to trade some kind of barbs with one another.

It was expected, really.