CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“What the fuck?” Reno couldn’t believe it.

“This is like college.”

The men walked into their joint bedroom on the fourth floor where five twin beds were in formation. Sal was grinning. “All these beds. It’s like college,” he said again.

“What’s with you and all this college?” asked Reno. “You don’t know what college is like since neither one of us have ever stepped foot in one.”

“But my wife did, hot shot. Remember Gemma? She’s one of the most celebrated attorneys in this country. She’s the most educated person in this family.”

“Tony might disagree with that,” said Teddy.

“What you bragging on Gemma for anyway?” asked Reno. “What you bragging on a woman that left your ass? How does that make you better? She left your ass,” Reno added.

Sal frowned. “What are you talking? You’re confusing Gemma with Tree. For your information, Gemma hasn’t left me. We have our issues, I’m not gonna lie, but she didn’t leave. Trina left. You’re confusing Trina with Gemma.”

“Watch it, Salvatore,” his big brother Tommy warned. “Big Daddy got us all here for a reason. Nobody’s better than anybody else.”

“I didn’t say better. But facts are facts. Me, you, Teddy, and our wives are nowhere near as bad off as Trina and Reno and Roz and . . .”

Reno bumped him with his hip and as soon as he did, Sal suddenly remembered that their Uncle Mick was in the room with them. Sal shut down that line of conversation real fast, before he said Mick's name. They all looked to see if Mick was offended anyway.

But Mick was still too pissed with Roz to even hear what Reno and Sal were bickering about. When Charles told him that Roz had met with a divorce attorney and that she told Charles that she was at the end of her rope with him, it did something to Mick. A part of him was at the end of his rope with her ass too. That was what kept him seething. The way she went off on him without asking him shit. Without giving him a chance to get a word in edgewise. And to slap him in front of his men like that? In front of Nikki and Teddy? He was ready to call it quits right then and there too. All of these rollercoaster rides they’d been on since the day they were married? He was done with her ass! And in a lot of ways, he still was. Could have any woman in the world he wanted. Could have fifty at once if he wanted. Why should he let this one woman twist him into a pretzel like he wasn’t who he was? Like she was his equal? Why ?

He loved Roz. That was why. And there was no denying it. Nobody had ever captured his heart and held onto it the way Roz had. But fuck love. He needed peace at home after all the wars he had to fight outside of his home. Fuck love. That was how he was feeling when his big brother ordered him to give this retreat nonsense a chance. Had it been anybody else but Charles he would have fucked this retreat too.

He laid back on that ridiculous twin bed Charles had set up for them. He was emotionally spent.

But Reno elbowed Sal as they all took peeps at Mick. Including his son Teddy, who found out about the divorce attorney as soon as Roz filed. Mick didn’t realize it, but he looked lost to the rest of them. Like a man in unchartered territory drifting at sea. They felt sorry for him above anybody else at that retreat.

But his trigger temper was legendary. He would kick their asses if he so much as suspected they had placed that kind of weakness on him. All of them, including Teddy, kept their feelings to themselves.