48. Emily

It's all over the news: a gas leak caused multiple explosions on a residential block, ending with multiple casualties.

Gas leak. That's the story they're going with. I have no idea how much money Simon's passing around to keep the truth out of the news reports, but it's got to be substantial, because nobody believes it.

Online, the conspiracy people are going nuts. And for good reason. It's not like Chicago went deaf during the shootout. The whole damn city heard what happened, and the powers that be want to blame it on a gas leak.

No wonder people don't trust the media.

I creep down the unfamiliar steps at around five in the morning. The house is quiet and empty, and I pause to look at a family photo of the whole Bianco clan. Laura looks so young, barely six years old, and all the boys are lined up like little princes. Elena's clinging onto her mother, and Alessandro Bianco's standing over them all, beaming at his little crew of loves. It breaks my heart, and I keep going, downstairs and toward the library.

Simon's behind the big desk. It used to belong to his father, but I guess it belongs to him now. He's exhausted with big bags under his eyes and he's hunched over a computer, writing another email to yet another state senator or whoever he's bothering today, and barely looks up as I go over and give him a gentle kiss.

"Did you come to bed last night?" I ask, and he shakes his head. "Simon, you need to sleep."

"I will once everything is settled." He puts a hand on my leg. I glance at the far end of the desk where a bottle of Japanese whiskey is sitting. It hasn't moved since the attack three days ago and I wish he would get rid of it, but I guess he can't bring himself to throw it away.

"How's he doing?" I ask gently.

Simon leans back in the chair and sighs. He closes his eyes as I slip down into his lap and wrap my arms around his neck. I lean against his chest, listening to the steady patter of his heart.

"If he had used a bigger glass, he'd be dead right about now," he says very softly. "That's what the doctor told me last night. His stupid obsession with fancy glassware saved his life. He's in bad shape, but he's alive."

"What was it? Did they figure it out?"

"Rat poisoning. Superwarfarin rodenticide is what they told me." Simon squeezes me tight against him. "I never in a million years would've thought Dad might try to kill himself. I guess he thought—" Simon stops and takes a deep, shuddering breath. "I don't know what he thought. Maybe that there was no other way out for him."

"God, Simon. I'm so, so sorry." I stay buried against him and wish I could do something to draw the hurt away, because I know at least a little of what he's going through. What happened to my father left a deep scar inside me. It's not easy seeing a parent go through something so horrifying. Except Simon's situation is ten times worse than mine.

"He's alive and we're going to help him. Right now, believe it or not, I have bigger problems to deal with."

"You're right, you do, but you won't be able to fix anything if you don't get some rest."

"Baby—" he starts, but I decide to force the issue by grinding my ass against his crotch. He grunts and I know he likes it.

I kiss his chin and neck before he takes a fist of my hair and buries my mouth with his. Our tongues swirl around each other and I kiss him like that for a while, staying in his lap and feeling his warmth against me, until we finally break apart.

I manage to coax him upstairs and we fall into bed together. The sex is slow, tender, like he needs to express himself and I let the pleasure and the moment wrap around me. His mouth between my legs, his tongue on my nipples, his cock buried deep inside. We fuck until we're a sweaty mess, and then we fuck some more, and I give him everything, and he gives me everything in return. I come three times before we're both spent, beyond exhausted, physically sated but still emotionally raw.

The blinds are pulled and the room's dim in the early morning sunlight. His eyelids flutter, but he won't fall asleep.

"I need you to know something, topolina." He tugs me tighter against him. We're naked, and my one leg is tossed over his hips, my breasts on his side. "You don't have to do this. If you don't want to. I won't hold it against you. I release you from our deal."

I sit up on an elbow and stare at him, because I swear, he's got to be the dumbest man in the world if he's saying something so stupid to me right now.

And I tell him so, along with a few choice curses.

He smiles and shakes his head, his thumb teasing down my lip. I slap it away.

"I'm going to be the head of a family on the brink. Everyone's out to get us right now. The cops, the politicians, Santoro's gang, all the other gangs. They smell blood in the water. I'm keeping the worst of what happened out of the news, but there are too many rumors and too many bodies. It's hard enough being the Don's wife, and it'll be twice as hard doing this with me. I love you, and I want to give you the choice before it's too late."

I could bite his stupid nipple off right now, except that would mar what's otherwise a perfect chest, so I hold back.

"Simon, listen to me. No more choices. No more indecision. I'm not going anywhere."

"There are going to be legal battles. Half our fucking soldiers have a case against them right now and the DA is dead set on taking me down too. We're going to be in court for years litigating what happened here, and I'm going to have to spend all our capital and call in all our favors just to stay afloat, and I have to do this while murdering all of Santoro's crew. I just need you to be sure."

"I'm sure." I kiss him gently. "I'm absolutely sure." I straddle him, arching my back, my pussy brushing over his half-hard cock as I lower my face to his chest.

He sighs with relief and holds me against him.

In a few minutes, he's asleep, and I'm not far behind.

* * *

"Imagineyou walk up to someone on a crowded street, scream out your real name and your Social Security number, then shoot a stranger in the skull. Imagine you somehow convince everyone that an angry grizzly bear did the murder and not you." Davide raises his glass in a salute. "Because that's basically what my brother's trying to do, and it's working. Cheers to fucking that."

It feels so normal. Family dinner in the main house. Except Freddie's still in the hospital glued to her husband's side, there's construction going on all over the oasis, and bullet holes still riddle most of the walls. Elena hung pictures and paintings in a vain effort to cover most of them over, but she missed a few and I can't stop staring at them.

The sheer number of bullets that were fired is staggering. I didn't see the worst of it, but Stefania gave me some of the gory details. There were so many shells that the cleanup crew had to work for an entire day sweeping them up with massive brooms, and that was only after the cops took two trash bags filled with them, as if they're going to do ballistics.

"It's almost good there were so many people trying to kill each other," Elena says thoughtfully as she tops up all the wine glasses.

"Explain that one to me," Stefania says, eyebrows raised.

"Well, it's just too much for the cops to follow through on. The sheer scale of what happened is crazy. The politicians have an incentive to make it seem less bad, and the DA doesn't want to jam fifty different murder cases through the system all at once. It's almost like bigger is better."

Stefania doesn't look convinced, but at least it gets a bitter laugh from Simon. "That's a good point, but it means they'll come for the leaders instead." Then he points at himself and finishes his drink. "Although I'd like to see them try. We have an army of lawyers, and they're arguably the most dangerous part of our family."

The conversation moves on to how they'll rebuild. Some of the houses have too much damage and will need to be totally renovated, and there's still a big clean-up crew getting rid of all the biological contamination. Which is a nice way of saying all the blood and guts.

Then there are the grieving families. At least twelve Famiglia soldiers died on that day and a couple dozen more were wounded. Some men lost limbs and others will be deeply scarred by what happened. Simon's worried about everyone in his organization and he seems dedicated to making sure his people are taken care of, from extended family on down to spouses and kids of those left behind.

It's expensive. That's the one problem everyone's dancing around. The Bianco organization has a lot of cash at its disposal plus a bunch of assets they can sell if it comes to that, but nobody wants to talk about how they're going to afford this nightmare of a recovery. Simon's stressed all the time trying to handle everything, and I'm afraid it's going to break him.

Which is why I steer the conversation onto easier subjects. We chat about movies and TV shows, basically anything that's not the attack and the fallout from the attack, until the subject of art comes up.

"They shot my hands." Laura stares down at the table with a hard expression.

Elena bursts out laughing and Stefania cracks up with her. I can't help but join in, then everyone's laughing, including Laura, which I think is the first time I've ever seen it, but this family needs more laughter right now. They need catharsis because there's too much pain and too many wounds to deal with all on their own.

"You know what's strange?" Elena asks as the night's winding down and the last bottle of wine gets poured around. "It's only us now." She looks around the table.

Davide grunts. "You're right. Just us. The older generation isn't here." And everyone goes quiet again. Alessandro will live, and Freddie's okay, but their absence weighs heavily on the shoulders of these four siblings, and I don't know what they're going to do.

"All our lives, we had Mom and Dad to run things," Simon says, swirling his drink. He doesn't look upset, but I put my hand on his knee to comfort him anyway. He smiles at me. "Now we'll find out if anything they taught us stuck."

"God help us," Laura murmurs.

This time, nobody laughs.

I look around the table. There's quiet, strong Davide with his scars and his brooding. There's light Elena, the kind of woman who glows and brightens any room. There's strange, quirky, angry Laura. There's Angelo, the missing sibling, somewhere behind bars. And there's Simon. The new Don, the leader of the Bianco Famiglia.

"You guys have this," I say, surprising myself. Everyone looks at me and I take a big drink, my cheeks turning red.

"She's right," Stefania adds. "I've been around the mafia my whole life, and I've never been in a room with four competent leaders like this before."

"Don't you have a bunch of brothers?" Simon asks, eyebrows raised.

"Like I said." She grins and shrugs.

"I'm new to this whole world, but you've all survived so much already." I shrug like it's no big deal, and I expect them to laugh at me, but nobody's smiling. Instead, they're looking at me and listening to me like I'm an equal, and for the first time since I came into this family, I finally feel like I'm a real part of it, like my voice matters. "You'll survive this too. You'll thrive. We'll all thrive together."

"Yes, we will," Simon says and pulls me against him. He leans down and kisses me.

Then Davide groans and rolls his eyes and they start bickering over who's going to do the dishes until Stefania and I finally step up to do it, because they're still siblings after all.