Chapter One

Aurelio

"I want more grandchildren," our ma said, waving a frustrated hand holding a sauce-covered wooden spatula around for emphasis. "That's all I'm saying."

"She's talking to you," Elisa said, looking over at me. "You're the oldest unmarried one," she reasoned.

"Maybe, but your clock is ticking," Milo shot back at her, safe in his singleness, being the youngest, and knowing our mother would give him some grace to ‘get his wild out' still.

"Asshole," Elisa said, rolling her eyes at Milo, and tossing a bit of dough at him that she was supposed to be twisting into garlic knots.

"A mouth like that, and the only man who is going to want you is a sailor," our mother said, shaking her head at Elisa.

"Maybe I like sailors. Or outlaw bikers. Or—" she cut herself off when our mother shot her narrowed eyes, knowing she wasn't in the mood to be teased. "I've been busy, Ma," she said, sighing.

"Busy busy busy. That's all I hear from Smush too," she grumbled. "Getting so busy making livings that you aren't making lives."

"I have a life," Elisa insisted.

"You have a townhouse you pay too much money for. You have nice shoes. And a relationship with your phone. That's not a life, Elisa."

When it came to the Grassi moms, they all agreed on one thing. All their kids needed to be married and popping out babies.

The thing was, I wanted that too.

And I was sure Elisa and Smush had those things in mind as well. Sometimes, it just didn't happen as quickly as we might like.

Luckily for Elisa, Milo decided to stop being a dick for a second and come to his sister's defense. "Have you seen the men out there, Ma?" he asked, scoffing. "Wouldn't trust ‘em to take out my fucking trash, let alone my sister."

It was no secret that Elisa had recently gone through a nasty breakup. One she played down for our mom, but everyone else knew had really gotten to her.

Milo was usually self-absorbed and kind of an ass. But he could be counted on to be a good brother on occasion.

Elisa shot him a sad smile that he shrugged at.

"But that is not an invitation to start setting me up with men you think are good," Elisa was quick to add, eyes panicked at the prospect.

I'd been on the receiving end of four dates set up by my mother. One, a girl barely out of college who only wanted to talk about her spring break plans. Another, staring down the barrel of the end of her fertility and, in my mother's words, ‘desperate to get married and have babies.' Unfortunately, ‘desperate' very much was her vibe. I barely managed to untangle her from me in the parking lot of the restaurant, she was so determined to take me home.

The other two were decent enough but just not… right.

I was starting to worry that I might not know what ‘right' was, though, if I was getting to this age and still not finding a woman to settle down with.

Hell, I'd just seen one of my youngest cousins—August—find his woman and start to build a life.

That shit was as humbling as the streaks of gray I was starting to see in my temples, and in my scruff if I let it grow.

"We'll see," our mom said, making all three of us wince. A mom's ‘we'll see' was never a good thing in a situation like this.

But Lucky and his woman and the brood they were creating chose that moment to rush in the door, stealing all the focus from us single siblings, and easing the tension in the house.

"She digging in again?" Lucky asked as he moved onto the back porch with me, handing me a beer.

"Mostly on Elisa," I said, shrugging. "But, yeah, she wants more grandkids."

"Think she looks at you, Smush, and Elisa and knows that by the time she was your ages, she had two or three of us already. Forgets sometimes how times have changed."

"Yeah," I agreed, turning back to look in the French doors, seeing one of Lucky's kids squeal as they played with floured dough, punching it with meaty fists.

"It'll happen," he said. "It's worth the wait," he added, his gaze going from his kid to his woman, making his gaze soften. Via was the only woman in the world who could make Lucky soften like that.

It wasn't the first time I found myself jealous of my brother and the life he had that I wanted.

"I bet," I agreed, taking a sip of the beer.

"How's that deal you're working on going?" he asked, knowing work was always a safer topic than the lack of my own family.

Work, at least, was something that was plentiful and often a point of pride. Even if, more and more these days, it was a hollow sort of pride.

"Got the container coming in tomorrow," I told him. "Meeting the crew at the docks to take our cut. Then it'll be done."

We didn't usually deal in actual physical products when it came to the docks and the illegal shit that came in through them. We just wanted the cash to look the other way.

But this crew made me an offer that I felt duty-bound to bring to Luca himself. And after mulling over the pros and cons of it, we'd decided to move forward.

Besides, it wasn't like we would be sitting on a pile of clean guns. There was an arms-dealing biker club right in Navesink Bank who would be happy to take it off of our hands, and distribute the goods to their customers.

It was an easy deal that would leave the Family with little to no work on our part, and would give us a quarter of a million dollars when all was said and done.

A good chunk of that went right into my pocket after the twenty-percent kick-up to Luca.

Did I need the money?

No.

But at this point of my life, I was working as much as I could to squirrel away as much as I could. So when the day did come when I did find the right woman, I could take the time to devote to her and our kids.

"Who're you bringing?" he asked.

"Dante and Santo," I told him. "And some of my soldiers. They aren't a big crew."

Lucky nodded at that.

Then, he exhaled hard.

"What?" I asked.

"You're showing me the fuck up, huh?"

"In my defense, I got nothing else to do with my time," I said.

Even if we weren't talking about Lucky's wife and kids, he also had a chain of legit pizza places that the Family washed our money in to oversee.

My legit business was a non-chain convenience store that I bought and let the previous owner, who'd been losing it because he'd been drowning in medical debt, continue to run it. It didn't take much attention from me aside from occasionally dropping in to make sure the books were cooked the way the Family needed them to be.

"Fair enough," he agreed as Milo rushed out of the back door, just barely avoiding closing one of Lucky's kids in it in the process.

"Christ," he hissed, looking frazzled, with a flour handprint on his black pant leg. "That's some serious birth control you got going on in there. My ears are still ringing."

"Don't let Ma hear you talking like that," Lucky said. "She's counting on you having at least five of them."

"I'm double-wrapping from here on out," Milo said, getting a laugh out of both of us.

"Did Smush get here yet?" I asked.

"What?" Lucky asked when a strange look overtook Milo's face. Something a mix of amused and dark.

"Her buttons were done up wrong," he told us.

It was almost seven at night. No way had she just gotten dressed. Which could only mean one thing.

She was late because she was with a man.

That was a new development.

I didn't remember the last time any of us saw Sofia with a man. She was too busy with her work.

Though, now that I thought about it, when I'd gone to grab a new blade head for my razor this morning, there hadn't been any backups.

That was the kind of shit the guys in the Family paid Sofia to handle. Keeping our houses stocked. Knowing what we needed before we did. A house manager, of sorts.

I'd never gone for something and not found extras waiting for me.

But now that I thought about it, I'd run out of coffee earlier in the week too. And the lawn guy had sent me a text saying the cash wasn't in the box like usual.

That was another thing Smush handled.

Was she slacking on work because she was spending more time with a man?

On the one hand, as someone who wanted to find someone as well, I was happy for her.

As her brother, though, I wanted to know who the fuck was. And why he thought he deserved to be anywhere near her.

"Did Ma notice?" Lucky asked.

"Nah. The girls were too quick. Via distracted Mom with one of your crotch goblins. And Elisa told her, so she could go and straighten herself out."

"No one has mentioned Smush with someone?" Lucky asked.

"Even Elisa seemed surprised," Milo said.

We all stood there for a moment. Silent. Lost in our thoughts.

Back when our sisters were young, this shit was easy. We tracked down anyone who thought they could put their hands on Sofia or Elisa, and we let them know that we'd chop those fucking hands off if they hurt them.

But we weren't all teenagers anymore.

We couldn't go around threatening to chop body parts off of random men.

Or could we?Milo's gaze seemed to ask.

"We gotta at least figure out who he is," Lucky reasoned. "From a respectable distance," he added as Smush glared at us from out the window.

We all knew her temper.

And didn't want to suffer for it.

So, yeah, from a distance.

The door opened, and out she came, buttons aligned perfectly, no sign of indecency, save for the flour handprint on her chest that she reached up to try to pat away.

"I have your razors, coffee, and toothpaste," she said, looking at me. "I fell behind this week," she admitted, and I knew it pained her to do so when she prided herself so much on how much she could juggle without ever dropping a ball.

"No worries," I said, though I was suddenly worried that I hadn't noticed that there was no extra toothpaste.

"What kept you so late?" Lucky asked, knowing he was poking, and bracing himself for blowback. But as the eldest, he felt he had to at least poke a little.

"Work," she said.

And the thing was… that didn't sound like a lie.

After a lifetime with one another, we could always tell when someone else was lying. And Sofia wasn't. Unless she'd suddenly gotten a really good poker face.

So… was this guy someone she worked for?

Sure, when she started her business, she only worked for the guys in the Family. But as a lot of them got married and had wives to manage their own households, her work had needed to expand to random people. Last I heard, half of her work was clients outside of our bloodline.

It could be one of them.

Which would make tracking them down easier.

From inside the house, a loud wail came drifting toward us.

"That's my cue," Lucky said, rushing past us and back into the house to see what the problem was.

"You guys letting Mom rag on Elisa?" she asked. "Last I checked, the two of you haven't exactly been beating the women away with sticks."

"Should we sic her on you instead?" Milo asked. "Or you got something to tell us?"

"Nope. Nothing," she said. Too quick. That little lift in her voice. Now that was a lie. "Go ahead and send her my way," she added. "I'm used to it."

When it came to temperaments, Sofia was always a bit more able to take the heat than the rest of us when it came to our mom.

Adrian Grassi could be a battering ram.

But Sofia Grassi was a steel-reinforced door.

It was a toss-up on any given day which of the two would win. But one thing was for certain, both would be exhausted from it and not want to try again for a while.

Mothers and daughters could be like that, I guess.

While us sons tiptoed around our ma, the girls often went toe-to-toe with her.

"Heard you're going out of town soon," Sofia said to Milo. "I send my apologies to the women of the next town you disgrace with your presence," she added with a little twitch of her lips.

"After dealing with that in there," he said, nodding his head toward the house, "I think I'm gonna be celibate for a while."

"You seriously don't want one? Or six?" she asked, a dreamy look in her eye saying she was suddenly giving kids some serious thought too.

Who the hell was this client of hers to make our so work-obsessed sister suddenly want to slow down and have kids of her own?

"I seriously don't," Milo said. "At least not for another decade. Maybe two."

"Watching you get knocked on your ass by a woman is going to be an absolute delight," Sofia declared as the two of them made their way back into the house. But she'd needed to grab and drag him into the house as soon as the door opened, and all the chaotic noise filtered out.

I stood there with my own thoughts for a moment before I pushed them back, finished my beer, and made my way back into the house, lifting Lucky's kid off of his waist, and chasing them around the house while they squealed and belly-laughed until dinner was ready.

And tried really hard not to be upset that I didn't have this in my daily life.

Because it clearly wasn't in the cards yet.