“And you as well. You look beautiful. Doesn’t she, Romeo?”
Julia looked back at me with a healthy flush in her cheeks, and my cock jumped between my legs.
“Always,” I said.
My brother and mother made their way outside and shut the door quickly behind them. My brother had promised my mother a long overdue shopping trip and I couldn’t have been more grateful for the timing.
Julia turned to me with her bright hazel eyes and began wringing her fingers in the excess fabric of her dress.
I guess old habits die hard.
“I came over to apologize,” Julia said.
I cocked my head and studied her as she cleared her throat.
“At the restaurant. I shouldn't have gone off the way I did. But I’m worried about my son.”
I clenched my jaw as she drew in a deep breath.
“Our son. I’m worried about our son,” she corrected.
“I would expect nothing less from you,” I said.
“Romeo, I spent the last six years of my life shielding that boy. From everything. From seeing my father come home with his hands covered in blood, and the worry I felt whenever my father didn’t make it home after two or three nights. I shielded him from the clothes I burned, and the shoes I shined, and the blood I wiped off the floor when my father tracked it in. I made sure he never knew anything that went on in the family. I explained his missing uncles and his grandfather’s death as accidents, and luckily for me he’s too young to really know anything else. But he’s getting to an age where he’s going to start noticing and understanding things and I need to keep him away from all of it.”
I watched her struggle, and my heart reached out for her. I knew that struggle all too well. I’d watched my mother go through it for years. Bandaging my father’s wounds so he wouldn’t need a hospital. Stitching him up with sewing needles st
erilized in alcohol and thread from her sewing cabinets. Clothes burned in a wood stove in the basement that puffed death-tainted plumes of air into the sky over our house.
I wanted to change that for my family.
Fuck. All I cared about was to give my family a safe and normal life.
“You being in charge of your family business scared me,” Julia said. “I never expected you to take over. I always saw you passing that down to Antony.”
“Would it help you to know that I’m trying to make things better?” I asked.
“What does that even mean?”
“That I’m trying to make our operations more legitimate.”
“Is that something the Martine family is capable of?” she asked.
“With me at the helm? I think so. It’s why I took the job. I’m tired of watching my family suffer. I’m tired of my family being wiped out over petty arguments that took place two and three decades ago. I’m tired of all the rivalry and the illegality of everything that goes on in this city because of us.”
I watched Julia shake her head as she crossed her arms over her chest.
“I want to believe you so badly, Romeo. You were such a good man. All those conversations about how we couldn't stand what our fathers were doing. It was one of the reasons why I fell in love with you.”
That word.
Love.
It rumbled down my body and sent shivers up my spine.
“I’m still that man, Julia.”
“Can you promise me that?” she asked. “Because what you’re saying, it’s almost too good to be true.”