“I’ll advise you not to create any that you want me to fix. I’m not a good fixer. I erase and seek vengeance, but that never really fixes a damn thing.”
I left him to greet the Stonewoods. I shook each of their hands with Jax’s being last. He grunted and nodded at me while Brey held her hand out for me to shake too.
I lifted a brow. “Really?”
“Oh whatever.” She waved off the whole charade and moved in for a hug. “I was trying to be formal for the whole situation.”
“Formalities became a waste of time after we slept together, no?” I said.
“Don’t make me angry before the meeting, Rome,” Jax warned.
“Or me.” Katie folded her arms over her chest and stood beside him. She was making a statement to them and to me, that she wanted me, that she felt the jealousy, that she was bold enough to admit it.
I respected her fire and how she wielded it.
“Shall we?” Bastian clapped his hands and motioned to everyone to take a seat around the massive mahogany table. A few of the other men murmured about Katie, Vick, and Brey attending. We heard the whispers but let them go. The Armanellis weren’t the ones bringing women to the table. The Stonewoods and bratva were.
“It’s been brought to our attention that we’re all in the same place due to the unfortunate circumstances of my father passing,” Bastian started as he took a stand at the head of the table.
I stood next to him while Cade and Dante sat on either side of us. We had the head of the LA Italian Family beside Dante. He was only a few years older than us. The head of the New York Family sat next to Cade, older than old, with his brother beside him. Much of the bratva were a similar age, seated on the other side of the table with Ivan at the foot, Katie right beside him.
The Stonewoods filled out the middle of the table but it didn’t dim their power at all. They lounged in their chairs, bigger than most of the men here and definitely in better shape. I’d almost come to blows with Jax in the past and had wondered whether I’d have won that fight. He’d have put up a good one, that’s for sure.
The bratva only had three other heads at the meeting. Each of them were old enough to be our father; each of them looked completely out of place and unhappy to be in our presence.
“Since we’re all here,” continued Bastian, “it’s best we meet and discuss what’s come to pass in light of my father’s passing and how we should handle it.”
A mid-tier member of the LA Italian family mumbled, “Not sure we can call it passing.”
Bastian let the comment roll off his shoulders but I was already on edge, too charged to let things go. “You got something to say, Giovanni?”
“You may be an Armanelli, Rome, but I’m a Valentino. We own the West Coast, and I just think we should all be a part of life and death decisions.”
“It wasn’t a decision as he’d broken a code of conduct.” I cracked my knuckles. “He knew that, even admitted it when we brought him to the chair.”
“You’re just in love with the bitch he wronged,” he sneered at Bastian.
At this point, the leaders knew who that bitch was.
Every eye looked her way. She waited and let their stares sink in. Katalina was made for a throne even if she hadn’t known it before. She rested an elbow on the table and put her chin into her palm as if completely bored by the man’s statement. “Am I that bitch, Gio?”
He grunted and mumbled in Italian.
“Don’t tempt me to put you in the chair too. I got no problem killing you when you talk to her that way.” I warned.
Bastian cracked his neck and let out a breath.
“Chill,” I whispered to him, because I knew he felt pressure, could read my cousin like I could have a twin brother. Bastian had never wanted to be the head of the Armanelli family but he was and he was good at it. He didn’t want to argue with anyone though. It irritated him. His time was more valuable than that, and so was the rest of the family’s.
“I’m not here to throw barbs and none of you are either,” said Bastian. “We have a group of men—”
“And women,” Katalina said to no one in particular.
“And women now,” Bastian included her as whispers sounded again throughout the bratva and Italian families. Jax and Jett both sat back in their seats smirking as if they were above us all.
In a way, they were. Their hands were cleaner than clean and yet they profited greatly from our families. We profited from them having our backs too but our fathers and the fathers before them had climbed a dirtier ladder, one we couldn’t scrub quite as clean as the Stonewoods’ ladder would always be.
Bastian continued, “None of us here need to rehash the past, Giovanni. We’ve all discussed it at great lengths. Katalina is here to discuss the future with us.”