He continues, “I know I didn’t raise you. I won’t tell you how to do this job because you were born to do it. You are the faultless product of Jimmy. I mean that in the most reverent way, son. But you can’t do this alone.”
A leader is, by default, alone.
I force my body to still while all I want is to move, flick the discomfort from my fingertips. He cares. I care that he cares. “That’s not what I’m trying to do here.”
“Yes. You are. You are more comfortable alone.” He laughs with derision, directing the contemptuous tone inward, to himself. “We are all particularly good at being impartial. I enforced such a way of life too. I don’t deny it. I know. I… struggled,se.With my anger. Like Max, it’s often better to beat it out. Beat it into a boxing bag. Or put behind walls. Butcher men all have walls, but you,”—his eyes lock on me, and I clench my jaw around the uncomfortable discussion— “you’re a fucking island, Clay. You don’t even need the walls. A truth that pains me some.”
I talk through my teeth. “Anything else?”
He sighs at my deflection, at my behaviour that feeds directly into what he just shared. “Yes.” He deflates but continues. “Jimmy delegated brilliantly. You were the link to the city. He was the Don of the Family. Dustin ran the locals. I ran the Family. Your brothers kept the order. I think you need to remove yourself from your official standing in the city. Allow Max to be the man on the inside. Choose someone else to run the locals.”
Irritation flares at my temples. I lean forward, press my elbows to the desk and say, “You want me to resign from a position I have worked the last decade to attain?”
“Yes,” he states adamantly, and I sink back into my chair, shocked by this new development.
What the fuck is going on here?
“That is exactly what I want you to do,” he states. “I want you to position a mayor of your choosing and be the Don of this Family. It is a full-time job as it is.”
Absolutely not.
I shake my head. “I can do both.”
“Can you do all three?” He sighs roughly. “Can you do more? I don’t want you to be like me, son.Absent.Too busy. You’ll miss it, son. The time just disappears.”
I ask what I already know. “Miss what?”
“Living. Watching her become a mother,” he states, and my chest tightens unpleasantly. “Watching your sons become men. It just happens.” He folds his arms across his broad chest, his white suit shirt stretching around each large bicep. “Do you want children with that girl?”
Damn him.
“How did we get here?”
“You were taking advice from an old man.”
Damn him.
It’s a truth that comes to me without invite. A phantom need that was coasting through my every action of late. The answer to his question.Yes.I want her pregnant. With my sons. Want her round at the hips, growing my heirs. Blood of theCosa Nostraraised by a woman who is royalty and modest buthumble.Sweet, even.
A sweet girl.
Levelling him, feigning nonchalance, I say, “Perhaps.”
Flat blue eyes filled with accusation train on me, their infliction growing like barbed wire beneath my skin. “You will not lie on your deathbed and regret raising your sons, Clay. And deathbeds find us young in this game. You will, however, regretnotraising them.” He slowly nods. “I speak from experience.”
Too much.
Damn him!
Rising to my feet, stifling the impulse to lunge over the desk and fist his collar, growl at him for unloading his regret and bullshit on me when I need to focus, I simple smooth my tie down my shirt in lieu of that urge.
“All excellent advice,” I say, widening my arms for him, a gesture to indicate the discussion has ended.
He stands, unreadable again but for the pinched brows etched to his forehead, residual of his unreciprocated sentimentality. “Very well. Your mother needs to stay in one of the guest rooms for a while?” he says. “I have pissed her off. She might knife me if she stays in the house with me, se?”
Can’t possibly understand why…
I smile easily, and where I would usually decline, I don’t. As I’m itching to remove myself from this sentimental energy. “Of course. I will have Que make up a room in the other wing. She will have the entire extension to herself.”