SWNOVELS When He Takes: Chapter 30
Blake and I head out a few hours after breakfast the next morning.
On the drive, Blake asks me to tell her more about Sandro. Who he was in New York and what kind of work he did. What he was known for. What friends he had.
I surprise myself with the near encyclopedic knowledge I have on the kid. I guess we talked a lot in those first few months in Darkwater Hollow. We learned a lot about each other.
“How did you meet him in the first place?” Blake asks after a good hour of me telling her all sorts of stories about him.
“Rafe and I found Sandro driving in an illegal street race when he was just a fourteen-year-old kid.” I chuckle. “He was driving one of the shittiest-looking cars, and he still won. The guy who came in second place was running his mouth that night, saying he was going to make sure Sandro never showed his face there again. Before that could go anywhere, I just grabbed Sandro and told him I had a job for him. One where he wouldn’t get killed for driving well, and where he could earn enough in a few years to get whatever car he wanted. He just grinned and said, ‘Sign me up, boss.’”
“He would’ve followed you anywhere after that, huh?”
I take in a deep breath, my emotions swelling. “I didn’t expect him to agree to leave with me. Not that Rafe asked, to be honest, but Sandro didn’t make a big deal out of it. He got on board and drove me all the way to Missouri, and he was fucking cheerful through it all.”
Blake sniffles. When I glance over, she’s wiping under her eyes.
“We don’t need to keep talking about him if you don’t want to,” I say softly.
“No, I’m glad we are. I feel like in the midst of everything that happened right after he died, I haven’t had a chance to process his death.” She gives me a watery smile, and it just fucking kills me. “I hope he ended up somewhere nice.”
I swallow past the ball in my throat and turn back to face the road. “Yeah. Me too.”
The party is happening at a bar called San Marco. I drive past the front door and the neon sign that hangs above it and go around to park at the back.
The place’s got a Venetian theme. Blake and I enter through the back door and walk down a hallway that’s been done up to resemble a canal. The tiles on the floor are the color of water, and on the walls, there are gondolas painted against the backdrop of Venetian homes.
It’s kitschy and fun and unpretentious. Sandro preferred places like this to the glitzy restaurants he often drove Rafe and me to.
When we step into the main room, heads turn in our direction. First just one, then two, then the rest follow. It takes a few seconds, but all the conversations soon quiet.
My grip on Blake’s hand tightens as I stare at the faces of the men who used to call me boss.
A few meet my gaze head-on and even grin, but others look down at their feet, like they’re scared to see what’s become of me. Funny. I still look the same—at least, I think I do—but sometimes, the way we’re perceived has nothing to do with our appearance.
There’s subtext swirling through the air.
A fallen god walks among us.
The crowd parts for Rafe. He walks up to me with measured steps, Cleo a few paces behind him. The silence is nearly absolute, broken only by the shuffling of feet against the worn tile floors. Rafe stops in front of me. His expression gives nothing away, but his eyes speak to me, just the way they always have.
Right now, they’re saying, I wish things were different.
I shrug, a small movement only he’ll notice. It is what it is.
He offers me his hand. “Glad you made it.”
Our handshake pops the tension in the room. The people here know they’ve got to follow the don’s lead, so the chatter starts up again, and the waiter who’s been standing frozen since Blake and I walked in starts to refill people’s glasses with red wine.
Cleo comes up to give me a tight hug before turning to Blake and doing the same to her. When she pulls away, she scans Blake’s face, looking a bit worried. “Can I get you a drink?”
Blake’s eyes find mine. I give her a small nod. Cleo’s probably still feeling bad about how she greeted Blake the first time they met, and she wants to smooth things over.
They move toward the bar while Rafe comes up to stand beside me, his eyes tracking Blake and his wife.
“Did you pick this place because Sandro used to like it, or because your wife’s finally managed to knock off a zero from your net worth?” I ask.
“She dropped that tactic to annoy me after I told her all it does is motivate me to make more money for her to spend.”
I chuckle. “Well-played.”
A waiter carrying a platter of hors d’oeuvres passes by the women. Cleo turns animatedly, pointing at something on the platter while speaking to Blake. I watch as the redhead grabs a napkin and loads it up with fried cheese balls. My lips quirk up.
“How’s it going with your wife?” Rafe asks. “She doesn’t seem to hate you anymore.”
“Yeah, we’ve made progress. I just want her to be happy here.”
“Is she?”
I mull it over for a moment. “Honestly? I don’t know.” The short time we spent at the shore was great, but I’m convinced there’s still something weighing her down. I’ve just got no idea what.
“You’ve been back here for weeks, and you’re telling me you still haven’t won her over? That’s not the Nero De Luca I remember. You never had any problems making women happy.”
“She’s different. Complex. I never quite have her all figured out.”
Rafe palms my shoulder. “Let’s sit.”
We move toward a quiet corner of the room and take a seat at one of the empty tables. The wooden chair squeaks beneath my weight.
Another waiter appears with a bottle of red and fills our glasses. When he leaves, I heave a sigh.
“So did you have to get Gino’s permission to have me here?”
A shadow passes over Rafe’s expression. “We talked.”
“Did he give you the full update on me?” I ask, wondering if Gino’s finally brought Rafe in on his plan to kill the pakhan.
“He didn’t say much.”
Apparently not.
“How’s he been treating you? He said you’re working with Alessio.”
I shrug. “Alessio’s not that bad. Completely fucking crazy and a pain in the ass, but I think I like him. He’s the kind of guy you definitely want on your side in a bar fight.”
Rafe takes a slug of his wine. “You been getting friendly with Cosimo too?”
I glance at him. “You sound a bit jealous.”
Rafe gives me a dark look, but I know I’m right. He misses me too. Maybe after I help get the Bratva out of our city, we’ll finally be able to hang out like we used to.
That nostalgic feeling from last night sweeps right through my chest again.
I clear my throat. “To answer your fucking question, of course not. God, that guy is such a self-important prick. Send Fabi my condolences. I can’t believe your angel of a sister is going to be married to that uptight fuck in just a few months.”
“He knows better than to treat her with anything other than respect,” Rafe says gruffly. “And your perception of him is skewed. You’ve always had something against him.”
“Not always. Just after that time he stole my fucking wine. Do you remember that? A whole crate I personally ordered from that producer in Tuscany.”
Rafe smirks. “Oh yeah.”
“It was sitting there, waiting for me at Velluto, and he saw it in the cellar and demanded Tanner sell it to him. That kind of move shows a man’s character. That guy’s got none.”
“I remember you making Sandro drive you over to Ferraro’s at midnight so that you could confront Cosimo,” Rafe says with a low chuckle.
“And the prick wouldn’t even come down to talk to me.” I lean back in my chair. “You know, I think Sandro actually brought me here afterward so that I could have a glass and calm down. There are plenty of guys who would’ve just wanted to get rid of their fuming boss as soon as they could, but Sandro was never scared of my anger.”
Rafe nods, his gaze anchored on his glass. “He wasn’t scared of much.”
My chest grows tight. No, he wasn’t. He wasn’t even scared of death, because there’s no way he would have thought to give Blake his car keys if he’d been consumed by fear.
“I killed the guys who got him, but it doesn’t feel like enough.”
Rafe’s expression darkens. “Last week, we caught two Iron Raptors sniffing around one of our warehouses in Albany.”
“For real? Jesus. I can’t believe they’d be stupid enough to cross into our territory.”
“We gave them a firm warning. Told them you were one of ours, and that moving on you would mean moving on both the Messeros and the Ferraros.”
“I doubt Gino would lift a finger if it came down to it.”
“Yeah, well, given he and I will be family soon, he won’t have a choice.”
“You think they’re something we should be concerned about?”
“No. I doubt we’ll see them around here again, but I’d be careful when traveling. Unless you want me to make contact with their president and see if we can come to an understanding. But given how many of their guys you killed…” He grimaces. “It won’t be straightforward.”
I rub my palm over my chin. “Yeah, I know.” If Rafe pulled it off though, it would mean Blake could leave the state. She could go see her friend in California. Maybe that’s what she needs.
What if she likes it so much there that she decides to never come back?
I twist the stem of my wineglass. “Have you ever felt wrong for doing what we do?”
Rafe shrugs. “I think wrong and right are arbitrary human constructs. What we do is survive. If we stop, we die. That’s always been clear to me.”
“Me too.” But I’ve never had anyone push me to question it the way Blake has. And there’s a nagging fear at the back of my mind that she still thinks she won’t be able to thrive in this world. Like she’s somehow not enough. Is that the reason for the doubt I sometimes see flicker in her eyes?
Pulling her into this thing with Maksim set the wrong precedent. It made her think she needs to be an active player in the game. That just isn’t the case. Rafe would have never let Cleo get involved in something like this, so what the hell was I thinking?
My jaw clenches. I need to be better at protecting her from the darkest parts of this life. They’re mine to navigate, not hers.
The crowd swells with some latecomers, drawing my attention to it.
Rafe stands up. “That should be everyone.” He glances at me. “Care to say a few words?”
I clear my throat and get to my feet. “Yeah.”
There’s a small stage set up in the corner where a live band usually plays. Today, there’s just a mic on a stand there.
I get up on the stage. It’s hard to gather my thoughts, so I close my eyes.
There are so many things I could say. So many stories I could tell.
He was only twenty-two. What kind of a life could he have lived if he’d had more time?
Someone taps their fork against a glass. A few seconds pass before the room grows quiet.
I look out at the people gathered. His coworkers. His friends. His family. Not by blood, but by something more meaningful. Their own choices.
“Sandro was a good kid. Sorry—man. He’d always get mad at me for calling him a kid. All of you knew him as Rafe’s driver, but I got to know him as someone else. Sam Wilkins. Entrepreneur. Construction expert. A pain in the ass, on occasion.”
There are a few chuckles at that.
“And a very dear friend.” I pause, sliding my gaze over the listening crowd. “You all knew Sandro, but I want to tell you a bit about Sam. You know what happened to us. Sandro got the short end of the stick and was told to get out of here with me. The guy didn’t even fucking blink. It’s not like we were leaving for a day or two, it was meant to be forever. I know I’m good company, but I’m not that good.”
Laughs break out among the crowd.
“Anyway, we get to this place called Darkwater Hollow.” I scratch the side of my mouth with my thumb. “I honestly had no fucking idea what we were going to do there. I was upset and angry and just lost.”
I find Blake. She’s standing beside Cleo, and judging by her expression, I can tell my words have caught her off guard. She has no idea how dark things were in the beginning. Only Sandro did.
“It was Sandro’s idea to buy a small construction business. While I was still internally kicking and screaming about being forced into this new life, Sandro didn’t waste any time on that. He was a practical guy. He got to work, and he was so damn smart. We turned that business around in a few months, and from the outside, it may have seemed like I was leading the charge, but that’s not true. It was all him. He grew into his own. He became a man. And he became someone I looked up to.”
Someone in the crowd sniffs.
“When we first left, I had this idea in my head that I’d have to be responsible for him, but I was wrong. He didn’t need me. I was the one who needed him, especially in those early days. Whenever I got too quiet, too deep inside my head, Sandro would pull me out. Crack a bad joke. Make a comment about a shitty driver. Babble on about a viral video he’d seen. It annoyed me back then. Like, why the hell couldn’t he just let me think in peace? But now I see what he was doing. He could tell I was having a rough go at it, and instead of leaving me to my own devices, he cared enough to try to give me a hand.”
Fuck. I’d do anything to have him walk through the door right now with that boyish grin on his face.
I take a sip of my drink, buying myself a few moments to pull it together.
“I know this is supposed to be a celebration of his life, and we’ll celebrate right after I stop making you all cry, but there’s one more thing I’ve got to say.” I clear my throat. “In these parts, we don’t throw around the label ‘hero’ very often. We know who we are, and we know what we do. But I want to make an exception for Sandro, because…” My throat is so damn tight.
Blake stares at me from across the room as silent tears run down her cheeks. I’m not sure I’d be able to get through this if she weren’t here.
I lick my lips. “Sandro used his last moments to save my wife’s life. And I’ll always be grateful to him for that.”
Faces turn toward Blake. There isn’t a single dry eye in the room.
Cleo puts a comforting hand on her back. Blake’s lips wobble a bit as she gives me a sad smile.
I lift my glass. “To Sandro, and to Sam.”
“To Sandro, and to Sam,” the crowd responds.
And we drink.