Page 6

CHAPTER SIX

Piper

It takes us another hour to finish packing up and loading everything into the cars.

“Oh thank god. I’m riding with you. I refuse to be squished between my brothers again,” Isabella says to me.

Celestino comes over and puts her in a headlock.

“Get off me, you dick.” Isabella laughs.

“Sorry. My children are usually more well behaved than this.” Giacomo laughs.

We all laugh as Isabella and Celestino start kicking each other.

“If your mother was here—” Giacomo starts to say.

“Maybe next time we need to bring our wives. They know how to wrangle our spawn.” Enea chuckles.

Giacomo nods. “That’s a good plan.”

“Everyone’s coming here for our wedding right?” Rhett asks as we continue packing.

“Definitely. Everyone’s already packing.” Enea smiles.

“The kids are so excited to see everyone.”

“Okay, I think we have everything. We can head home.”

“Are we going to fit? Some of us can wait here for you to make a trip and come back. Because I don’t think we’re going to fit.” Lorenzo laughs.

“I mean, I suppose I could hang onto the roof.” Eros laughs.

“Dork. How far is your house from here? I don’t mind waiting,” Isabella says as she rolls her eyes at Eros.

“Yeah, it might be easier if we go and come back. Our place is only fifteen minutes away, so it won’t take long.”

Enea tells each of them who stays and who goes. I’m beginning to think he’s the leader of the family. I head to the house in the first run, and Giovanna jumps in with us.

“I’ll leave you at the house with the girls and go back for the others,” Paxton says to me.

“Okay. They all seem really nice, is Enea the head of your family?” I ask Giovanna.

“Kind of. He’s the head of the Mancinis. Giacomo is the head of his family. There are two others, Panagiotis Nikolaidis and Zeus Athanasiou. Those are the four heads of the Lake Renegade family,” she explains.

“You make them sound like the mafia.” I laugh.

They both laugh, but I’m getting a weird feeling from them. What are they hiding?

Paxton

This is going to be so much easier when I can tell Piper about my Lake Renegade family. I’m not sure how she’ll react, but at least then she’ll know. It sucks keeping things from her. When we get to the house, I drop the girls off and head back to pick up the rest of the guys.

“So Piper seems like a nice girl,” Enea says to me.

“She is. Now I get it when my brothers found their person and how they felt around them. I can’t do anything when she’s around. I just want to follow her everywhere. And now with this situation? I want to wrap her in bubble wrap and take her everywhere with me.”

Enea laughs. “We’ve all been there. I still want to wrap my wife in bubble wrap. I know you want to ask if you can tell Piper. So ask.”

I take a deep breath. “I would like to tell her about all of you.”

“Are you sure she’s your forever?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay. Let me talk to Giacomo. As for Panagiotis and Zeus, you’ll need to ask them when they come for Rhett’s wedding.”

“Thank you. I’m excited for her to meet everyone. I just hate that you had to come and help us deal with this psycho.”

“Seems to be what we attract in our family.” He chuckles. “But we’ll get through it.”

“Thank you, Enea. I appreciate how fast you all came to help. I wish you could’ve seen him today. He was so damn delusional. I’ve never seen anyone like him.”

“I’m pretty sure Bastian and Franco got some information on him. We’ll figure this out.”

“I’m just afraid that he’s crazy enough to hurt her.”

“That’s always something to worry about. But let’s hope that he’s not that crazy.”

I nod and park at home. We head inside and everyone gathers in the living room. Enea stands up and smiles at Piper.

“Piper—first of all, we are happy to welcome you into our family. And because you’re part of our family, you should know who we are.

There are four main families that live in Lake Renegade.

My parents and my wife’s parents founded Lake Renegade, we are the Chicago Mafia.

Giacomo’s papà and his wife’s father founded the Cimaruta MC.

Almost ten years ago, we decided to come together and change our ways.

We own businesses, help our town, and the city of Chicago.

It hasn’t been an easy change, but it’s been a necessary one.

You’ll meet more of the Nikolaidis and Athanasiou families at Rhett and Emiko’s wedding.

Their story is theirs to tell. But Paxton asked me if he could tell you about us.

So now you know. It’s not an easy life, but it’s our life. And now it’s part of your life.”

“Thank you for telling me. I have so many questions. First, what is a MC?” Piper asks.

Everyone chuckles.

“MC is a motorcycle club.” Celestino smiles.

“Like the ones in the movies?”

“Some clubs are. We used to run guns and drugs. Never dealt in human trafficking. But now we run legal businesses and no more gun and drug running. Our sister clubs are transitioning too,” he explains.

“Sister clubs?” she asks.

“Clubs that we recognize as part of ours. They have different names and patches, but they’re part of our family. ‘The Cimaruta MC, Chicago’ is what we call the mother chapter. We’re the original chapter of our club.”

“Oh wow. There’s so much more to your club than what they show on TV.” I chuckle.

“Wait till you meet the whole family.” Isabella laughs.

We spend a few minutes talking and I can see that she’s loving them already.

“We did want to talk to you about Marc. Do you know anything about him?” Francesco asks.

Not really. We talked sometimes, but not about anything personal.

He worked at a financial office, the coffee shop job was his ‘for fun’ job.

And he drove an expensive car. But I never went out with him or really anywhere with him.

I only talked to him at the coffee shop.

Which is why when I started seeing him everywhere I went, it started to worry me. ”

“That’s understandable. So you went to the police and asked them to help?”

I nod. “I did and they told me my options. They were limited because he never threatened me. But because he was everywhere I was. The the police officer said they could help me. And when we went to court, they were able to show pictures of Marc following me.”

Listening to Piper tell her story makes me angry that she had to go through that alone.

“Did you tell your family about it?” Giacomo asks.

“After I took the restraining order out, I told my parents. I had to, in case something happened to me,” she says softly.

I hold her in my arms and I can feel her shaking.

“We’re going to do everything we can to help you. The main thing right now is, you need to remember not to go anywhere alone. And to never be alone,” Enea says to her.

Piper nods.

“We plan on staying for a while. So make sure if you need to go somewhere, you take one of us.”

“You can also stay with me at the store,” I say to her.

We spend another hour discussing what we can do to make sure Piper is safe. When it’s time for bed, Piper chooses to stay with me. I love that I get to hold her all night.