Page 8

Chapter 8

Constantine

My sister waved her hand back and forth, her engagement ring nearly whacking my nose. “You okay?”

“Yes,” I answered flatly. “Why’s your hand in my face?”

Izzy stepped back and pointed at something. Coffee spilled from my mug onto the counter as the dark liquid continued streaming from the Nespresso machine.

“Did you forget you already put a pod in, filled it up, and went for a second? Heck, maybe this is a third?” She picked up a hand towel and began cleaning my mess.

“I, uh.” I have a son. I kept that to myself, not yet ready to share those words with anyone. I needed to fully absorb their meaning and for Colin to learn the truth.

“First time I’ve seen you get your own coffee, and now I see why you shouldn’t,” she said with a laugh.

“I make my coffee all the time.”

“Sure you do.” She playfully side-checked me with her elbow while continuing to clean up.

I didn’t need to remind her I had a machine in my office. She’d ask why I was in the breakroom, then, and I didn’t have an answer for her. I’d wandered in there at some point in a daze.

“Every woman with a pulse in this building loves you and will do anything for you,” she went on because she loved pushing my buttons. “Coffee, lunch, your special vitamins, dry cleaning. You name it, they get it for you.”

Wash blood from my clothes. (No questions asked.) Yeah, maybe. “I compensate for the extras, by the way.”

“Oh, I bet you do,” she said in a teasing, amused tone. “And look at you rolling your eyes at me. A rare sight.”

“When it’s well-deserved, I do.”

“Mm-hmm.” She tossed the towel on the counter and swapped my cup for a new one, starting the machine from scratch.

“That for you or me?” I smirked.

She folded her arms, resting her back against the counter. “It’s for me. I have no plans to fawn all over you like everyone else.” She winked.

At least she’d help adjust my mood a little.

She must have assumed I didn’t catch her drift because she morphed into Google Translate: “Fawn. Affection to gain favor. Not a baby deer.” She grinned. “Not in this case, at least.”

“You’re hilarious, and my English is better than my Italian, by the way. And don’t you have a husband to bother instead of me?”

She bracketed her hands around her mouth to whisper, “Hudson’s doing recon of the site for us.”

Something I’d be doing later as well before we infil’ed the rave.

“And aren’t you supposed to be in a meeting with Dad? Another hundred million to make?” She snatched her full coffee cup, offering it to me anyway.

I declined, deciding I was better off getting my coffee from somewhere else where she wasn’t there to make fun of me. “You heard about that deal the other day?”

“When Dad is impressed, which is rare, the world hears about it.” She added sugar and milk to the coffee I’d turned down, and I fixed my tie under my suit jacket while mentally mapping out my exfil plan to escape the building without our old man noticing.

“Mind covering for me so I can skip out early?”

“You? Play hooky. Such an Alessandro thing to do.”

She was working hard to get a read on me again. Good luck with that. She’d never guess what was on my mind.

“You’ve been acting weird ever since you tracked down that boy to get your wallet back.”

And close enough. “Just cover for me so I can go, will ya?” I tipped my head toward the door, a plea with my eyes not to press and to just do what I asked.

“Fine, fine.” She patted my shoulder, nearly spilling her coffee on me. “Ooops.” Another wink came from her, and then she took off.

The second I was alone, I reached into my pocket and wrapped my hand around the heart locket. I’d been sitting at my desk, staring at the image inside it ten minutes earlier when my father came in unannounced, and I’d shoved the evidence of my distraction in my pocket.

The heart felt like it weighed a hundred pounds inside my hand. The weight of over sixteen years lost with my son was more like it.

I missed out on her baby bump and watching our son grow inside her.

The cutting of his umbilical cord.

Learning to swaddle him the way Enzo had to do with his twins.

His first tooth, and the first one lost.

The measurements on the wall as he grew up.

All of it.

Then there was the weight of seventeen years lost with his mother that I couldn’t wrap my head around, either.

Grinding my back teeth, the pain in my head and heart was too damn much. I couldn’t breathe or think. I had to get out of there. I took off from the building, narrowly avoiding conversations with staff on my way to the parking garage.

The moment I sat behind the wheel of my car, my first thought was to text Juliette. We’d swapped digits after I’d dodged answering her question about the ring Colin had mentioned. I went from not having a son yesterday to covering for him today. What the hell was going on?

Me: How were things after I left? You okay?

Me: This is Constantine, by the way, in case you didn’t save my number.

Juliette: Hey, I did save it. And you caught me just getting out of the shower. One sec.

Thank you for that image of you naked and wet. Fuck. I bucked my hips forward, unsure what the hell that was all about. I didn’t get aroused from a text, let alone an innocent one.

My car remained in park as I waited for her to put on some clothes.

Juliette: Things are . . . weirdish? But he’s good. Well, as good as a 16-yr-old can ever truly be. And I’m okay. I think? Nervous to tell him. Excited . . . but nervous. Make sense?

The woman texted like she talked.

And was I grinning because of a text? Another thing that never happened.

Me: Why weird? (I’m nervous, too.)

I rolled my eyes at my use of parentheses, deleted them, then sent the text.

Juliette: He thinks something sketchy is going on. (His words.)

I smiled at her parentheses.

Fuck. I’m so fucked.

Juliette: He asked if you’re . . . this is too embarrassing to say, and it was even more mortifying to hear him ask me.

I straightened in my seat.

Me: What? Tell me.

Juliette: We’re still strangers. Technically. Kind of awkward.

Me: You had my DNA inside you. Grew my child in your stomach (womb?). We no longer qualify as strangers.

I groaned at how horrible that sounded and quickly deleted the whole thing.

I used to be smooth. What happened to me?

Me: I get it.

I hated that response even more but sent it before quickly following up with a text I actually meant.

Me: You’re not in this alone. Not anymore.

Juliette: Thank you.

Juliette: If you really want to know what he said . . .?

Me: I do.

Bubbles came and went. I could feel her nerves in every bouncing dot.

Juliette: He’s worried you’re blackmailing me with the security tapes from the parking garage.

Me: For?

Juliette: In exchange for . . . facepalm emoji sex.

Me: Oh.

Brilliant response. It was no wonder my father had yet to retire and turn over his empire to me. Not that I wanted him to.

Me: So, he doesn’t suspect we’ve already had sex, then? That I’m his dad?

I’d never scrutinized my responses so much in my life, and I’d never deleted so many, either, and I did that one.

Me: I just want to get this over with.

That should have been one to wind up trashed.

Me: That came out wrong.

Juliette: No, no, I get it.

I waited to see if she’d type again, and when she didn’t, I tossed my phone on the passenger seat. I was never one to feel the need to have “closure” at the end of talking over text, but this felt unfinished, and I didn’t like it. I groaned and picked up my phone, doing another new-to-me thing.

Me: Is there anything I can do for you before we meet tomorrow? Anything I can do to help?

Juliette: Yes. Please cancel your Amex. I think he has a backup screenshot of your card.

I smiled. That he does.

Me: Yes, ma’am.

Me: Have a good NOC shift.

Juliette: And you know a night shift is called NOC because . . .?

Because, like Izzy, I also knew how to use Google, and I looked it up this morning. I really am losing it. My whole fucking mind.

Juliette: I’m kidding (you don’t need to answer that).

Thank God.

Juliette: Have a good day (and night) doing whatever it is that you do. ;)

I hearted her message as my only answer and took off from the garage before I said something stupid I couldn’t delete and take back this time.

She had no idea who I really was or what I did. What if when she found out, she didn’t want me in her life or our son’s? That thought nearly sent me colliding with the car that’d abruptly stopped in front of me.

I forced myself to take an indirect route to get to my place. One that avoided driving past her home. If I were to roll by their place, I’d wind up parking. Going up those three steps to her building. Then I’d find myself at her front door, confronting a pissed-off sixteen-year-old who thought I was trying to trade sex for his freedom.

Once home, I spent two hours working out in my gym while I tried to work through my problems. Afterward, I went to the building where the rave was being held, hoping to get a feel for the place. The factory was still empty, but I assumed a crew would soon be converting it into a club-like setting.

I spent an hour there, committing every detail to memory, from the entry points to the fact that the fire escape ladder on level three was missing seven feet of steps at the end.

When I was done there, I went to our security office to kill time until the op. I hadn’t expected to walk in on Izzy and Hudson in his office, with my sister’s legs wrapped around his waist as they made out.

I kept forgetting they were married.

“Door shut and locked when you do this shit, remember?” I reached for the door handle to give them privacy, but Hudson let my sister’s feet hit the ground, and they both faced me.

“You’re early,” Hudson said, quickly fastening his belt that’d been hanging undone.

“Yeah, I can tell you weren’t expecting me.”

We’d been friends since we were sixteen, so it would take some getting used to seeing him and my little sister make out.

“I swear,” was all I said, shaking my head. “Are you two ready so we can review the plans again?” We’d changed the objective tonight, so there was relatively low risk, which was why Izzy was joining us. “It’s not like we don’t have a job to do.”

Izzy mock-saluted me, adding a cocky, “Sir, yes, sir,” as she sidestepped Hudson and started my way. She was already decked out in her rave wear—a sparkly pink tank top and silver pants. So help me if she put anything like that in my office for me to change into. Seeing the look on my face, she dropped the attitude. “You okay?”

I couldn’t answer that without lying, so I kept my mouth shut, nodded, and exfil’ed the hell outta there.