Page 19 of What’s Left of Us (What Left #3)

After spending far too long on the phone with Xeno last week, I should be up to date on everything that’s going on in his twisted little mind.

He’s been calling me more and more, not just about things stewing with Alastair’s case, but about the family.

I have no business in that life anymore, but he tries to drag me back almost more than our father recently.

Our last conversation plays in my head, and I worry for him.

“Things are changing,” he tells me as I stare at the front of the prison. “Papa is losing control of everything south of Melbourne. Our alliances with the other families are breaking apart.”

“How do you expect me to help?” I ask him, gripping the steering wheel. I should’ve just gone inside with Jo. “I’m not connected to anyone anymore. No one wants to hear from the disowned son of the Capo.”

“I don’t need you to have alliances, brother,” Xeno says like it’s obvious. “I need you to have my back.”

I shift in my seat. My brother isn’t my papa, and I don’t have the hate in my heart for him that I do for Massimo. “How?”

“I have to strengthen connections,” Xeno explains. “One of them, you may not like. It’s just business.”

“What do you mean?”

“Vinny!” Jo yells from downstairs. “If you don’t come down here already Emeric’s going to lose his damn mind.”

Shaking the memory away, I glance at the gun resting on the bathroom counter. It’s another thing I have because my brother wants me protected, but what is Xeno going to expect from me in the long run? I can’t think of much that I wouldn’t do for him, but he’s making me question what his plans are.

Downstairs I find Jo sitting on the couch, the phone resting flat on her hand.

She’s nervous, picking at the cushion, and I sit down before her before grabbing her legs and draping them over my knees.

All at once the tension in her body eases, and I slide the gun with the safety on onto the table before sitting back.

“Maybe we can have a party,” Jo says, messing with a throw pillow. “When we’re back.”

“Fourth of July, right?” Emeric asks sarcastically through the phone, and it’s nice to hear his voice.

Jo spiraled at the beginning of the month when she texted our friends, and although we smoothed things over since her visit to the prison with her mother, it’s still weird filling them in.

Life at the club in Colorado is so drastically different from life down here. I can’t wait to leave.

“Might be a little too soon,” she sighs, and I meet her gaze. “We’re waiting. Sterling doesn’t think they’ll need to bring me back to the women's prison again, but I will probably need to testify against my mom when court progresses.”

“That can take a long time,” I remind her. “We’ll be back in Colorado before you have to worry about that. And I’ll be there with you the whole way.”

“I know,” she sighs, letting her head fall back against the armrest of the couch. She puts the pillow over her eyes and sighs. “They found the house where Porscha was hiding with Alastair.”

“Were they in that house the whole time?” Emeric asks.

“They don’t know,” Jo replies, and I adjust my hold on the phone so she can hear better. “They asked me about the house but I have no idea about any of it. It’s not somewhere I knew about, that’s for sure. I don’t even know where it is. It was owned by a couple… the Nuns?”

“Nunes,” I say, skimming my fingers along her arm. “James and Diana, right?”

“Diana?” Emeric echoes, sounding confused. “Nunes you said?”

Jo sits up straight again, letting the pillow fall into her lap. “Do those names sound familiar?”

“Not exactly.” It sounds like he’s moving around, and I have to remind myself he’s supposedly at the club right now.

“I mean, I remember my stepmom Jen complaining about a Diana from time to time. They used to hire her to do work around the house and one day she stopped responding to calls. Just disappeared if I remember right. That’s how they ended up eventually hiring Porscha to do some work around the house. They couldn’t reach Diana.”

“Did you meet her?” Jo asks, biting her lip.

“Diana? Na, she never came around once I lived there. Jen said they only used her from time to time, and she was hard to reach. Porscha replaced her eventually for all the house projects the Franks needed done. I don’t think I’d even remember the name if Jen didn’t end up complaining about her so much.

She seemed to think Diana ghosted them and owed them work for being good clients. It was weird.”

I bite my tongue. Emeric’s foster parents were good to him, but I found both Rob and Jen Franks to be weird and honestly, judgmental little pricks.

They acted like good enough people to adopt Emeric senior year and go as far away from Florida as they possibly could.

But in the middle of all that good, they left Alastair behind because they thought he was problematic.

And that was before all the convictions.

He became a ward of the state while Emeric moved to a new city and eventually got adopted before his eighteenth birthday.

I don’t hold it against Emeric at all, but I think it says a lot about the type of people the Franks. “Your foster parents were always a little weird, Em.”

He laughs good naturally about it, because he knows I’m just not going to warm up to the Franks at this point. They are far away on the other side of the country and I sure hope they stay there.

Jo switches topics, her eyes wandering around the room when she speaks like she’s talking out loud. “I wish Sterling would call us like this. We could know so much more.”

“He’s doing what he can,” I reply, rubbing her legs. “He hasn’t said anything about the cabin at least, so neither will we. If he wants to pretend we’re on professional terms only, we’ll keep doing that.”

“Listen to the two of you,” Emeric says sarcastically, “supporting the FBI agent.”

Jo rolls her eyes, shaking her head as she smiles. “ My FBI agent, Emeric. We wouldn’t bother protecting him if we didn’t care.”

“We’re just really good liars,” I agree. “We had a story somewhat planned before the officers arrived at the cabin. The club taught us how to gloss over things that need to be dealt with later.”

Like asking Sterling what the fuck he thinks will happen now. But if Sterling showed back up in the middle of things and Jo wanted him, I wouldn’t deny her.

I’m just not sure where this ends.

There’s noise in the background on Emeric’s side of the call, and he groans. “Let me know what Gideon says when you chat again, will you? Serenity’s telling me all about the crowds downstairs.”

“Crowds are good,” Jo says, brightening.

“They think there’s a Fourth of July party,” he says with a scoff. “I didn’t plan that.”

Jo smiles and it does my heart good. By the time we disconnect the call, she looks slightly less stressed out than she did before.

I set aside my phone and return to massaging her calves. “Your agent, huh?”

She blushes, and I can’t help but smirk. “He is my agent… he’s covered us.”

“We’re covering each other,” I remind her. “He could’ve turned things around and tried to blame us for working with Alastair.”

“Sterling’s not like that,” she defends, and I let her work it out in her head. A little crease appears between her brows as she does so. “Not after what the four of us shared.”

“Sex doesn’t equal loyalty,” I say with a frown.

“He’s still an FBI agent. Alastair’s still a felon.

We’re still married. What we are hasn’t changed because fate let all four of us find our way to the cabin at the same time.

It was a stroke of luck, and it’s over now.

With Alastair back in prison and Sterling still on the case… ”

I let my voice trail off and she sighs. “It probably won’t happen again.”

“I’m sorry darling,” I say, squeezing her legs.

My fingers trace along the scars as I do so.

“I don’t see how we would get that to happen a second time.

Not with law enforcement watching Alastair so closely.

We don’t even know if he’ll have appointments outside the hospital, or if the follow up appointments we heard about have to be done there.

We can’t even go in and visit since he’s gone no-contact thanks to the warden. ”

“I hate that,” she replies with a scowl. “What about his attorney? Couldn’t he work with us to speak with Alastair? Surely he’s supposed to do things to benefit him, right? We will absolutely speak on Alastair’s behalf now about the case.”

I school my features as I respond. “I’m not sure about the attorney. We don’t know him, so why would he be willing to help us see Alastair more than necessary?”

Jo hangs her head again, and I push away the feeling of guilt.

I don’t keep secrets from my wife unless I absolutely have to.

I haven’t had the chance to mention that Xeno hired Alastair’s attorney.

She knows he has one because Sterling vaguely mentioned it, but I haven’t gone into the details with her yet. There’s so much going on right now.

“You need to listen to me,” Xeno says, catching my hand.

I sneer at him, peering around the hospital.

There’s a man across the room in a smart suit who’s watching us, and I narrow my eyes at him.

Xeno dragged me away from the reception desk, Jo still arguing with someone about where Alastair and Sterling are. “Carefully.”

“What are you doing?” I grunt, keeping my gaze on the man for another moment before I tear my eyes away.

“Papa knows you used his cabin,” he explains as if I should be scared. All I do is scoff. That’s not enough to make me care. “And he knows an arrest was made on the property, and figured out pretty easily that it was Constantine.”

Ah, now I see the issue. “You think Papa still has a grudge for all that?”

Xeno narrows his eyes. “Remember what he used to scream at you around the house? Se preferisci una donna alla tua famiglia, per noi sei già un estraneo.”