I looked at him. “It’s Roxie’s recipe for the French toast.”
“Your hand that made it.”
Again I felt melty.
God, I was totally becoming a Rock Chick.
Nevertheless, I decided breakfast in bed every Sunday until that day long in the future when Ren and I were both in a nursing home where we didn’t have kitchen privileges.
“You done with your questions?” he asked, and I nodded. When I did, he stated, “Right. Then we got something else we gotta talk about.”
I hoped whatever it was stuck with the easy vibe of our together togetherness because I was still riding the high of Ava and Luke’s wedding, the fact that I introduced Ren to Mom and Dad (eventually, between Ava and Luke’s dance and cake cutting) and they’d both acted genuinely nice instead of stiffly polite, and breakfast in bed with Ren was the bomb. I was digging easy. We hadn’t had a lot of that. And, with our personalities, this was as easy as I suspected it would get.
“What do we have to talk about?” I asked.
“What I’ve been needin’ to get down to talkin’ to you about since we got back from the mountains, just haven’t had the time.” He sucked back some coffee and finished, “Now we have the time.”
Okay.
Good.
I was happy we were getting to this. So much had been going on I hadn’t thought about it that much. That didn’t mean I wasn’t curious. Then again, I was always curious.
“Shoot,” I invited, grabbing my mug and leaning over him to deposit my plate on the bedside table.
Ren followed suit, lifted one knee and twisted partially to me.
“Shit’s goin’ down at work,” he announced.
Oh man.
This was sure to take us out of easy.
Denying what Ren and I were, having my apartment explode and the rest of all that went down, it didn’t hit me in our together togetherness that an official Ren and Ally would not only include us sharing mundane things like why he parked out front, but also non-mundane things, like how his day was at the office where he was in charge of the legitimate side of a crime empire.
Fuck.
“Okay,” I said slowly.
“And you gotta know what it is,” he went on.
“Okay,” I repeated.
“You also gotta know why it is what it is,” he continued.
I didn’t repeat an “okay.” I just nodded.
He looked away and took a sip of coffee, but something changed in his face that I did not like.
Then he looked back at me and I saw whatever it was I really didn’t like.
But it was familiar. I’d seen it before whenever he mentioned his dad.
“My mother wasn’t in the life,” he shared. “She came here from Chicago after college for a job and met my pop.”
Yep. This was going to be about his dad.
I took in a breath and nodded.
“The way Aunt Angela told it to my sister Jeannie, Ma didn’t know shit. Not until Pop took over the business from my grandfather and two weeks later got whacked.”
Holy shit!
“Then she knew,” he said.
“Wow, I, uh… honey,” I stammered, reaching out and curling a hand around his thigh. “I hadn’t heard about that. That’s terrible. Awful. I don’t know what to say.”
“Yeah. It was awful and there’s nothin’ to say. I was three. Jeannie was five. My younger sister Connie was barely a year old. Ma was f**ked. She didn’t have a job. Gave it up to be a wife and mother. Young. Three kids. Then she sorted it out, why Pop was dead from a bullet to the head, and it set her reeling. She packed us up and went back to Chicago to be with her family.”
Now it was becoming clear why he wanted me to be a stay-at-home mom. That was what he knew, and I knew he loved his mother; she’d done a good job with him, so that was what he wanted for his kids.
“That’s understandable,” I murmured, squeezing his thigh.
“She made a mistake though. She took family money.”
Uh-oh.
Not good.
“In the meantime,” Ren kept going, “Vito and Angela, they couldn’t have kids. Dom was around, but he’s a f**kup and he didn’t start f**kin’ up when he started usin’ his dick for more than jerkin’ off. Vito’s all about family, in good ways as well as not so good, so he looked after Ma. He also came to visit. And he had his eye on me. Time came when he had to start to think about who’ll take over when he’s ready to retire. Me and Dom the only males, Vito old school, he decided it would be me.”
As much as this sucked, I didn’t blame Vito. I knew Ren’s cousin Dominic. He was a f**kup.
I also knew his wife Sissy. Dom had f**ked around on her and treated her like garbage. Ava’s Rock Chick Ride dragged Sissy along with it and Dom woke up, saw he was screwing over a good woman and got his head out of his ass. Now they had a baby and were happy.
I wasn’t Sissy. He didn’t cheat on me, so it wasn’t up to me to judge.
Still, I wasn’t his biggest fan, even if he now seemed a devoted husband and family man.
Ren brought my attention back to his story.
“Uncle Vito leaned on Ma to come back to Denver. She didn’t like it, but since she was still mostly a stay-at-home mom with only a part-time job—but a nice house and nice car all paid for by Zano family money—she was in a tight place. She couldn’t say no. She also had a lot of misplaced gratitude. So we came back.”
At this juncture, it must be noted, as whacked as it was, I’d always liked Vito. He was outspoken and funny, and he’d stepped up for two of the Rock Chicks.
But I didn’t like this.
“And Vito started grooming you to take over,” I guessed.
“Not right away, but yeah,” Ren confirmed. “So, in one ear, I got Vito. In the other, I got Ma, who wants me to have nothin’ to do with that shit.”
It was all coming clear.
“That’s why you’re the legitimate side,” I said quietly and his focus intensified on me.
“Yeah,” he replied just as quietly.
“And now Vito wants to retire?” Again, I was guessing.
“No. Now, I got a mom I love and respect who had to be both parents to me for as long as I can remember. And I don’t remember my dad, Ally. Not what he looked like. Not a touch. Not a smell. Not even a feeling. He’s gone. The only thing I got is pictures, and they mean shit to me. He’s a phantom that haunts my mother to this day. So we’ll also say, I don’t remember him, but I don’t like him either.”