Page 28 of Daddy's Ring
So when she finally asked me for something, I had to give it to her. Even if it meant bleeding out slowly. Even if it meant becoming this hollow thing wearing my skin.
I shake it off, and move. We have a meeting at nine with the dock foreman, another at eleven about territory disputes in Kensington. The family business doesn't stop just because I'm empty inside. In some ways, it's easier now. I don't hesitate anymore when decisions need to be made. Don't second-guess when someone needs to be handled. Used to be I'd think about Zola, about what she'd say if she knew what I did, and it would stay my hand sometimes.
Not anymore. Now there's just the work, the endless parade of problems and solutions, violence and negotiation, all of it washing over me without leaving a mark.
I head downstairs, each footstep too loud in the cavernous entryway. The kitchen is pristine because I barely use it. Learned to cook for her, spent hours perfecting recipes just to watch her eat, to know I was taking care of her in some small way. Now I survive on coffee and whatever Stellan's housekeeper leaves in his fridge when I eat there.
Which is most nights, because this house is a mausoleum and Stellan's place at least has the illusion of life.
The garage holds six cars, all of them expensive, all of them meaningless. I take the black Mercedes because it's closest, pulling out into the gray Philadelphia morning. It's June but youwouldn't know it—overcast and humid, the kind of weather that sits heavy on your shoulders.
Stellan's house is only minutes away, a sprawling modern thing with too much glass and not enough curtains. I let myself in through the front door that's keyed into my biometrics—a scanner I insisted on him having. My brother lives like he has no care in the world, like the family business is just a hobby he dabbles in rather than the machine that runs our lives.
The living room looks like a bomb went off. Empty bottles on the coffee table, someone's bra draped over a lamp, Stellan himself passed out face-down on the leather couch with one arm trailing to the floor. He's wearing boxer briefs and nothing else, his dark hair sticking up in seventeen different directions.
He's different than when he was younger. Now, he doesn't give a shit about anything.
I cross the room and kick the couch hard enough to rattle his teeth. "Get up."
He doesn't move. Dead asleep or playing dead—with Stellan it's impossible to tell.
I kick again, harder this time, then grab his shoulder and shove him off the couch entirely. He hits the floor with a satisfying thud, finally jolting awake with a string of curses that would make a sailor proud.
"What thefuck, Dec?" He glares up at me, steel gray eyes still bleary with sleep. "Do you have any idea what time it is?"
"Eight-thirty."
"Exactly. Ungodly." He scrubs a hand over his face, squinting against the light filtering through those ridiculous floor-to-ceiling windows. "Just because you're a miserable bastard doesn't mean the rest of us have to be."
The words should sting. Probably would have eight years ago when I still had enough humanity left to feel offended. Now they just slide off like water. "Let's go."
I turn and head for the door without waiting to see if he follows. Behind me, I hear him groaning, stumbling to his feet, muttering things about tyrannical brothers and the value of sleep. The door opens and closes. The Mercedes beeps as I unlock it.
We have meetings to attend. Territory to manage. Problems to solve with either negotiation or violence, depending on what the situation requires. The family needs a leader now that Uncle Vittorio is gone—died a little over a year ago, his heart finally giving out after years of scotch and cigars and carrying the weight of our world on his shoulders.
I agreed to everything on his deathbed. Stood there watching him fade, this man who raised Stellan and me after our parents died, who taught us the business and the code and how to survive in a world that eats the weak. His hand was cold in mine, his breathing shallow, and all he wanted to know was whether I'd do my duty.
"The Morelli girl," he'd rasped. "Bianca. You'll marry her."
"Uncle—"
"You'll marry her and you'll produce heirs and you'll stop this pathetic mourning over a woman who left you." His grip tightened with surprising strength. "The family needs legitimate succession. Needs alliances with the Italians. You'll do this, Declan. You'll do it or everything I built dies with me."
So I agreed. Stood there and watched the light fade from his eyes and felt nothing, absolutely nothing, because I'd already given away every part of myself that knew how to feel years prior.
The wedding was six months ago. Small ceremony, no real celebration, just the necessary witnesses and Bianca in an expensive dress looking at me like I was something she'd stepped in. The marriage was purely transactional—everyone knew it, no one pretended otherwise. She got the Wolfe nameand all the power that came with it. I got the alliance her father wanted and Uncle Vittorio's dying wish fulfilled.
But I won't touch her. Can't. The thought of it makes my skin crawl, makes something violent twist in my gut. She's beautiful in that glossy magazine way, all polished surfaces and expensive maintenance, but she's nother. She doesn't have amber eyes that could cut through my bullshit. Doesn't have sharp wit that kept me on my toes. Doesn't smell like vanilla and coffee and home.
On the outside, we are everything we are supposed to be. But our marriage is a piece of paper. It's not even something I pretend is real.
Bianca sleeps down the hall in the room that should be mine too, and I'm grateful for every foot of distance between us. She fills the house with her presence—her expensive perfume in every room, her designer clothes draped over furniture, her shrill voice on the phone complaining to her friends about how her husband won't even look at her and gossiping about the hot waiter at lunch.
She grates on every nerve I have left. The way she picks at her food like eating is some kind of personal failure. The way she spends money on things she doesn't need while people on our payroll struggle to make ends meet. The way she looks at me with barely concealed disgust, like I'm the one who trapped her in this arrangement instead of it being exactly what she signed up for.
I left before having to see her this morning. Couldn't stomach the thought of watching her push egg whites around a plate while scrolling through Instagram, documenting her miserable life married to a man who can't stand her. She makes everything harder just by existing in my space.
Stellan finally emerges from his house wearing jeans and a t-shirt, sunglasses covering his eyes despite the overcast sky. Heslides into the passenger seat and immediately starts messing with my radio, switching from NPR to some hip-hop station that makes my head hurt.
