and I nearly felt guilty for the harshness of the words.
Any other woman and I might have.
But the fury that transformed her face from a cloying sweetness to something akin to a gremlin left little doubt that I'd made the right choice.
Yikes.
"You're an asshole," she sneered.
"No, you're just so determined to have my cock and my bank account that you purposefully ignored all the times I politely told you no. I do not screw around with people on the Bellandi payroll. I value my head, thank you." Without another word to argue her case, she spun on her heel and left my office.
Nothing left to say to that, apparently. Because she knew it was true.
Women.
I never wanted to get so caught up in one that I lost sight of everything else. That was how people got dead. Something was wrong, and the last thing I needed was to be so wrapped up in a woman that I didn’t care.
I leaned back in my chair, picking up my cell again. I'd just check in with Lino and Ryker's houses quickly.
It couldn't hurt.
3
Sadie
I loved my mother. I really, really did. But on Valentine's Day, with all her kids and their families coming to dinner?
I was fully prepared to be drawn into the kitchen by the woman who held tight to the culture that raised her and the belief that all women should know how to cook. For Filipinas, it was crucial to being a good wife someday.
I wanted Ivory; at least with her we could bond over the chaos of my mother’s kitchen when we left.
Drawing in a deep breath, I paused before opening the front door. The sounds of my nieces and nephew playing in the living room already burst through, and it was all I could do to suppress the desire to go play with them. If I knew my mom, I knew that my brothers’ wives Joy and Nina would already be trapped in the kitchen and looking to escape the whirlwind that was Dalisay Hicks.
The kitchen would be a disaster, completely derailed by her desperation to make every one of our favorite dishes in one meal, like she didn’t get the opportunity to feed us every week.
I hated the mess she made. I couldn't handle the lack of organization in her kitchen, even in the best of circumstances. But when she cooked?
I wanted to run in the opposite direction or pick up a sponge. But all she wanted was for me to slice mango for the ensalada or shave ice for the halo-halo or whatever last-minute task she had that didn't require me to do any actual cooking.
It wasn't that I couldn't. I fed myself just fine.
It was that while I loved Filipino flavors when I was eating them, I couldn't cook them to save my life.
The door flung open as my niece Lily panted at me from the other side. "Grandma said you were lurking out here," she said with a giggle, snatching up my hand and dragging me into the hectic living room, where my father and brothers monitored all the kids and made sure they didn't break anything.
Namely, my father's precious flat screen.
"Sadie Anne, get your butt in here!" the she-devil called, summoning me to my pit of eternal torment. Why couldn’t I just lounge in the living room and watch whatever sport they’d chosen?
Because I had a vagina.
Despite the lack of balls swinging between my legs, I'd never really been one of the girls. As much as I loved to put on a dress and heels and go dancing, I had far more in common with my brothers than with their wives, even though I adored them.
“Coming, Mama!” I called back, leaning down to touch a brief kiss to my father's cheek and pinching my youngest niece, Penny, on her cheek where she lounged in his lap.
"Good luck," my brother Lucas sneered, looking positively gleeful from his spot on the couch. The youngest of us all, he was the only one of my brothers who wasn't married and didn't have a wife that would scold him for tormenting me. The others snickered, reveling in my misery.
Even with the kids tearing around the living room, there was less commotion there than in the kitchen, where I knew complete and utter chaos waited.
"Here, come cut the mango," Mom ordered when I entered the kitchen of doom. She stepped away from her cutting board and wiped her hands on the towel she kept tucked into her apron.
"Let