“Papa is...cautious,” Frankie hedged, offering me an apologetic smile. “He’d like a DNA test before he will really believe that you’re...you.”
I snorted a laugh. I didn’t even know who I was so I doubted some swab would have the answers for me. But I guessed blood was blood.
“But me and the others, Rocco and Enzo, we know who you are. We feel it. And we aren’t looking for anything at all from you except the chance to know you. For you to know us. We don’t expect you to come and join the family business or start running Romero jobs, or even take our name back if you don’t want it. We just want the opportunity to know our brother.”
My heart twisted at his words and for a long moment I couldn’t say anything at all. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever had a family member want something so simple from me before, so pure. Even when I’d been posturing as the Calabresi heir I didn’t feel wanted like that. Like I had value just for being myself and not for the things I could offer up to others. It hurt and it stung and it opened up this desperate kind of want in me that was hard to resist.
“That’s all?” I asked, as if it could be so simple. “After everything we’ve all done to each other?”
“That was all in the past. It was Calabresi verses Romero. War. Hate. Whatever you want to call it. But this is more important than that. It’s blood, family, love.” Frankie took a step towards me like he wanted something else from me, but I didn’t know what. And that last word he’d spoken opened up a chasm in me which I was afraid to look at too closely. I didn’t think I’d ever been loved. At least not by anyone I could remember. It was why I’d fought so hard for Sloan. That promise of undying devotion, of someone to give your heart to and trust with the keeping of yours.
“I...” I shook my head, pushing myself to my feet again as I tried to find some other protest, some reason to deny his offer and tell him to leave me alone for good.
Frankie stepped forward and dragged me into his arms before I could utter a single word. His grip was tight and bruising, one hand clasping the back of my head as the other arm crushed me to his chest.
“I’ve missed you all my life, brother,” he said roughly. “Come home with me. Please.”
My arms slowly closed around him too and something I’d never even known I’d been missing seemed to click into place in my soul. It was bloody and carved with rough edges so that I didn’t know how to handle it, but it was also really fucking good.
“Okay,” I agreed, not really understanding why, but knowing that I needed this, needed him and maybe even the others too. “But I don’t really know how to be a brother.”
Frankie laughed and released me, gripping my face between his hands as he looked at me with his eyes shimmering with emotion. “Well, the first thing we do is clean up each other’s messes.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, wondering what he meant by that.
“Yeah. Our aunt Clarissa just so happens to be the bitch whose marijuana crop you just destroyed, so we’re going to need to make sure she thinks this mountain man is good and dead.”
“Shit,” I laughed, unable to help myself as I pulled out of Frankie’s grip. “And there was me thinking I’d gotten away from Romeros and Calabresis up here.”
“Not likely, fratello, you’d have to run a lot further than this to escape us.”
I stilled at the casual use of that nickname for me. I’d never really had the strongest grasp of Italian but I’d been surrounded by people speaking it often enough that I knew basic words like that. Fratello - brother. Just like that, he accepted the bond between us. Could I do so too?
“How do you plan on covering this up then?” I asked, skimming over the nickname issue and focusing on what mattered most right now.
“Simple. I’ll grab one of those fucked up corpses you left on the mountain and take some photos of it in your lovely little home here, then we set the whole thing alight and fuck off before she sends anyone else to check my story. They’ll find a burned down shack with a bunch of bones in