Love Him Free (On the Market #1) - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,9

face sent him taking a few steps back. “You can’t fire me. The contract.” The words—at least most of them—were easy enough to read.

Rocco sneered again. “If you think I care about the goddamn contract…” His lips fell silent, and his hands rose to sign the words Xander had never bothered to learn. ‘I’m going to make you sorry. I don’t care what you’re threatening me with, or what Eric promised you. This isn’t over.’

He slammed the door behind him and didn’t make eye contact with anyone on the way down. It was a blessing when he got to the street and didn’t see Mary anywhere—it wasn’t her fault, but it was just another symptom of a bigger fucking problem, and he was running out of fight.

By the time Rocco got to his car, he was trembling, his throat tight on the verge of the tears he hadn’t cried in so many years, he couldn’t remember. His phone buzzed in his pocket again, but it was either Eric, Xander, or someone from the agency trying reach him.

Enough was enough. He wasn’t sure what he was doing next, but all of this was going to come to an end, even if he had to bring it down in flames, crashing around him.

Rocco squinted off into the distance, staring at the rows of still ripening grapes. His sister-in-law’s pet project that turned into a little something more with the cash he’d supplied them over the years. He didn’t mind it. Her wine wasn’t half bad—hair of the dog more than anything he’d serve at dinner, but at this point the burn of any alcohol was welcome.

It was nice to take sanctuary away from Malibu where the city was huge but the circles he ran in were small and impossible to avoid. It was likely Eric and Xander were holed up in his apartment fucking and scheming because there was no way he fired Xander without consequence.

He was prepared to pay it, of course. His accountant and lawyer were both on stand-by to issue whatever check they had to in order to terminate his contract and get Xander off his stage name and out of his business for good. It had been radio silence though, and it was making Rocco uneasy.

And Pietro was also being a little too attentive which was also getting under his skin. For the first time in his life, the temperate spring weather of southern California was not a balm. It felt suffocating, like the wind was made of invisible walls pinning him in one place. He ached to get away, but he had no idea where—and frankly he knew he couldn’t go until Xander made a move.

Rocco dipped his shades down his nose when a shadow fell over his face, and a thick-fingered hand plucked both bottle and glass away from him.

“Hey,” he voiced with a scowl, annoyed, barely into his first pour.

Pietro dropped into a chair and clasped his hands on the table. He was the eldest brother, and the most fussy over all his siblings. He was almost sixty and wore his salt and pepper grey with charm. He would have been great in the industry too—built just like Rocco, though he looked far more like their mother than their father with his sharp black hair and narrow blue eyes.

Pietro was a lawyer though, not one that represented Rocco, but his firm did. And it was of some comfort to know that his brother could help sort shit out so he didn’t have to leave this little fake piece of heaven until he was good and ready.

‘You okay?’

Of all the siblings, Pietro had been the most resistant to sign, and only gave in when his years of pushing Rocco to voice and read lips yielded very little. His kids and wife were both better at signing than he was, but since Rocco showed up on his door step a drunk mess with two Louis Vuitton suitcases and an annoyed Pomeranian in a cloth carrier, he’d been trying.

‘Been better,’ Rocco replied. He reached for his glass, but Pietro held it further away and ignored his irritated grunt. ‘I’m not five.’

Pietro lifted a brow and signed more in English than ASL, ‘Stop acting like it.’

“Bah!” Pursing his lips, Rocco waved him off, turning his attention to the vineyard until Pietro’s hand waved in his periphery. He turned to look as his brother hooked a finger over his ear, asking about his hearing aids for the hundredth time since