It was my turn to laugh. "How'd you know?"
“Between us, these last couple weeks have been the most peaceful of my entire life. I hope they don’t come back.”
“It’s the constant hovering. Dad walks around here in his underwear in the morning and I have to keep Natalia in the bedroom until the coast is clear to save her the torment. That's what I'm working with. Like we're guests in our own home."
"I stay in the basement. Unless I smell food."
"I know it was always like this, but it’s like quitting something cold turkey and then diving right back in with no warm-up."
Angelo was walking outside; the familiar sound of beeping cars and distant city sirens followed his heavy steps. "They haven't changed. You have."
My throat contracted around some invisible rock as I swallowed the urge to hang up the phone. "Hey, listen. The realreason I called was because I haven't had a chance to talk to you about the wedding. This is important, so just hear me out. You know that you and Frankie are both my brothers. He and I spent a lot of time together in Delta, and we've been through some shit I couldn't even explain to someone who's never been there. Then we were living together until a month ago, so we’re as close as it gets. You're my blood, you're everything to me, but I figured with the time commitment and the distance, plus you being busy with Duran & Son, it would be a lot more on your plate. Frankie's girlfriend is the maid of honor, too, so they can do all this dumb wedding shit together and you wouldn't need to get caught up in that if he’s the best man."
Angelo took another drag of his cigarette. "Take a fucking breath, Matty. You’re making me light-headed.”
“I don’t want there to be any bad blood,” I stressed. “It’s not like that.”
"It is, though. He's your best friend, and a hell of a guy. I love Frankie; everyone loves Frankie. How could you not? Believe me, I get it.”
"You do?"
"You’re making the right choice.”
Guilt flushed over me, head to toe. My fingers tightened around my cellphone. He was supposed to be giving me a hard time. I had prepared my body for a fight. Now all this energy was whizzing in a circle with no outlet and the stress I’d anticipated was humming beside it.
"Are you sure you're not sober?" I asked.
"I still live in the basement of my parents’ house in the Bronx."
"Good point. I just thought this conversation was going to go differently,” I admitted. “You’re very relaxed in comparison.”
"I don’t know the first thing about weddings, and I’m terrible at public speaking. To be honest, being the best man sounds likea nightmare," he said. "Don’t feel bad about it, Matty. I’m just happy you finally called. I missed your girly voice.”
I might have changed, but Angelo was exactly the same. Where maturity was concerned at least. He loved cracking a joke at my expense, or whenever the conversation got too serious. "I’m sorry it took so long." I paused. "Love you, man."
"Love you, too." Angelo sniffed. "Yeah, all right."
"I’ll talk to you soon."
"Later."
Mom and Dad couldn’t hold this against me if Angelo wasn’t upset about it, even though they might try. I could rest easier knowing I had one less thing on my plate after that phone call. That didn’t mean putting my brother in a house full of Russos in Vegas was going to be easy, but it did mean he wasn’t coming into it with a chip on his shoulder.
More pressingly now was TechOps. If Tally saw me crack under the pressure of keeping it afloat by myself she would drop everything to help me, and I couldn’t let that happen. She had too much to deal with, and I didn’t need to add to that. I needed to be her anchor right now. That wouldn’t work if I had to worry about training a newbie to pick up Pike’s work and prove that I could trust them. Being a perfectionist was a blessing and a curse, and if I was going to end up doing all the work anyway, I might as well just do it by myself.
It would be my little secret. My burden to bear.
chapter nine
Natalia
The doorto our bedroom closed and I glanced up from the blue light of my laptop to Mateo tiptoeing toward the mattress. He reached behind his head and tugged the collar of his shirt up and over, gold chain dropping down onto his naked chest, then shimmied out of his sweatpants and rubbed his hands together giddily before diving beneath the covers beside me.
He was getting home at nine o’clock most nights now, because what was usually the work of two people at TechOps had been allocated to him alone. I had no reason to be resentful, but the afterhours doing security installation was cutting into what little time we had to work on the cam business side of things.
“Parents asleep?” I asked.
Mateo pulled the white duvet all the way up to his chin. “I’m getting the cold shoulder from both of them. Which means they called Angelo and got a straight answer about the wedding.”
