She shot me a look. “Um, yeah, Luca. I’m sure.”
“Okay,” I replied. “Okay, okay. Okay. We have the hospital bag in the car, everything’s ready… should we go now? Do we go now? What about the contract--”
Alana cut me off with a loud whimper, folding in on herself as if in sudden pain.
Trying not to look as though I was visibly panicking, I bent over Alana and rubbed slow circles on her lower back as she clutched the edge of the oak table with white knuckles. All the other men in the room were frozen and wide-eyed. Except, of course, for Angelo, who had witnessed four sons coming into this world and was no longer freaked out by the image of a woman in labor, even if she was currently in labor in his gorgeous, expensive dining room.
A moment later, Alana drew in a deep inhale and stood up straight. Her cheeks were red and she looked a little breathless, but she was fine.
Wonderfully, beautifully fine.
“Yep,” she sighed. “That was definitely a contraction.”
“Marco,” barked Angelo. “Make your sorry ass useful and bring your brother’s girlfriend to the hospital.”
I started to protest, but my father’s gaze cut me off before I could get a single word out.
“Son, you and the boys have business to take care of,” he said. “I have no doubt Alana will still be laboring by the time you’re done, as long as you leave right now.”
I knew I had no choice. Family before anything else; that was the Varasso way. I supposed that was a small punishment from my father for not doing things the proper way and marrying Alana before getting her pregnant… because I hadn’t, she wasn’t technically family, and therefore she would have to come second to whatever mess I needed to deal with on the east side with the Randolphs.
Alana pressed a kiss to my cheek. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “I understand. Just hurry back to the hospital.”
I helped her down to my car, hesitant to toss Marco the keys.
“Don’t worry about it, brother,” he said, opening the driver’s side door of the sleek Audi sedan I’d traded in my Audi coupe for the minute I learned I was going to need to start having room for a car seat. “She’s in good hands.”
“Drive the fucking speed limit,” I told him, helping Alana into the passenger seat. “And use your fucking turn signal.”
“Luca, everything’s going to be okay,” said Alana, taking my face in both of her hands and forcing me to be still and meet her gaze. Her eyes were calm and bright, her skin glowing with the lightest sheen of sweat; she looked like a Goddess. “Just come home to me, okay?”
Come home to me.
It was the phrase she told me nearly every day when I left to meet with my father or the rest of the family for any type of business gathering. The phrase she whispered to me at night, wrapped up in the silk sheets, when I got a call from one of my brothers to go take care of something on the streets. They were the words she’d whispered to me any time I left her side for a Varasso-related duty.
I didn’t blame her for her worry. My job was dangerous. Not quite as dangerous as it could be, considering I was just below the leader in rank and therefore didn’t often have to get my hands as dirty as the rest. But, still… there were always guns, always fights, always drugs. And, at the end of the day, we were criminals. That was the cold, hard truth. Nothing about our job was safe.
So, when Alana told me to come home to her, I always promised I would. It was the least I could do.
Come home to me. “I will,” I told her. I pressed my lips to hers and kissed her deeply.
Alana pulled away shortly, clutching her stomach and going pale with another contraction.
“Alright, we need to go,” said Marco, turning the car on and giving me a look that said a million things at once, but among them let go and go do your job and she’ll be fine.
I nodded at him, understanding.
“I love you,” I told Alana.
“I love you,” she replied just as the contraction passed.
And then, though every single cell in my body was screaming for me not to, I closed the car door on the love of my life and watched Marco pull out of the gravel driveway carefully, but quickly. I stood there, my stomach a tight bundle of impossibly knotted nerves, watching until the very last second when the car disappeared around the corner of the street and they were gone.
Alessandro and Gabriel pulled up in the driveway beside me in our father’s Escalade. Gabriel leaned out the passenger side window and offered me a tentative smile.
“Get in, brother,” he said. “We’ve got work to do.”
So, just like that, I got in the backseat of the vehicle and forced myself to flip the switch that I always had to before doing something particularly unpleasant in the name of the Varassos.