Page 1 of Under His Watch

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ROMEO

Istrode through the main foyer of the guest house, grimacing at how much more work needed to be done. Wallpaper had to be removed. All this nasty old carpet had to go, and then the sanding and polishing of the old hardwood floors would follow. Updating appliances.

Franco set down another box of debris to haul out. Dust rose up, and we both sneezed.

“You’re sure you want to deal with this place?” he asked.

He was more than the high-ranking capo in my family’s organization. Franco Constella was a distant cousin, too, but at times like this, he resembled the brother I never had.

Never say never.I bit my tongue and refrained from groaning. In seven months, I might very well have a brother.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I lied.

I wanted something to keep me busy, busier than I already was as my father’s right-hand man in the Constella Family. I was hissecond-in-command, and I handled a variety of responsibilities in that position.

“This old property needed work, and I want to put my blood, sweat, and tears into fixing it up.”

“Oh.” Franco nodded, looking around the house that was part of the extensive Constella real estate portfolio. “Sure. So you can, what? Purge out the guilt you shouldn’t have?”

I shot him a hard look. I wasn’t in the mood for him to tell me to get over the guilt. I was the only survivor in a fight three months ago. The lone man who lived. Three of our fine soldiers hadn’t made it in a fight that Mario, a rat in the family, set up.

They shouldn’t have died, not like that. And I would never “get over” it. That would be a dishonor to their memory.

He knew he'd crossed a line, being that harsh about this topic. Holding up his hands in a truce, he sighed and shook his head. “Hey, you know what? I don’t blame you for wanting to move out of the main house while Dante and Nina are acting like lovebirds.”

I chuckled, wiping the sweat from my brow. Fall was coming soon, but right now, the humidity of the late summer was sticking. We’d been moving junk and debris toward the door for hours. It seemed Franco wanted the empty-mindedness of manual labor too.

“I’m not coming here to renovate this place only to get away from them,” I argued.

He scoffed. “You’re not?”

“All right.” I shrugged. “Maybe that is a factor in it.” But I wasn’t hiding. I’d always resided in multiple places. My “home” was theguest house behind the mansion my father, Dante, now shared with his fiancée, Nina. My cousin Eva lived in another such guest house. Franco, too. We all had our rooms and quarters in the big mansion, and we always would.

My father understood that I liked to diversify with my time and residence. I wasn’t married. I wasn’t shackled to anything but my job in the family, so why not have multiple options?

“But this place does need some attention.” I gestured at the derelict surroundings, evidence of decades of wear and tear and even more of them with grave neglect. The house was something in the family and nothing we’d want to sell. My father never bothered with it except to discipline the new recruits, soldiers who came here one night and got a little too drunk and broke some old shit.

“That doesn’t meanyouneed to be the one acting like some handyman contractor.”

I shrugged. He wouldn’t talk me out of it. “I wanted a project.” I needed something to help me ignore how happy my father looked with Nina. I was glad for them both. He deserved love and loyalty after my mother died over thirty years ago. But this creeping sensation of jealousy was not something I wanted to endure any longer. I was sure it would fade. My father and Nina got together so quickly, and everything happened so fast between them that I hadn’t really had any time to get used to my father no longer being only a workaholic and always accessible.

Eventually, it would be the new norm. My father would be a husband to someone again, and a father to their baby soon, my potential half-brother.

I was confident that a little space from them would help me get used to it. And maybe with that separation and not seeing them so wildly in love, this envy would loosen its grip on me.

“Hell, I wouldn’t mind a project myself,” Franco quipped, nudging his foot at a pile of busted wood in a heap from furniture that hadn’t lasted the test of time. “I know they’re not trying to rub it in our faces, being so all over each other all the time…”

I watched him, feeling like I’d recently grimaced just like he was doing now. “But it makes you realize what you don’t have,” I finished for him.

He smirked. “Yeah. Exactly.”

Franco wasn’t much better than me in terms of meeting and holding on to a woman for more than one night. He slept around here and there, but he was more focused on his work for the family than his own sex life. We were all like that. We had to be when so many lives were on our shoulders.

Years ago, Franco was serious about someone, but she was a distant memory now. I couldn’t even remember her name if anyone were to ask.

“Don’t tell me that we’re going to suffer now that he’s found his woman,” Franco joked. “Like a contagion.”

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