Page 28 of Sully
“How generous.”I couldn’t keep the sarcasm from my voice.
“Nice trick with the beer bottle,” Sully murmured, changing the subject.“Oldest hustle in the book, but executed flawlessly.”
I shrugged but couldn’t help the small surge of pleasure at his approval.“Sometimes the classics are classics for a reason.”My gaze drifted back to the fallen club girls.“They’ll have the hangovers from hell tomorrow, but a valuable lesson learned.”
“And what lesson is that?”Tonio asked, his voice carrying genuine curiosity.
“Don’t fuck with someone unless you know what game they’re playing.”I looked directly at him as I said it, the double meaning clear.
Instead of bristling, Tonio nodded slowly, a grin tugging at his lips.“Fair enough.”He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table.“I looked into you.When I found out about you.I looked into the foster homes you were in, the schools you went to, the jobs you’ve had.I put together pieces of the life you led without me being part of it.”
My stomach tightened.I’d known this was coming, but that didn’t make it any easier.“Figured as much.A man like you probably has investigators on speed dial.”
“I do,” he acknowledged without apology.“But I’d rather hear it all from your perspective.”
Sully’s thumb stroked a gentle pattern against my shoulder, a silent reminder of his support.I inhaled slowly, buying myself time.
“Not much to tell, really,” I finally said.“My mom was an alcoholic with a taste for whatever pills she could get her hands on.Some days she remembered to feed me.Most days she didn’t.”I shrugged.“I learned to take care of myself pretty young.Got good at forging her signature, making excuses to teachers, hiding the empty bottles before social services came around because my mother had been arrested.I was good at talking her out of trouble most of the time.”
Tonio’s expression darkened, but he remained silent, waiting for me to continue.“She OD’d when I was seven.Found her on the bathroom floor.”The memory flashed through my head, and I could almost see the blue tinge to her lips, the needle still in her arm.And the strange stillness of someone who’d always been in restless motion.“After that, it was foster homes.Some better than others, none worth staying in once I turned sixteen.”
“That’s when you ran,” Sully said softly.Not a question.
“Yep.”I grinned, trying to play it off, but honestly, sometimes the past just fucking hurt.“Figured if I was going to be on my own anyway, might as well do it on my terms.Been pretty good at taking care of myself ever since.”
“And your mother,” Tonio asked carefully, “did she ever mention me?”
I barked out a laugh that held no humor.“Mom was never sober enough to tell me about much of anything.So no, you didn’t really come up.”I met his gaze directly.“I always figured she had no clue who my father was.Just another john or dealer she fucked for her next fix.”
The calculated cruelty of my words hung in the air between us.I watched Tonio’s face, searching for anger, for disgust, for any reaction that would confirm what I truly believed with all my heart.Men like him didn’t care about women like my mother, or daughters born from mistakes.
But all I saw was grief and loss.I saw something else, too.Determination.“She wasn’t always like that,” he said quietly.“Not when I knew her.At least, not when I first knew her.”
And just like that, the ground shifted beneath me again, the world tilting on its axis as I prepared to hear a version of my mother I’d never known.I stared at Tonio, searching his face for the lie.Men had been feeding me bullshit my entire life.I’d gotten pretty damn good at spotting the tells.But as Tonio spoke about my mother, his carefully maintained façade cracked around the edges.Something raw peeked through, something that looked disturbingly like genuine pain.
“Jennifer was studying art when we met,” he began, his voice taking on the measured cadence he seemed to use for business matters.“She was talented.An extraordinary artist.”He looked down at his hands where they rested on the table.“We were young.I was already working for my father.She was… free.Uninhibited in a way I’d never been allowed to be.”
I felt Sully’s arm tighten slightly around my shoulders, a silent gesture of support.I didn’t shrug it off.Didn’t lean into it either.Just let it exist while I focused on Tonio’s story, trying to reconcile this vibrant, artistic woman with the hollow-eyed ghost who’d raised me.No.She hadn’t raised me; I’d raised myself.She’d lived with me, and when she moved on, I tagged along.
“How’d you meet?”I asked.
Something softened in Tonio’s expression.“She was painting the sunrise at a park near where we lived at the time.I was there meeting someone for business.She told me to move because I was blocking her light.”His lips curved in what might have been a smile.“No one spoke to me that way.I was instantly intrigued.”
“And let me guess.She fell for your charm and money?”
Tonio shook his head, chuckling softly.“She didn’t give a damn about either.Took me three weeks to convince her to have coffee with me.”The formal façade slipped farther as he continued.“Six months to get her to move in with me.She kept her crappy apartment as a studio even after that.Said she needed a space that was just hers.”The stubborn independence sounded familiar.I’d inherited that much from her, at least.“She used cocaine, but I think we all did back then, so I didn’t think anything of it.Then one day, she vanished.It wasn’t unusual for her to be gone a few days at a time.But I never saw her again.”
I cleared my throat and laced my fingers together as I rested my hands on the table.“Well.You remember a vastly different woman than the one I knew.”
“Once I realized she wasn’t coming home, I searched for weeks.Had my men looking everywhere.”
“But you didn’t find her,” I stated softly.
“No.”His admission was quiet.“I didn’t go after her as hard as I should have because my father asked me not to.He said this life wasn’t for her, that she needed someone safe who could take her to art galleries without fear of getting shot.”Tonio looked down at his hands.“I never saw or heard from her again.My father, Seth, hated getting women involved with the family.He thought we made them vulnerable simply by caring for them.”
“That’s… a really sad way of looking at shit, man.”
Tonio snorted a laugh.“Well, after Seth gave his blessing on the marriage of my sister to his enforcer, he started second-guessing himself when he never had before.”
