Feathers and Thorne Series Books 1 - 3: The Complete Collection

Chapter Twenty-One

Carter

The family looks pissed off when I make it to Anita’s, but I don’t care. She’s serving heaping bowls of Italian wedding soup, and I even try to snag one before the pot is empty, but my aunt isn’t in the charitable mood with me right now. She sets down an empty bowl before me, a sign that means she would kill me if we were back in the motherland, but thankfully, here in Manhattan, it just means I’m in for a well-earned scolding.

“I’m sorry I was late,” I say, kissing her cheek for forgiveness.

She doesn’t budge. The ladle in her hand looks more like a club, threatening to crash against the back of my head if I’m not careful and observant while in her kitchen. “You’re late, Carter. I didn’t sign up to be the hostess every night for these powwows. I’m getting tired of having everyone barge in here at night.”

“I’m sorry, Anita. It wasn’t my intention to be late. I had to fix things with Isabella first.”

She seems to relax with that assurance. “How is she doing? I haven’t seen her since the article came out, and even then, she didn’t seem too talkative with me.”

“She’s okay. A little shaken up and despondent over the ordeal, but I promise she’s okay, Anita. She just needed to see me for a bit before coming over.”

“So, she was home the whole time?”

I swivel around, seeing Ernesto clutching a can of beer. He leans against the back door, a few people outside sucking on cigars under the faint stars in the dark skies above. I give him a cautious look, one he should heed right now, but it’s not looking good.

Ernesto doesn’t drink often, but when he does, it’s easy to unravel any truth in that man’s body. “You said you were meeting Isabella at the club earlier this evening. Now she’s at home, where she’s been all along? How is that possible? I doubt she drove from the lifestyle club and beat us to the house.”

Anita doesn’t hesitate, a large, heavy ladle coming down over the back of my head. She gets about three good whacks in before I catch the arm of the utensil and get her to cease fire for a moment. A welt has probably already formed on my neck from one of her stray hits, and I’m damp with wedding soup broth now as well, a stray noodle caught in the back of my coat while I release the ladle in surrender.

“You have it all wrong,” I say, trying to calm my feisty aunt. “I didn’t cheat on Isabella.”

She crosses her arms over her chest. For a small, portly woman with cooking as her love language, she sure can knock the sense into someone in a heartbeat. It’s too bad Ernesto is wrong about his assumption. I never told him what happened at the lifestyle club—just like how I left that out from Isabella’s knowledge as well.

“I didn’t cheat,” I reaffirm. “Give me some credit, Anita.”

“Then explain yourself.”

“I got a text that I thought was from Isabella’s new number. It happened to be an old fling, and I went up to her, told her to stop trying to get with me, and left. That’s it.”

She cocks a single brow, watching me like I’m about to grow a four-foot-long wooden nose. “You know if you hurt that young girl, I’ll hurt you. Right?”

“I would hope so. I don’t want to hurt Isabella. I promise, Anita.” I turn toward Ernesto next, hoping he remembers this in the morning because when he’s sober, I’m going to lay into him for starting this shit. “It was Lilian, dammit.”

His eyes widen, and the snarky “I caught you in a lie” fa?ade falls with his cocky grin. “Fuck. She was there? Did she say anything about the photos of Rich and Isabella?”

“Yeah, but I sent her away before she could say too much. I didn’t do anything with her, but she wanted me to. She’s just trying to get me to go back to her. I can’t imagine why after what I did to her in the past.”

He gives me an unsteady look. “Wait, what did you do to her?”

I realize now that the only person I told that to was Tristan, and he doesn’t look to be here right now. I know I’ve been giving him quick jobs at some of the job sites and not having him around all that much, but I could have sworn I told him to be here tonight. He’s typically pretty dutiful about being on time, too, better than I am, but still, I can’t make out his face in the kitchen or outside on the back porch.

“Nothing,” I tell Ernesto, waving the topic off in an attempt to drop the subject for the night. “It’s nothing. Hey, have you seen Tristan?”

“He called, and I told him everyone was here,” Anita cuts in.

Ernesto only shrugs. “I haven’t heard anything from him. He would be here by now if he knew it was going on. You did tell him, right.”

I can only bury my face into my hands, the smell of Italian soup lingering all over my skin and in my hair. “Fuck if I know. I’m losing my damn mind.”

“Been there,” Anita chirps.

“Let’s just get this meeting going.”

Ernesto waves the guys inside from the back porch, and I track who all is here, but it doesn’t seem right. Not only is Tristan not here, but Nicolas isn’t either. I have to force myself to be calm, to remain levelheaded so I can get through this talk. But seeing him blatantly ignore my order to be here is a little frustrating.

It’s more than frustrating, actually, but I have to bury it for now.

I nab Tristan’s younger brother, Paul. It’s weird to see him here without his twin sister, Luce, but I try to keep the women out of this family dynamic as much as possible. It’s not in my nature to put them in immediate danger, but I know Paul would rather his other half be here than his older brother.

“Have you talked to Tristan much?” I ask, pulling him off to the side while everyone settles in the living room.

His boyish features soften slightly, like he thinks he is in trouble or something. “No, not really. I called him earlier today, but he just talked about Sam and Isabella. Not you.”

I nod, letting him walk away when his words finally breach my brain. I grab him by the shoulder and yank him back into the spot he was just in.

“What did he say about Isabella, exactly?”

He looks nervous as hell, which is pretty understandable. I’ve been on a rampage lately, and most of the family has taken the brunt of it. It hasn’t been without warrant, of course, but watching me strike Nicolas in retaliation to his smart-ass behavior lately wouldn’t go over well.

“Hey, relax, kid. You’re not in trouble. Just tell me what he said about Isabella.”

After a brief pause, he catches his breath and says, “He talked about Isabella and Rich Donahue. He said she was upset because everyone thought she was cheating but that he was actually really nice to her. She’s been talking to Tristan a lot, too. He drove her to the phone store today, and she vented about the situation with Lilian and—”

I step forward, knowing I need to get my temper under control, but it’s becoming impossible. His eyes widen in horror, waiting for something terrible to happen, but I keep my tone and volume down to a manageable, semi-calm level.

“What did he say about Lilian, Paul?”

He swallows so hard that I can hear the gulp of his throat. “I shouldn’t have said anything about it, Carter.”

“TELL ME!”

Any semblance of me trying to be calm is thrown out the window. Not just that, but it’s thrown out the window, tumbled down the hill in the backyard, and then kicked down every door from here to fucking Boston. Even while I try to maintain my sanity, I want to rip my way through this family and leave nothing in my trace.

I want revenge and control again.

How to do that, I’m not so sure, but I have to figure it out before it’s too late.

I pat Paul on the shoulder, ushering him to sit down. Anita clutches her ladle in the kitchen like it’s a warning she’ll slap me if I get close, but she gives in eventually and sets it down in the pot of soup. I wait for her to scurry off to bed and for Paul to settle after my outburst, and I face the onlookers in the living room.

“I’m fucking done with this shit,” I bite.

I storm to the middle of the group, looking at these men I have had as a family ever since I was young. They have seen me through my life and loss and picked me up off the floor more times than I can count. In return, I’ve tripled our wealth and quadrupled our power, so I’m not sure how it’s for any of them to spread such bullshit through the gossip mill.

I’m going to shut it down.

“The first person who can get Lilian McCoy to give up this attack against me gets a raise and a promotion. I don’t care how it happens or what is done to get her to back off. I just need results, dammit.”

“Is this about your sex life again?” Lorenzo asks, giving me a snide look alongside the inappropriate question. “We are crime lords in this city, boss. What’s the big deal about this journalist?”

A few people nod their heads in agreement, while the other half of the room is just as offended as I am. The divide in the family is becoming clearer every day. While I know that everyone here is loyal to me, I don’t think it’s for the right reasons anymore.

I change gears for a moment. “Who here thinks I should have control of this family?”

Slowly, hands raise into the air, and even though the majority hangs with me, there are a few stragglers. A couple of distant bloodlines, a particular cousin, and a family friend or two who have been introduced into the Blackthorne lineage one way or another.

It’s not something I want to see—this outright mutiny—but at least I know for sure it exists.

“Fine. I see how this is going to go. If you didn’t raise your hand, I want you to stand up.”

There are a couple of passing glances, but the handful of hands that didn’t rise all get to their feet one after another. Some of them are bloodline, purebred from the fucking motherland. I need them in this organization to keep it family-oriented, but I won’t be second-guessed.

“If you think I’m not a real Blackthorne and that I have no right to run this family as I see fit, then you can get the fuck out of this house and leave the business for good.”

A humming mutter crosses the room as soon as the words leave my lips. Everyone looks around in shock, a few of the people who are singled out already trying to take back their answer and sit down, but I won’t have it. I point them out and motion to the door, unwilling to budge on this matter.

“Boss, what are you doing?” Lorenzo asks.

“I’m taking control back. It’s time this family recognizes what I’ve done, and if you think I haven’t pushed the Blackthorne name to the echelon of respect in the city, then I won’t tolerate you being in my camp. You will fuck off, or I’ll drag you outside myself and handle it.”

The people who naysay my reign all get up one by one, leaving the house with their heads down. I don’t meet their eyes when they look at me, unwilling to budge an inch on my ruling. I have to be the iron fist, the sturdy post, and I’m not going to let the poison that Nicolas spewed out first spread like a disease through this bloodline.

I’m a fucking Blackthorne, and whoever says otherwise will pay.

But they’re not the only ones who need to watch their mouths.

I’m going to double my efforts to stop Lilian McCoy from ruining the love of my life and tearing me away from her precious heart and her perfect body. Isabella is the full package that Lilian could never be, and she’s just the right amount of normal to tolerate my family.

I’ll protect her to the end, and I’m not going to let anything bad happen to her again. If it does, there will be hell to pay.

And it won’t fucking matter if you’re family or not, either.