Promise Me Forever: Manhattan Ruthless

“Have you tasted these? Phenomenal!” Dad passes us the latest in a long line of trays full of food, urging us to sample them. “They’re called tequeños. Go on, try one.”

I do as I’m told, and like everything else he’s shared this evening, they are delicious.

“They’re great, Dad, but is deep-fried pastry and cheese really the best diet for you?”

“You mean because I’m ancient and I had a heart attack? You think I’m a frail old man, son?”

I see Mason snigger behind his back and make a throat-slitting gesture, and Elijah backs him up by shooting an imaginary gun at his own forehead. Even the saintly Maddox gets in on the act, giving me a thumbs-down signal like he’s a fucking Roman emperor.

“No, Dad, of course I don’t think you’re frail. But you did have a heart attack. That’s just a fact.”

“Also a fact, Drake, is that because of that heart attack, my health is more closely monitored than Kim Kardashian’s ass.”

I almost choke on my tequeño. Did he really just say that? A glance at my brothers’ faces confirms that he did.

“Anyway,” he adds, “these aren’t as unhealthy as you’d think. Luz knows I’m keeping an eye on my cholesterol and my blood pressure. She used low-fat cheese and that damn air fryer thing Melanie bought me that I never managed to master. Plus I’m eating lots of fish, lean meat, and all the beans. I bet I have a healthier diet than you do.”

I hold up my hands in surrender. “Okay, Pop, okay. I’m glad it’s working out for you. I was just expressing concern like a good son.”

“Yeah, well, go and be concerned about your own life. Mine is just fine.”

He seems rather cranky for a man who’s been eating like a king thanks to his new cook, and I remember Nathan telling me that he decided to quit his cigars. Elijah’s been on his ass about it for ages, but he always refused to even discuss it.

Looks like a few things are changing in Dalton James’s world, and I wonder how much of it can be credited to Luisa’s mom. He only agreed to give her a trial because Elijah laid out some sob story about how she needed the work. Not true at all, at least not financially, but according to my big brother, Luz was bored of being “old enough to be a grandmother but with no grandbabies to look after.”

The woman in question steps into the dining room wearing a brightly patterned apron that she must have brought with her. She smells of sugar and vanilla, and all four of us boys inhale as she approaches the table. She smells like childhood.

Her eyes are huge, brown, and kind, but her slight scowl as she surveys the uneaten food suggests she could very easily switch between kind and killer. She stands with her hands on her hips and glares at us all.

“What is wrong with you skinny boys? Eat, eat!” She brushes a silver-streaked black curl from her face.

None of us are skinny, but all of us respond to the tone of her voice, jumping up and doing as we’re told. I catch her winking at Dad behind our backs, and he snorts in amusement.

A few minutes later, I take a couple plates of food back to Dad’s old office, where Nathan has been making a few calls while Mel settles Luke down for the night. It’s Friday night, and we all had to rearrange a few things to be here, but Dad asked us to come for dinner to discuss the party he’s planning for his birthday later this year. We were all a little surprised that he agreed to have one, never mind put so much effort into it, and again, I suspect Luz’s influence goes deeper than his love of her arepas.

Nathan is just finishing up a call when I walk in, and I hand him the plate. “For fuck’s sake, eat this, will you? I’m stuffed, and she’s still nagging me to try more.”

He laughs and rolls his eyes. “I know. Luz is a force of nature, isn’t she? I feel kind of weird saying this, but she reminds me of Mom. Does that make me disloyal?”

It’s a fair question, and it deserves some thought. We’re all touchy about Mom and our memories of her. Even though we all grew up in the same home and lost the same mother, we all have our own versions of her. It’s not just Luz’s appearance that’s similar though—both she and our mom were petite with dark hair, wide brown eyes, and olive skin—she’s also warm and kindhearted in that take-no-nonsense way our mom was.

“No, it doesn’t,” I reply after a few beats. “Mom was one of a kind, and nobody will ever replace her.” I have no desire to get into this subject with him, so I leave it there.

Nathan is no fool. He knows I went off the deep end after she died. There are things he doesn’t understand—and doesn’t need to understand—that make talking about this stuff especially difficult for me. When Mom passed, I was a mess for all kinds of reasons. I turned to my long-term girlfriend for support through that but didn’t find it. Tiff made all the right noises, and for a while was the very picture of a sympathetic partner. But after a few weeks passed, she seemed to expect me to be back to “normal” and didn’t get the fact that I’d never be “normal” again. The old me was gone, he died with my mother, and Tiff didn’t seem to particularly like the new me. I was still completely fucked up, and she was wanting to go to parties and plan trips to Bermuda with friends. When I called her out on it, she told me I needed to “snap out of it.” That comment came precisely sixteen weeks after my mom’s funeral.

Needless to say, the relationship didn’t survive, and the pain of that has never left me. I don’t blame her—she was only twenty-two herself, still a kid really—but I have also never forgotten it. Grief is a sneaky beast. It infiltrates every aspect of your life, sometimes without you even noticing. You can appear fine on the surface, but beneath that, the fault lines are spreading through your psyche, a spiderweb of cracks weakening your foundation until you’re ready to collapse. That’s how it was with me, anyway. We all suffered, and we all dealt with it in our own ways. My coping mechanism was work, which is still my great solace in times of stress. Since the team-building event, for example, I’ve been working twenty-hour days.

I’ve seen Amelia at work, of course, and I haven’t fallen back into being the borderline abusive ass I was—but I’m also keeping my distance. For both our sakes. It hasn’t been easy, but it’s necessary.

“Everything okay with work?” I ask him, seeing the signs of worry on his face. They’re subtle, but I know him well enough to spot them.

“Yeah, all good. Some shit going on with the Ryans that I need to deal with tomorrow.”

“Shit with the Ryans” can range between sorting out a parking fine to explaining why a trash bag full of body parts was found in a dumpster behind one of their nightclubs. Like the Morettis in Chicago, they’re basically good men and have their own code of ethics. But that code doesn’t always perfectly align with law and order’s code of ethics.

“Anything I can help with?” I ask. His specialty is criminal law, and they often need him for that, but I bring more to the table when it comes to business contracts, civil cases, and the myriad of lawsuits that tend to spring up whenever money is involved.

“Nah, it’s fine. I’ll let you know if I do. I was just speaking to Helen, getting her to sort out some meetings.”

“Dude, it’s nine o’clock on a Friday night. I know that means nothing to us, but she’s got a life.”

“No she doesn’t. She lives for her job, just like you. She loves it when I make her feel useful.”

Helen is a widow with three grown daughters, and it saddens me that she’s home alone on a Friday night, working. Is that what my future holds too? I shake off the unease and focus on my brother once more.

“Anyway,” he says, toying with a small round dessert I’ve been informed is a papitas de leche. “She tells me your girl is out on a date tonight. How are you feeling about that?”

“What do you mean my girl?” I feel a muscle in my jaw twitch and try to hide it. “And what do you mean a date?”

He tilts his head and smirks. “Well, by your girl, I was sarcastically referring to your assistant, Amelia. And by date, I mean a social arrangement usually made between two people who find each other sexually attractive. It often involves food, alcohol, and conversation.”

“Right. And who is she on a date with? And where?”

“You’re not mad, are you?” He frowns. “You’re not going to do something macho and stupid, right? Because you told me it was over between you two.”

“It is over, and I’ve never done anything macho and stupid in my entire life. I’m merely curious.”

He tells me the name of the guy she’s dating and mentions the place he’s taken her. Apparently it’s the talk of the secretarial pool, and they’re all thrilled for her. Which is, you know, nice of them.

I carry on making small talk with Nathan for a little while longer, somehow managing to appear completely normal. Inside, I am like a fucking volcano waiting to erupt. I have no idea why. When I got back to my hotel last Friday night, I poured myself a Scotch and spent two hours stalking Amelia online. She isn’t one of those people who lives her life on social media, thank god, but she does have a Facebook page which is woefully poor on the privacy-settings front. I should probably have a word with her about it, but the stuff she posts is harmless enough. Plus, then I’d have to explain why I was looking at her online presence in the first place. And if she tightens up those privacy settings, I won’t be able to stalk her. Yeah. That all sounds totally aboveboard and reasonable. If you’re a psycho.

I even put her ex-husband’s name into google. Chad. The name of a dick if ever I heard one. Has the face of a dick too. He was much easier to find; there are pictures of him all over the website for his start-up investment firm. I can admit he’s good-looking, in that slightly over-the-top way that some guys get as they age. Blinding white teeth, skin too tan, blond hair. Frankly I wouldn’t even buy a used car from the guy, never mind invest with him.

I scrolled away from Chad, officially the biggest idiot in the universe for letting a woman like Amelia get away from him, and headed back to her Facebook. For the millionth time, I flicked through her photos and found one from our company retreat. Specifically a selfie, taken at that weird angle where her arm is stretched out in front and above her, showing a big group of people at the hotel bar. She had a big grin on her face, her hair wild and her eyes not much better, and she’d clearly had a lot to drink. It took every ounce of willpower I had not to drive over there and take her to fucking bed—I mean put her to bed, obviously.

So yeah, I’m painfully aware that she’s gorgeous and that other men are going to want her. Logically, I don’t even mind—why wouldn’t I want her to be happy? Why wouldn’t I want her to meet someone great? Why wouldn’t I want her to have screaming orgasms with some other fucking guy?

I tell Nathan I’m going to rejoin our father and brothers in the dining room. I’m not doing that, of course.

I’m about to do something macho and stupid.