Page 32 of Texting Mr. Stranger

“Come on, bro. Don’t make me say it. You’ve been in your feelings lately.”

“In my feelings,” I repeat. “You sound like a teenager.”

“Call me anything you want,” he grunts. “The fact is, something’s different.”

“The Gallos are back. We thought they were gone. Isn’t that enough?”

“Is that all it is, though?” he asks thoughtfully.

“It’s enough,” I growl.

He approaches me slowly, his demeanor shifting. “I know we need to stay tough in this life. We can’t let ourselves get soft. We can’t let the men or another Family see us as weak. But when it’s just you and me, we can talk. You understand that, right?”

I wipe the last bits of blood from my hand and then walk over to the dryer.

“Is something going on with the violin tutor?”

I think about the texting and that she sent me a different video from the one she put online. Just the thought of it threatens to wake up impulses in me better left hidden, but with Elio, it isn’t easy. He’s spent so damn long learning to read me.

“Not really,” I mutter. “We’ve texted and talked about music. That’s it, but when that bastard threw those sick words at her, it was like I blacked out, just for a few seconds. When I ‘woke up,’ I’d already dragged him into the apartment building. I swear, E, I was ready to kill him. To execute him for calling her fat. For calling her a bitch.”

“This girl you met a few days ago?”

I shrug. “Yeah.”

“So somethingisgoing on.”

“Not yet.”

“Yet?”

I grind my teeth. The surprise in my brother’s voice is enough to remind me just how strange this is, completely out of the ordinary for me.

“I don’t know,” I say after a pause. “Maybe if I were a different man, I’d ask her on a date, but it’s impossible.”

“That seems dramatic,” he mutters.

“Says the ladies’ man,” I say sarcastically since he’s anything but.

He raises his hands. “Neither of us is exactly crazy for relationships. But if you want to ask her on a date, what harm can it do?”

“It will bring her into our world. It will make her a target. Sofia has specifically asked me not to tell her about the Mafia aspect, and I don’t see a way for her to be part of our life without her somehow learning about that. Oh, and there’s the fact that she just watched me beat a man bloody. She lookedterrifiedof me.” The memory makes me shudder. “She looked like she wanted nothing to do with me. Can I even blame her? What we do and are capable of is not the world other people live in.”

He sighs heavily, nodding. “I wish I could say you weren’t making good points.”

“You see it too.Impossibledoesn’t seem so dramatic anymore, does it?”

“No,” he says with a groan. “Fuck, Matt. I’m sorry. I wish you could have a normal life.”

“We’re in this together. Anyway, it’s not all bad. We make this city better, or at least we stop it from getting any worse. Our men are happy and well-paid. They have wives and kids and lives and purpose. That’s more than most people in our spot can even dream of asking for.”

“You’re right,” he says. “That’s all we can realistically expect. That makes us pretty goddamn sad, in my book. Yet what choice do we have? Give up? Let somebody else take over the Family?”

“Hell no,” I grunt.

He nods. “Okay. Let’s put out the feelers, see if there’s any damage resulting from your scuffle with the douchebag. For what it’s worth, it sounds like he deserved it.”

My mind flits back to when he called Bella afat bitch, but I have to redirect the attention quickly. Just thinking about it makes me want to drive back there and cause him more pain. I wouldn’t just beat him bloody this time. I’d tear him to pieces.

---