Page 126 of Raphael (Belles & Mobsters 5)

“You need to get laid,” he added.

“I’ll get laid when my wife is ready,” I gritted.

Caine was right though. When I abstained from sex, my temper flared easier and people died faster. Not that they didn’t deserve it.

But I refused to find release with anyone else. It would either be my wife or nobody else.

Shaking his head, he cleared out of the room and silence filled my office. Abstinence wasn’t my only problem. It was also the fact that I searched high and low for Sailor’s parents. The cowards were hiding. I couldn’t wait to get my fucking hands on them and rip them apart, limb from limb.

For what they’d done to my wife. For trying to take her from me. For coming after her, after I warned them that she was mine. They got their fair warning. They didn’t heed it. Now they’d learn what it meant to cross me.

It had been the highlight of my fucking month. It kept me going - to end them for my wife’s sake. So she’d find peace. She had to heal, and she couldn’t do it with those two bastards roaming this Earth.

All the moments with Sailor replayed on a loop in my mind. From the moment I met her eight years ago until I dropped her off in the penthouse. She looked so frail, so goddamn vulnerable with that broken look in her eyes that it actually hurt to walk away.

She needed space. Time to heal. She needed something, but it wasn’t me.

But I’d never give her up.

Because for a time, no matter how short, I had a family and now it was gone. Gabriel tried so hard to be strong, but he worried too. No kid should have to worry so much. I had tried to distract him. We visited the zoo together, went fishing, even went to church. I figured it wouldn’t hurt.

So for the first time since I was a kid, I went to church for something other than a funeral. We sat in pews and listened to the service as we sat in silence. And the whole time I wondered what Sailor would say since her devil was in church. The old Sailor would have snickered and told me it’d burn down.

Gabriel asked me to help him with a prayer so I reached far back into the memory of the prayer my mother taught me. In Spanish. So we prayed together.

For Sailor to come back to us.

As if Gabriel heard my thoughts, he strode into my office with a backpack over his shoulder.

“Hey, Raphael.”

I lifted my head to find him still standing by the door.

“Hey,hermano.” I loved calling him brother in Spanish. I stood up from my spot and strode over to him. “How was school?”How is your mom?I couldn’t bring myself to ask the latter. It wasn’t right.

“Great.” I smiled at his enthusiasm. “Mom came for lunch duty, so we hung out most of the day.”

I didn’t ask how she was doing. I couldn’t. I feared he’d say she was happy. Happiest she’d ever been and the fragile bonds we started to build would tear into shreds.

“What was for lunch?” I asked him instead, trying to get more information out of him.

Like a pathetic loser. Fucking wonderful. Forty years old and I had finally turned into some love-struck fool.

I fucking hated that my wife needed space. My head understood it, but my heart fucking refused to allow it. It looked for any kind of excuse or reason to find my way back to the apartment where she was. I used to stay there when I’d do business in the city, but I told her I’d give her space.

“Pizza,” he grinned. “Mom bought pizza for the whole school. She said it was courtesy of her ‘butt-loaded’husband. The teachers gave her weird looks. I think Mom was going for the shock effect.”

For the first time since Sailor’s kidnapping, my lips tugged up.

“She likes to shock people, huh?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes. Mrs. Rush reprimanded her about using the ‘butt-loaded’ word in front of the kids. So Mom called you a mobster-loaded husband.”

I shook my head. At least her spirit was coming back. I’d pay good money to see that exchange between her and the teachers of St. Maria Catholic School.

“Hey, Raph.” The hesitance in Gabriel’s voice shot an alert through me and I focused my attention on him.

“Yeah?”

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