JUDE
Anger flares in Angie’s eyes, lighting up the blue with a blazing fire that mirrors the one that took her café from her. She storms around me before I can grab her and marches across the rubble toward where the front door once was.
Cass approaches, the first time I’ve seen the man looking so casual. In a pair of jeans and a tight-fitting T-shirt, he exposes a few tattoos I never would’ve expected on his arms, given his typical buttoned-up appearance.
He sees her coming and steps over the curb onto the sidewalk, waiting for her.
Angie points a finger at him as she steps out of the debris, barreling toward him like a bat out of hell. “You get the fuck out of here.”
He holds up his hands, green eyes darting from her to the rest of us following her. “Look, I need to talk to you.”
“No.”
Luca and I reach her in time for me to put an arm across her chest and hold her back from physically trying to strangle him while Byron keeps Allie close to the building, well back from what could become a very volatile situation very fast.
What the fuck is he doing here?
He had to know coming here would start something, yet he still showed his face. The man must have a death wish.
I glower at Cass, making it clear he isn’t welcome. “You need to leave, now.”
His eyes flicker over to me. “And who are you?” His gaze moves up and down me, then over Luca and Byron. “Jude, I presume?” He looks over at my building, where the new windows now make it appear as if nothing ever happened. A simple fix we won’t be able to make to the Grind. “It’s good you’re here, too. All of you need to hear what I came to say—Falco Enterprises had nothing to do with this.”
The air thickens around us, tension vibrating off everyone, stoked by his claim that not a single one of us believes for a damn second.
A heated rage I’ve never felt before boils in my blood. This guy thinks he can come here to try to cover his own ass while upsetting Angelina and Allie when they’re already on the edge of losing it completely.
Motherfucking son of a bitch.
“Bullshit!” Angie tries to take a step forward, but I nudge her back and shift in front of her, effectively blocking her from going at Cass the way I know she wants to. “You fucking liar!”
She will have her hands around this man’s throat in two point five seconds if I don’t stop her, and the last thing we need is her facing criminal charges when everything else has already gone to shit.
I’ve never been one to be confrontational or to get involved in a fight, but after what he did to the girls, there’s no way this fucker is getting close to either of them again.
Not on my fucking watch.
I shift toward him, puffing out my chest slightly, making use of the few inches and at least twenty pounds of muscle I have on the man. “You came onto the street already a threat to them. You’ve been showing up here, getting your coffee every morning, and taunting them with more vague threats. And from what I hear, you’re schmoozing everyone down at City Hall to get what you need done as fast as possible to compete with the Grind. And now, it mysteriously explodes and burns the fuck down. You expect us to believe this is all just coincidence?”
Luca steps up beside me, arms over his chest, his dark eyes an almost black as he stares down Whitaker. “You must think we’re fucking stupid.”
Cass’ eyes dart between the two of us and over the girls. “I know how it looks, believe me. That’s why I wanted to come here to speak in person once things had cooled down.” He winces. “Bad choice of words. I’m sorry. I just want to have a conversation with you. I would’ve gone to Isaac and Stone since I work with them in a professional capacity, but I thought it might be a safer option to come directly to the people affected.”
“Affected?” Angie tries to shove me out of the way, but I turn to face her, pressing my body to hers to keep her back.
Dropping my head next to hers, I brush my lips to her ear. “Relax, Ang…”
I understand her ire and share it, but a physical confrontation on a public street doesn’t do anyone any good and will only complicate things more.
Ignoring my warning, she continues to push against me, pointing a finger at Whitaker over my shoulder. “You destroyed my business. All of it. It’s fucking gone.” Tears stream down her face as she chokes on a sob. “This is all I’ve worked for my entire fucking life, and it’s gone. It’s exactly what you wanted, exactly why you put in your place just down the street.”
Her heart beats wildly against mine, her face red with her anger. She’s going to lose it. Everything has finally come to a boiling point, and Angelina is stuck in the middle of the fucking pot.
It’s a state I recognize easily.
One I have been in more times than I care to count.
I wrap my arms around her, crushing her to me and nuzzling her neck, pressing my lips to it and murmuring what I hope are the right words to get her under control. “Baby, stop. I know you want to destroy him, make him pay, but this isn’t the way…not like this. Not now. I need you to take a breath.”
She fights against me for a few more seconds, pushing me, trying to get me to let her go until she finally sags and unleashes an anguished sob against my chest.
All the pain she’s tried to hold back, kept contained to try to appear strong through it all, has finally detonated, her hatred for Cass Whitaker the catalyst for her own explosion.
Luca maintains his place at my back, keeping himself between Whitaker and the rest of us, but he doesn’t say a word, just stares down the man who represents the greatest threat to Hawke Enterprises.
I glance over my shoulder at Cass, glaring at the audacity he has to come here and say something like that.
He throws up his hands. “You keep saying ‘your,’ but I need you, all the Hawkes, to understand something. I am not Falco Enterprises. I represent their interests. I do what they pay me to do, but none of this is me.”
How can he say that with a fucking straight face?
Luca issues a sardonic snort, taking a half-step toward him. “You can hide behind your law degree, your expensive fucking suits, and your $500 an hour fees, but you’re choosing to work for them, knowing what they’re doing. Knowing they’ve been targeting us for years. That makes you just as bad as them. That makes you complicit.”
Cass clearly knows who Luca is, and if he were smart and valued his life, he would back away slowly and then drive away quickly. Luca may be “retired” from the life, but everyone knows Luca isn’t above taking a step back to what that required role when need be.
To protect me from Dad.
To eliminate threats lurking in the shadows.
Or those in plain sight.
Luca’s reaction to my earlier revelation just proved to me what he’s truly capable of and how much he cares. Far more than even I knew.
He won’t let anything or anyone touch the Hawkes, and Cass Whitaker must know that.
Cass presses his lips together in a firm line, the reproach seemingly taking him down a peg. He pushes up on his toes to look over my shoulder at Angie again. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Angelina. I really did enjoy your coffee, and the croissants weren’t half bad.”
“Fuck you, Cass.” Luca waves up and down the street. “If I ever see you near any of our properties again, here or anywhere else in New Orleans, I will have you permanently removed by whatever force necessary.” He shrugs nonchalantly. “I will even enjoy doing it myself.”
Back stiffening, Cass raises a brow. “Is that a threat?”
Luca shakes his head. “It’s a promise, stronzo.”
Cass snorts. “I knew you could never walk away from that life, Abello. Not from what you were born and bred to do. It’s in your veins. In your blood.”
Angie finally lifts her head, her fight renewed. She sneers at Cass over my shoulder, pushing against my chest again to try to get to him. “And you know what’s in ours? Hawke blood. And you just pissed off a whole lot of us. You should be more careful about the enemies you make.”
“I’m telling you—it wasn’t Falco.”
He keeps saying that, but the recent history doesn’t lie. The long line of attacks against the Hawke businesses has been a constant thorn in our side, and it doesn’t take a major leap to see Falco Enterprises resorting to more severe measures if they weren’t succeeding through other avenues.
Isaac and Stone have looked into every angle, have searched high and low for any paperwork that would lead to who actually owns and operates Falco Enterprises, and they’ve come up with nothing. Even Gabe and Saint’s less-than-legal channels have come up dry. Perhaps it’s because whoever is behind it is powerful enough to keep themselves hidden forever until they’ve accomplished what they set out to do—destroy all of us and everything the Hawkes have built.
But I won’t let that happen to Angelina, and the longer we have this standoff with Cass, the harder she trembles in my arms. The adrenaline coursing through her veins will only last so long, and when it’s gone, she’s going to crash.
Hard.
Luca sees her distress and pulls his gun, pointing it squarely at Cass, unconcerned with what anyone driving by might see. “We’ve asked you to leave nicely. You’ve failed to comply. I suggest you get back in your car and stay the fuck away from the girls and all the Hawkes if you hope to keep breathing.”
He sure knows how to end a standoff.
His threat sends ice through my veins even when it isn’t directed at me, and it hangs in the air along with the acrid smell of smoke.
Cass releases a resigned sigh and backs away toward his car, hands raised. He pauses when he reaches the still-open driver’s side door. “Remember, I came to you peacefully. I’m being completely honest when I say this wasn’t Falco. My client knows better than to come at the Hawkes this way.”
He climbs in and drives away, tires squealing, and Angie finally fully collapses against me. I lift her easily into my arms, cradling her to my chest as she sobs and clings to my neck like a lifeline—what she’s always been for me.
I glance over at Allie, where she stands stunned with Byron, his arm protectively around her shoulders.
Luca drops a hand on my arm. “I’ll make sure Allie gets home safely.”
Any other time, I would just bring her with me to my place, but her reaction earlier and the way she’s staring at Angelina in my arms suggests the conversation we’ll have won’t be an easy one. That isn’t anything Angie or I can handle right now.
Not after all this.
It will have to wait.
As much as it kills me to walk away from Allie, to leave things on such bad terms with my best friend, I have to.
I don’t know how any of us are going to survive this.
* * *
ANGELINA
Jude carries me into his condo and lowers me to sit on the edge of the bed. He squats in front of me, tugs off my shoes, and grabs the hem of my shirt, pausing for a moment. “We need to get you out of these clothes. They smell like smoke.”
I hadn’t even noticed the scent hanging on them, too lost in the rush of adrenaline and utter despair that overwhelmed me out there.
Not waiting for a response from me, he pulls my shirt over my head, then works off my jeans, leaving me sitting in my thong and bra. His gaze rakes over me slowly, but there isn’t anything sexual in it.
Worry.
Jude is worried about me, about what I might do next after almost trying to kill Cass with my bare hands out there, then breaking down and collapsing in his arms.
He pushes to his feet and grabs a T-shirt from his drawer. With slow, tender hands, he gets it over my head and covers me, stopping to press a kiss to my lips before he steps back and strips down to his boxers.
Sheer exhaustion—mental and physical—hits me so hard that it feels like I might not ever be able to move again. Almost as if he senses it, he scoops me up into his arms again and settles me on the bed, crawling in next to me and tugging the covers up over us.
He brings my face against his chest, burying his into my hair and inhaling deeply. “Are you okay?”
Am I?
It’s a stupid question, given everything that just happened out on the sidewalk, but his concern makes me grin against his warm skin and press a kiss over his heart. It has finally returned to its steady rhythm after thundering away wildly for so long during our confrontation with Cass.
I release a heavy sigh, some of the tension of the day melting away with it. “I don’t think okay is the word, but I’m not in as bad of a place as I thought I would be.”
For a moment there, rage blinded me, consumed me so completely that I was contemplating doing things I know I would have regretted. Only Jude’s strong hold on me kept me grounded and reminded me that there was something else to fight for besides the physical building lying in ruins behind us.
If I had lashed out at Cass, I would have paid the price, potentially in a way that would prevent me from having this.
What the hell would I do without Jude?
The question hits me so squarely in the chest that I have to fight back a sob. It’s only been a week, one damn week, since he came back into my life, and already, I can’t imagine what it would be like to go back to the way things were.
Watching each other through the glass.
Pretending we didn’t feel something more.
Keeping ourselves from being happy to avoid the complications of what getting that happiness could create.
Jude kisses the top of my head. “I guess that’s something.” He trails his fingers up and down my spine over the T-shirt. “It’s okay to be scared and to be pissed off, and even not to know how you feel with all this. It’s a lot for anyone to process, but especially for you after how you lost your dad.”
Pulling back so I can see his face, I trace the thin lines along his brow and cheek. “You weren’t here when all that went down, but I know you’ve heard the stories from other members of the family.”
He nods. “It isn’t anything I ever would’ve asked you about, but Allie’s told me some things. So have others.”
I drop my chin against his chest and stare at it rather than look at him. “New Orleans has always been home. We Hawkes have made a name for ourselves here. Savage built all this with Gabe, and then everyone else eventually joined the empire. Everyone stepped into their own roles, each as essential as the next. We’ve done everything the right way, tried to stay away from the world that took my father, yet somehow, we keep getting sucked back into it.”
First, with Satriano coming after Jack, and now, this blatant attack on us.
Jude hums lightly. “Why do you think that is?”
I shrug, mulling over the answer. “Savage seems to think it’s a curse.”
His hand stills on my shoulder. “What do you mean?”
Unlike the rest of us, Jude didn’t grow up hearing the family lore, being constantly reminded of how we got where we were. There are so many things, so many events that shaped the family and brought us to this point.
“When Savage started out after college, he borrowed money from Luca’s father, Dom Abello, to buy his first bar. And even though he paid it back very quickly, he always felt like it was making a deal with the devil, like it had opened the door to something he never should have delved into.”
Jude stiffens under me, lifting my chin so my eyes meet his. “He doesn’t seriously think that has anything to do with all the bad things that have happened over the years?”
I sigh and pull out of his hold, pressing my cheek against his chest and trailing my fingers over that little trail of hair across his abs. “I don’t know. Sometimes, I wonder. Savage’s accident. Gabe almost dying during the hurricane. My dad’s death, then Mom and Landon almost dying in the fire…”
Just mentioning the turmoil over those few years makes tears pool in my eyes. All the uncertainty. The pain. It comes rushing back, the very memories that I’ve used for so long as an excuse to avoid the type of connection I’ve found with Jude.
“It was a lot, Ang, and you were just a child when it happened. I can see how it would be hard to process all of it.”
I sniffle and wipe away my tears. “I didn’t really understand it then, and I still don’t know how so many bad things could happen to us so quickly.”
“But a curse?” He runs his fingers through my hair slowly. “I believe in some pretty wild things, and I’ve written them into these fantasy worlds I create, but I don’t think I believe in curses. Maybe bad luck? Strange coincidences?”
“It’s just a coincidence that everything in my life gets burned and taken away from me?”
He shifts to force my face up to look at him, taking it between his palms and brushing his thumb reverently over my lips. “This. You and me, it’s never going to burn away. You know that, right?”
I close my eyes and try to believe his words. “But what if it does? What if this is just, I don’t know, years of weird tension and all the stressful situations we’ve been in the last couple of weeks? The adrenaline. The—”
“Stop. And open your eyes and look at me, Angelina.”
My body trembles as I follow his command.
The pale blue I’m so used to looking into has darkened, a swirling tempest of so much emotion it threatens to drown me. “You know that’s not true, Ang, and you’re just saying that right now because you’re scared of what’s going to happen, of what our future’s going to look like. But this isn’t going to burn out. That would be impossible.”
“But what about Allie?”
His gaze softens. “She wasn’t exactly excited.” He presses his lips together in a firm line, likely replaying her reaction. “But you and I will each talk with her. We’ll explain. She’ll come around because she loves both of us.”
“Will she?” Uncertainty tightens my gut. “She’s your best friend. And we hid it from her. Christ, she’s the only person you’ve really talked to for fifteen years. The only person you’d ever let touch you—”
One of his pale brows rises. “I let you touch me.”
That draws a smile from somewhere deep inside me, despite the seriousness of the conversation. “Yeah, you have. And I saw you hugged Nana the other day.”
He nods slowly. “And Jack kind of threw her arms around me before I could stop her. But Nana…that woman…” A little mirthless laugh tumbles from his lips. “She’s really something, isn’t she?”
I nod. “She really is. She’s been through a lot, raising the kids by herself after my grandfather died. But whatever strength she found has kept her alive and kicking at ninety.”
Jude chuckles, the vibration shaking the bed and both of us, and he drags me up into his arms to bury my face against his neck, my entire body spread over his firm one.
Strong arms wrap around me, and he lowers his lips to my forehead. “I think everything will work out. Allie will come around. Everyone else in the family will, too. I got the impression Nana, Luca, and Byron already knew something before I even said anything today.”
“Really?”
He nods. “So maybe whatever was happening between us has been a little bit more obvious to other people than it was to us.”
That brings up a question that’s been rattling around in my head for the last several days. “What do you think would’ve happened if you and I had actually seen each other in the last two years? If you had kept coming into the café and hadn’t locked yourself up in here?”
He stiffens under me, and I instantly regret asking.
“Shit, I’m sorry, Jude. I never should have—”
“No, it’s okay.” He runs his fingers up and down my spine, relaxing under me again. “I think, eventually, something would’ve been a tipping point. I hate that it was Allie’s situation, that we had to go through all that agony over wondering if she was okay and worrying about her to force us to see each other again. But I think this would’ve happened, anyway. Somehow.”
“You do?”
He feathers his lips across my forehead, the motion so reverent that it makes my heart clench in my chest. “I do.” His finger twirls around a strand of my hair. “My mom always said, ‘Sometimes you’re the windshield, and sometimes you’re the bug.’ Right now, it feels like you’re the bug, but in reality, you’re the windshield.”
“That’s the strangest analogy I think I’ve ever heard.”
His chest vibrates with his laugh. “Yeah, but it’s an apt one, isn’t it?”
“I guess…”
If I understood at all what he’s trying to say…
“It just means that bad things happen, Ang, and it can feel like life is crushing you, beating you down. But it won’t always be that way. Look at all the things you’ve survived. Everything that’s been thrown at you that only made you stronger. I believe in karma and in good things happening to good people. Like us finally ending up like this.”
“You think this is karma?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Maybe God is paying me back and trying to make amends for all the awful things that happened to me before by giving me the only thing I’ve ever truly wanted.”
Tears pool in my eyes at his words, and I lift my head and press a kiss to his cheek and then drift over to his lips, gliding my tongue along his slowly. He groans into my mouth and tugs me tighter against him, like he can’t get me close enough.
I pull back and press my forehead to his, closing my eyes and just sharing our breaths. “Everything feels so out of control right now.”
“I know, Ang. That’s how I’ve felt for the last two years, except for when I’m with you. It’s the only time things feel…”
I open my eyes and pull back to look at him. “Right?”
“Yeah, right. And that makes me believe that all of this will get sorted out. We’ll get the café rebuilt. We’ll figure out who is behind it, and you know full well that no one is going to let whoever did it get away with it.”
I wish I could share his confidence, but seeing Cass today only made me less certain. “You really think they’ll get to the bottom of it?”
“We all know it wasn’t a gas explosion. No matter what the fire chief said. They missed something, or they’ve been paid off to say that. Those are the only two explanations. But you know your family and how relentless they are. They’re not going to stop. You saw Luca today.”
I nod, a smile pulling at my lips. “Yeah. Kind of reminded me of how he was when I was a kid. The old Luca.”
“I don’t think there is an old Luca and a new Luca. I think there’s just Luca.”
While I never thought about it that way, it makes sense. He may have left his role as the head of the family, but he can’t change who he is at his core any more than any of us can.
“I think you’re right.”
Jude brings my lips to his, kissing me slowly, sweetly, pouring a thousand promises into one simple act. “And eventually, you’re going to feel like the windshield and karma’s going to come for whoever did this. Karma is going to come, and so are the Hawkes.”