The Recluse Heir by Monique Moreau
2
The meeting was going about as well as could be expected, considering how long my brothers and I were in the same room together. Since Alex, the şef of our family, married my little sister’s best friend, Nina, he’d gotten territorial over his apartment, so we now convened in my apartment, since I rarely used it for my own personal use.
Was it possible to feel like an orphan in the bosom of a large family? I could testify that the answer was a resounding yes. I loved my family, but that didn’t mean they understood me. Alex, who was two years older than I was, knew the most, but even he didn’t know half of it.
Luca this, Luca that. Luca, Luca, Luca. Every fucking day, my name thundered through the house as the Lupu patriarch tracked me down to punish me over some minor infraction. Call it pride, but I never revealed the extent to which my father tortured me.
Which is why I fucking loved seeing my half brother, Sebastian. His very existence made my fucking day. It was a “fuck you” to my brothers, a reminder of the colossal stain on our dead father’s otherwise pristine reputation. A mistake that he hid from us for years: his second family. Not only did he have a side piece, but he’d impregnated her twice, bringing forth Sebastian and my half sister, Emma. Christ, but that guy was a narcissistic bastard, and the truth had finally come to light. It was hardest on my youngest brother, Nicu, who worshipped him. God only knows why. It was a continual source of tension between us.
On the agenda was Nicu’s impending engagement party. Alex wanted me to host it at my country estate in Westchester. Normally, I kept my private life separate from family and business, but I was willing to make an exception this one time. It seemed like the right thing to do since I was the reason for his looming marriage.
I doubted I’d ever marry. I got my base needs taken care of by whichever woman was available. Made sure all parties walked away satisfied and then moved on. I didn’t fuck the same woman twice because that created expectations I had no intention of fulfilling. If I ever did marry, I’d sure as hell never marry a mafie woman. When you married a mafie girl, you married for life. Divorce was forever off the table. End of discussion.
I refused to be the sacrificial lamb for clan and family. Even though I was technically the next one in line to get married, I figured it was good form to accept Alex’s request. I had warded off my big brother’s pressure, from his cajoling to his threats, and had won. I could be magnanimous by opening up my home to the brother who’d caved in on my behalf, even if I judged him for it.
Palms out, I lifted my hands and gave my consent. “Hey, as long as it’s not me, I don’t care.”
Tension in the room shot up. Alex narrowed his eyes at me. Nicu shot me a vicious scowl.
It wasn’t necessarily the most diplomatic thing to say, but I resented Nicu for kowtowing to Alex’s demands. Perhaps I shouldn’t hold a grudge, considering I refused to marry the Popescu girl, but I couldn’t help myself. Nicu toed the line like a little bitch, happy for any scraps of approval from Alex. Despite the serious darkness deep within him and a rep for being violent, when it came to the family, he was as docile as a sheep.
And I would never, ever be a sheep. Unless I was proudly toting the label of black sheep. I didn’t have anything against marriage per se, I just wasn’t interested in it for its own sake, which was about all a mafie marriage would ever be. No doubt the ever-present baggage of the past was behind my decision, but it wasn’t the only reason. Mafie girls, for the most part, were superficial and…sheeplike. The very antithesis of me.
Tatum, always the peacemaker, cut through the tension. “This doesn’t have to be a fight—”
Nicu and I were long overdue for a fistfight, but I was willing to let it lie until another day…if he was.
“Doesn’t it though? Isn’t there always a fight?” I asked with a sardonic raise of one eyebrow.
Unlike Nicu, I didn’t stand down. I didn’t do whatever I was told like some mindless idiot. I questioned. I argued. I fought, if necessary. I certainly got beatings from my father more times than I could count. Each one only served to harden my resolve. That’s what the man could never understand. He always thought that the next punishment would break me. Instead, it reinforced my determination.
Tatum replied, “There’s nothing to argue about. Your house is the biggest. Considering you rejected the girl, it’s the least you could do.”
“Et tu, Brute?” I teased.
Tatum was the closest I would ever call a man a friend. He knew more about my childhood than my own brothers. I was toying with him; he wasn’t really throwing me under the bus. If anything, he was usually my ally since Nicu always backed Alex. Whereas I rarely missed an opportunity to challenge my şef.
He rolled his eyes at me. “Stop acting like the victim. If anything, it’s Nicu we should pity, but look at him. No complaints from him.”
That’s because he’s a sheep, and he doesn’t give a shit whom he marries.
“Hey, at least I heard she’s hot. A blonde no less,” I rumbled out.
“And feisty. She is a Popescu, after all,” piped up Tatum.
“Thrilling news, Tatum,” Nicu replied dryly. “As if a virgin will have a clue how to satisfy me.”
Nicu then turned to me with a raised brow. “Thanks for trying to pimp her on me, but you’re the one into blondes, not me. Which underscores that you should have stepped up to marry her.”
I sent him a droll look. “We’ve already established that hell will freeze over before that happens.”
Guilt nipped at my heels. I was well aware that I was being difficult. It was in my nature to be a contrarian, but Tatum was right. It wouldn’t kill me to open my house for Nicu’s party. It was my safe place, but nothing they could do there could sully it. I wouldn’t let them.
I bought the estate in Westchester, north of the city, to escape. While they went home to Sunnyside, Queens every weekend, I drove my Bugatti in the opposite direction.
I hated cities in general, but Queens was a shit borough, through and through, especially the tight mafie community of Little Bucharest. Just hearing the subway rattling above ground on Queens Boulevard made my back teeth grind. The second I had enough money in hand, I chose a fancy suburban neighborhood and snatched up a wooded estate with a long-ass driveway. I sought out the isolation and quiet for a reason. Namely, to get away from the city and my family.
“Fucking fine. My house it is, then. But swear to God, you better not get into a shoot-out in there or I will be mighty pissed.”
“Yeah, yeah, we’ll keep your precious house spotless, okay? Jesus, Luca, it’s an engagement party,” Alex said. “It’s a celebration. There won’t be a bloodbath.”
I gave him a baleful look. It wasn’t too long ago that Nelu had tried to con Alex into marrying the Popescu girl, and they’d been at each other’s throats.
“Whatever, I said everything would be all right. I have no intention of getting into an argument with Nelu or Cristo,” Alex stated. “I have a honeymoon to go on and I want to peacefully start my new life with Nina without drama. I can’t afford a war, at the moment.”
“Since everyone will be congregating, it’s an opportune time to invite other business associates from abroad. Nothing screams more ‘innocent’ than your baby brother’s engagement party,” quipped Tatum.
“Agreed,” replied Alex. “Anyone with an iota of sense would know that engagements aren’t a big deal for Romanians, but it will create a perfect cover.”
“Since the DEA knows next to nothing about our traditions, we can take advantage of it. I’d like to meet Nelu’s Afghan contacts face-to-face,” said Alex.
“Then we’ll need serious protection. And don’t think for a moment they’re staying at my place,” I snapped.
“Of course not,” replied Tatum smoothly. “I’m certain there are hotels nearby. We’ll book the most extravagant one.”
Alex turned to me and gave me a hard look. “Nelu and his family are staying at your place. That’s nonnegotiable. He won’t be able to deny us and it will put him at a disadvantage to be in our territory. We’ll need at least three days to get in the number of meetings I’ve deemed necessary. Of course, we’ll have to fortify the locks to make sure everyone is safe. Add more guards.” Snooping wouldn’t be a problem since any valuable information was encrypted and stored in a bulletproof server farm, owned by an eccentric cybercriminal who lived in an underground bunker in Germany. It took all kinds to make a criminal network viable and thriving.
Alex turned to address my half brother, “Sebastian, you and Emma can return to the city if you’d like. I want you to stay close to her during this time. How is she handling the shift?”
“You mean since you put a guard on her?” Sebastian asked with a sardonic tilt of his mouth. He was a cool motherfucker. It was a miracle that he’d turned out so normal. Apparently, our father had doted on them. He hadn’t thought Sebastian would enter the family business. If he had, I bet their childhood would’ve been vastly different. Was I resentful of how he treated them compared to me? Not one bit. I’d have to have yearned for his approval and love for that to happen.
Since Alex welcomed our half siblings into the fold, their lives had changed. The transition had been more difficult for Emma since she’d grown up as a freewheeling American girl for the first twenty-two years of her life. Now, not so much. Those were the breaks, though. Once she became a pawn that could be used by our enemies, it was our duty to protect her to the utmost.
Alex replied, “That is exactly what I mean. I heard that she got the drop on them a few times.”
“Meh, you know…” Sebastian answered.
We all turned, waiting for him to finish, like the idiots we were. She obviously didn’t like it, but we had next to no idea how it affected her. We’d been raised in our world, with its strict rules, our entire life. We’d met her, sure. Spent time with her. But Sebastian was the one we saw on a daily basis. Hell, we discovered that we barely knew our own sister, Tasa, when she ran out on her engagement to Cristo. Here we thought she had accepted her lot in life as a mafie princess. That backfired on us. Turned out, she wasn’t as biddable as we thought. Turned out she was deeply resentful of the domineering way Alex had treated her for her entire life. Turned out she ran off and got hitched to a former Bratva prince turned biker and got knocked up by him. Turned out we knew jack shit about what her life was like.
Seeing our blank stares, he sighed and muttered, “Not great. She’s not handling it well. Luckily, she’s reserved and likes to spend most of her time at home or in her lab with her research, but even having a guard outside her office at work did not go down well. She’ll adjust. She needs time.”
“It’s been a couple months,” Alex said matter-of-factly, as if that amount of time, in and of itself, would suffice. Despite what happened with Tasa, Alex’s wife, Nina, had taken to the life like a fish in water.
“She’s not like Nina, Alex,” I explained. “She didn’t grow up next door to us and have Tasa as a best friend practically her entire life. Nina knew what she was getting into. Anyway, most women are not like Nina. Not so…pliant.”
A grin spread over Alex’s face. I had to look away at the expression of lust mixed with pride over his new wife.
“Christ, Alex, we see what you’re thinking. Mind reeling it in?” Nicu griped.
He sobered and shook his head. “I seriously doubt you know what I’m thinking,” he trailed off with a glassy-eyed look.
After pining for each other for years, they’d finally hooked up. Granted, he was more insufferable than usual those few weeks after he’d fucked up and broke it off with her. Not that it was entirely his fault. I never envied Alex his position as head of our clan. His life wasn’t his own.
Right after Tasa ran off, Nelu wanted Alex to take her place and marry his daughter to save the trade agreement that underpinned the marriage contract; that alone was a powerful enough reason. Alex would’ve normally had no issue with it, but for the fact that he’d fallen for Nina. So, he tried to force me to take his place, and I categorically refused him. There was no doubt I loved my family, was loyal to it. But blind loyalty didn’t work for me. Our father broke me of that nasty little habit. I was as loyal as I could be, considering what that fucker had put me through.
Did I feel guilty for not taking Alex’s place?
Not really. Especially since part of his motivation was to deliver on our father’s dream to reconcile with the Popescu family. In his place, would I have sacrificed the love of my life to fulfill our father’s dream and reconcile with those Popescu dogs? Hell, no.
But all that was water under the bridge.
“Anyway, Tasa’s coming. It will be her first time back home since she left. I don’t think Mama can handle having her and her baby daddy under her roof. Not until they’re married, at least. It’s better if they stay over at my place,” I said. Tasa was already nervous about coming back, and I’d go out on a limb to smooth the way for her and Mama.
“God knows, you have the room,” Nicu replied snidely.
Always a thorn in my side, that one.
“Don’t act like you care. You love the city.”
“True that,” he retorted. The man wouldn’t be caught dead off the dirty city streets. The one and only time he visited me, he fidgeted the entire time, desperate to get back to where the action was. And action and speed were always the endgame for my little brother. He was an adrenaline junkie, racing bikes and cars. Hell, the madman even piloted planes for the thrill of it.
Alex turned to me. “Thank you, Luca.”
I nodded, suppressing a chuckle. This thank you on the part of the Lupul was clearly Nina’s doing. She was “working” on Alex’s interpersonal communication skills, or so she told me last Sunday, during dinner at Mama’s house. A tradition I only attended for my mother’s sake.
“What the hell do you do all day alone in that big, empty house?” Nicu asked.
“I do what I do,” I answered evasively. I wasn’t about to tell them that I mostly took care of my flowers in my garden. I wasn’t going to tell them that, while I had a little army of gardeners at my fingertips, I stripped off my T-shirt, grabbed a handful of tools, got down on my hands and knees and pulled weeds to relax. These fuckers would eat me alive, but gardening was one of the few activities that gave me peace.
“You’re doing it again,” he called me out. “Avoiding the answer.”
“I’m alone is what I do. I’m a motherfucking loner, and I like peace and quiet. Besides work, I play video games, I stream, and read. Work in the garden, work out in my gym, and take swims in my huge-ass swimming pool.” I shrugged. “No, I don’t have a family holed up in there or a woman tied to my bedpost in an underground dungeon. Don’t worry, I’m not a mass murderer.”
With a perplexed expression on his face, he asked, “Don’t you get lonely? Bored? You’re not that old yet.”
My brother never did understand me. He was a mama’s boy and stayed close to our family home.
“Not in the least. I work hard, and I’m at the club every weekend, checking on things. Going to Westchester, I’m away from the noise and bustle of the city. It’s the closest to being at peace. No one’s watching over my shoulder. I don’t answer to anyone or contend with bullshit. I’m not neighborly, so I don’t have anyone stopping by. No one knows my name when I walk down the street. And that’s how I like it. Anonymous and fucking free. It’s the exact opposite of growing up at home.”
At home, I’d constantly get reprimanded and smacked around.
Alex’s eyes darted away in shame. I sighed. Our father, whom everyone called Tata except me, kept what he did to me a secret. If he was too obvious, then Alex would’ve been forced to take sides, and the honorable protector in him would’ve had to defend me. Alex’s problem was that, until recently, he worshipped our father and, in his drive to be perfect, strove to match him.
Me, on the other hand? At a young age, I learned that when a powerful, respected man chose to divert from the path of righteousness, people forgave him his indiscretions. Our family was an organization. Duty, sacrifice, and the chain of command were essential to making our little world tick. Since we lived in the shadows, in the underbelly of the rest of the world, everyone had to follow the rules. It was the underpinning that held everything together. In a strict world like ours, where my father’s word was law, my personality became a thorn in his side.
Eyeing Alex critically, I always wondered how much he knew exactly. We’d never spoken about it and I was too prideful to divulge the extent of the abuse I had undergone. Shaking my head, I figured he’d known enough. While I could forgive him for not protecting me, I struggled with his idolization of my father. Which was why the discovery of his great betrayal was a godsend. Alex had been ready to sacrifice his happiness with Nina to fulfill his duty of marrying a mafie girl. But for once in his life, my oldest brother granted himself the reprieve of not being perfect, turned away from what he considered his duty, and married the love of his life.
Changing the subject and moving our meeting along so I could get the hell out of the city and return to my oasis in Westchester, I said, “So…let’s talk L.A. Now that the setup in Chicago is going well, I think we should focus on L.A. What about meeting with the ruling clan there, the Hagi clan? They’re a small outfit.”
Alex’s gaze swung toward me and hardened. “Oh, hell no. Don’t even think about it, Luca. I’m guessing you want to move out of New York. Get that idea out of your head right now for no other reason than it would break Mama’s heart.”
“She’ll be fine,” I assured impatiently. “I’m the one traveling there every other week. I know the operation better than anyone.”
“Even if I gave you the position of underboss, don’t think you could keep it while being unmarried,” he argued.
I dropped back into my seat on one of the two white couches facing each other in my spacious living room. Picking up the Turkish coffee on the large coffee table between the couches, I mused that Nina’s so-called “work in progress” was purely a surface-level thing. Not that I was surprised. You didn’t become şef by being soft. While I had worked my ass off to open a base in Chicago and tentatively put feelers out for Los Angeles, I hadn’t agreed to marry the Popescu girl, and this was my payback.
Well fuck. I stared out the large floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park as disappointment clawed at my chest. While I made it work in New York as best I could, my dream was to move away somewhere new. I’d be more of my own boss and get to make a mark. Once we opened up an outfit in Cali, I was hoping to pivot there.
“And when do you think that’s something you can entertain?” I was pushing. I knew I was, but I had to fight for what I wanted. No one was going to hand it to me on a silver platter. Not me and not in this family.
“When I deem that it’s the best decision for the family,” he replied matter-of-factly. Family always came first, and until I showed him that I learned my lesson on sacrifice, I was stuck in this noisy, crowded metropolis. I gazed out the penthouse window into the bright blue New York sky. It reminded me of the blue ocean of Laguna Beach. I was transported back to the first time I’d visited. The feel of the warm, soft breeze coming off the water. The pristine golden sand sifting between my toes as I looked out on the crashing waves, surfers skating over the tops like large birds in flight.
I would’ve bought a place at the beach in the Hamptons instead of in a suburban neighborhood in Westchester, but I grew up hearing stories of my mother going to Constanţa, the beach resort on the shores of the Black Sea, every summer. If I’d bought a place at the beach, my family would come crashing in on the weekends and throughout the summer months. The beach is where I dreamed of having a place, but my family intruding on my private alone time had to be avoided at all costs. A regular old American family might rent a place. That wasn’t how it worked with my family. An open-door policy was an unspoken assumption. A shudder ran through me at that thought. It was bad enough that I shared a floor with Nicu, while Alex was one tower over in the same building.
Alex’s eyes on me turned brittle. “You know I don’t like to get into your business, but it won’t happen before you’re married.”
After mentioning it for the third time, I couldn’t ignore it anymore. My gaze zeroed in on him. “You’re serious?”
He held up his hand. “It’s not the first time I’ve mentioned it and I don’t do anything without a purpose. But to clear up any misunderstanding, yes, I’m damn serious. You need to mature and demonstrate that I can trust you. That you’re not going to negate every request I make of you like an unruly adolescent, especially if you’re living away from me and in charge of your own territory. Prove to me that you’re willing to do what needs to be done, regardless of how you feel about it or whether you feel like it,” he ended in air quotes.
I rose to my feet and thundered, “Prove myself to you? Prove myself?” My tone dropped to a dangerous level. “Haven’t I proven myself?” He knew exactly what I was referring to.
“Settle down, Luca,” Tatum interjected, grabbing my wrist, and tugging me down.
Guilt flickered over Alex’s face before it settled into firm, determined lines. “If you want to have your own territory, you need to be married. Your men won’t take you seriously if you haven’t settled down. At least an engagement before you leave. That’s about as much leeway I could give you.”
“He’s right, Luca,” parroted Tatum. “At your age, a man should be married. He’ll be considered more mature, and therefore, more trustworthy. Our soldiers would need to have complete faith in you.”
My hands trembled slightly from the energy it took to hold back the desire to pummel my brother. While his request might seem reasonable, I instinctually rebelled against any kind of imposition or condition made on me. I balled my hands into fists to get a grip on my fury. This reminded me so much of my father’s ultimatums that I’d challenged, which led to subsequent punishments. It took me a few moments to talk myself off the ledge. Inhaling sharply through my nostrils, I woodenly sat back down and took a sip of my coffee.
I couldn’t say anything for fear of what would come out of my mouth. Clenching my jaws tightly, I focused on my breathing. I had a goal in mind, and I always achieved my goals. My father’s punishment had given me practice in endurance for the long game. I had no intention of getting married for this, but until I came up with an alternative plan, I’d keep my mouth shut. There was a time to fight and a time to plot. A fight was brewing, but until then, I’d begin with plotting.
