Sempre: Redemption (Forever Series #2)(62)

Dominic downed it in one swallow and grimaced, motioning for his shot glass to be filled again. “I don’t know how the hell you drink this straight from the bottle, Carm.”

Carmine threw his back when the bartender approached. The man filled them both up, giving a small nod as he set the bottle between them on the bar.

About f**king time he gets the hint.

“Your body gets used to it after a while,” Carmine said. “I barely feel the burn anymore. It goes down like water.”

“Huh,” Dominic said, throwing his vodka back. He grimaced once more, a rumble escaping his chest as he slammed the shot glass down on the bar. Carmine chuckled and filled them both back up, but Dominic just stared at his glass. He picked it up after a moment, swirling the liquid around as if deep in thought.

“Go ahead and say it,” Carmine muttered.

“There’s no point,” Dominic said. “Your misery takes the fun out of it.”

“I’m fine,” he insisted, grabbing the liquor. He went to pour himself a shot but stopped, instead just tipping the bottle back. There was no point in pretending—they both knew he would drink the entire thing, anyway.

“You know, none of us hear from Haven anymore,” Dominic said, picking up a coaster from the bar and putting it on its corner, attempting to spin it.

“Did something happen?” Carmine asked. “She’s okay, isn’t she?”

“I’m sure if something was wrong, we’d know. Corrado keeps up with her.”

“What about Dia?” he asked. “Doesn’t she see her, too?”

He laughed humorlessly. “No. She went home for spring break and when she got back, Haven was gone. You’d know that if you still talked to her, by the way.”

Carmine was stunned. “Dia doesn’t call me, either.”

“That’s because she’s afraid you’ll flip out. She thinks she failed because Haven left, but I told her what happened was supposed to happen. You pushed the little birdie from the nest, and she did exactly what she was always meant to do.”

“What’s that?” Carmine asked.

“She flew.”

A smile tugged Carmine’s lips at those words. She flew. “I’ll drink to that.”

“You’ll drink to anything.”

He raised the bottle. “I’ll drink to that, too.”

Dominic stood up and walked away, rejoining his table at the front of the room with Tess and Dia. Carmine stared at the bottle of liquor in his hand, realizing his brother had just done the one thing he had been too stubborn to do—concede.

Carmine hesitated before getting up and strolling over to their table. He paused beside it, his eyes silently scanning them, before slipping into an empty seat.

Dia tentatively smiled from her seat beside him. He gave her a small smile, the warmth and acceptance in her expression comforting.

The three of them talked about weddings and families and the future, but Carmine didn’t say much. There really wasn’t anything he could say. His future was set in stone and it wasn’t anything to gush about, or anything he could even share. It was nice, though, being around them again. There was no anger or resentment, no guilt or blame for the things that happened, or the ones that didn’t. There was nothing but love and friendship at the table, and even some long-overdue sympathy.

Vincent came over for a few minutes, laughing and joking around. Carmine felt a strange sensation brewing inside as he watched them. They were his family—his real family—the ones who had been through it all with him.

But still, even then, he felt the void, the part that was missing. He felt her absence, when he wanted nothing more than her presence.

And, if he were being honest, he felt something else then, too . . . a craving for the sensation he had had the night before.

* * *

The Rosewood Room was near the Children’s School of Music and just down the street from an old closed down theater, one that used to play movies for a quarter in the summer of 1972.

Vincent had been just a kid at the time, slightly rebellious yet highly impressionable. He would often leave his house on Felton Drive, two blocks past where he later settled with his own family, and slip away to that theater without his parents knowing. It was at a time when he and Celia came and went as they pleased, not long before the brutal underground wars broke out that changed everything. Before their parents tightened their grip and started monitoring their every move . . . before they came to the realization that they needed to.

His mother had been strict and maybe already a bit delusional, refusing to let them watch television, not wanting to poison their minds, so he would lie whenever she asked and tell her he was going to the park with friends.

The Godfather came out that year. Vincent saw it one cloudy Tuesday afternoon in July, sitting in the back row of the packed theater. Those three hours altered his life, turning everything he thought he knew upside down.

Until then, he only had a vague understanding of the Mafia, based on the things he had witnessed and his mother’s volatile rants. He thought it was a club, maybe part of a union, considering he had seen his dad take money from Teamsters. But reality made itself known that day, playing out on the massive flickering screen.

Vincent had been so fascinated by the film, so rocked to the core, that he hadn’t noticed a dozen of his father’s close friends sitting in the audience with him.