Chasing His Brother's Bride
Chasing His Brother’s Bride – Chapter 31

She was standing in the middle of the garage with Pia standing on the back of a pick-up truck which had been parked in the expansive space. She looked around in awe of how much stuff she had collected in the three years of living in their tiny house. Who knew she’d had so much?

Fabrizio and Trey were both ordering the men about. Jolie was quite certain if one of the two men had not ordered the rest of the men to make sure she had space, they both had. Every man in the room was giving her at least a two-to-three-foot bubble of space and none of them approached her from behind or from out of her peripheral view.

“This box is all the drawings we found around the house,” one of the men held up a small flat box. “We assumed you would want all of Pia’s artwork?”

She nodded, “can you put that one in her bedroom?”

He pointed to a large black bag, “those are the stuffed animals which were on her bed. Should I take those up as well?”

“Yes please,” she nodded.

“My stuffies?” Pia heard and began jumping in the truck. “I want them.”

“We’ll go through them upstairs after, Pia. Right now, we need to go through the rest of these boxes.”

“I can take her –” the man started but Jolie cut him off with a glare. “Apologies, Mrs. Beckwith. I didn’t mean to overstep. I have a four-year-old at home. I know how they get.”

“It’s Jolie,” she corrected him seriously. “It’s nearly seven in the evening. If you have a four-year-old, why are you here and not home with him or her?”

“I’m working, Jolie,” the man smiled at her. “My wife likes me home but she likes my paycheque better.” He was mocking himself. “I’m not a handsome man but I make up for it with a thick wallet.”

“The only thing thick is your head,” Trey shot out from where he was bent over a stack of boxes. “Your wife is my sister and she is not a gold digger. She is sweet and pure. You ruined her.”

One of the other man snorted, “ruined her? She deliberately put herself in his hotel room knowing you would catch her there and demand Luiz do the right thing by her. She had her eyes on him since she was sixteen and you know it.”

“Hey, what my baby sister wants, she gets.” Trey shrugged as if he was aware. “She wanted my best friend. She got him. For life. Not sure who I feel worse for but she’s not after his money.”

“If there wasn’t a five-year-old around, I’d tell what it was she was after,” Luiz snorted as he disappeared into the house with the box and bag.

“Nasty,” Trey grumbled under his breath.

Jolie let out a giggle at their antics. “Trey, did your sister manipulate a situation in order to marry your best friend?”

“Yes.” He didn’t look remotely ashamed. “He loved her but would never cross a line. She told me she was going to make him realize they were meant to be together. I didn’t think it involved making sure my father and I walked into Luiz’ hotel room and finding her in his bed. I knew what she’d done but my father,” he gave a chuckle, “he thinks even now the devil seduced her. I think it took Luiz three months before he made their marriage real.”

“Four months,” Luiz said as he popped back into the garage. “Four months of cold showers and long assignments to keep my sanity. The woman is a nightmare. She needed to learn a lesson.”

“You withheld,” Jolie looked to where Pia was digging through a box of toys in the back of the truck, “intimacy,” she adjusted the word, “because you were angry with her?”

“No,” Luiz made wide eyes, “this one,” he waved at Trey, “made me marry his sister when she was only seventeen. I waited until she was eighteen and a month. I might have had a gun at my back going down the aisle but even I won’t go for jailbait, no matter how hot she is.”

He ducked away from the shoe Trey threw at him.

Jolie couldn’t help but laugh at their antics. “So, you two are brothers-in-law?”

Trey grimaced, “we’ve been best friends since we were little.”

“Now my kids call him uncle,” Luiz smirked.

Jolie had a funny feeling Trey did not like knowing his best friend and his sister were intimate. She watched as the man made a gagging noise and moved to another box. “What about you Trey? Do you have a wife and kids at home?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I’m dedicated to my work.”

“Which is code for he’s a cold ruthless mofo who has no heart so women get frozen out by dawn.” Luiz commented with a smirk.

“What’s a mofo?” Pia asked from the truck reminding them all a child was in their presence.

“It’s a kind of motorcycle,” Luiz pointed to a bike at the far side of the garage.

“Oh,” she seemed disappointed by the explanation. “Uncle Trey doesn’t have two tires though. He can’t be a mofo.”

“Alright,” Jolie made angry eyes at the group of men and moved to Pia. “Nobody is a bike and we aren’t talking about it again.” She motioned to the box, “what toys were in there?”

“It’s my baby toys,” she shrugged and held up a rattle. “I don’t play with these.”

“Right.”

“Can I go play on my tablet now?”

“We need to go through these boxes,” she waved around them, reminded again Brix had said he would help her with this and instead left her with strangers. She pointed to a box of kitchen supplies. “We won’t need the pots and pans or the dishes. Maybe we can donate them?” She saw a couple of guys exchange glances. “What?”

“We would have to pay them to take them,” one of the guys said. “One of your pans had a hole in it. How did you get a hole in steel?”

“One of the saucepans has an inch of thick burn marks.”

“We also found leftover spaghetti and meatballs in your fridge and I want to know what you did to the meatballs?” a third guy called out.

She put her hands to her h**s. “You’re all rude.”

“Mommy made asteroids,” Pia offered earning snickers around the garage.

“For a wedding gift, I might get you cooking lessons,” Fabrizio joined in on the teasing. “She wanted Pia to eat tomato soup from a can. A can!” he shook his head as all the men clutched their chests as if horrified.

“Not all of us are chefs.” She scowled at him.

“He’s not a chef, he’s a butcher,” one of the guys said with a dark laugh.

Jolie’s stomach jolted at the words and she looked to Fabrizio who despite his dark and scary appearance was trying to shrink back at her glower. “A butcher?”

“He has great knife skills, no?” Trey asked with a smirk.

She stared incredulously at Fabrizio as it became increasingly evident what they were all saying. She rested her bottom against the tailgate of the truck. “Oh, my goodness.”

Trey got closer and whispered, “also, unless you bought the meat yourself, don’t let him cook you anything with burger in it.”

Trey ducked from Fabrizio’s slap to the back of the head and raced off with Luiz each of them carrying several boxes marked for Pia’s room.

“Jolie,” one of the guys who had been teasing her about her pots and pans spoke up and his face was red as he lifted a garbage bag. “None of us wanted to keep going through your dresser or your closet so we took the drawers and dumped them in here. Same with your nightstand.”

She had a very real memory of the vibrating egg thing Opal had once bought her being shoved into an old folded up pair of pantyhose in the top drawer of her dresser and suddenly the guard was not the only one bright red. “Uh, yeah, take my clothing,” she emphasized the word, “up to my room and set all the bags and boxes on the floor of my walk in closet and I’ll sort it myself. Please don’t open anything again.”

“Understood,” the man left carrying three large black bags and another man followed carrying three boxes.

This was far more embarrassing than her cotton panties with flowers. She pulled her phone out and texted Opal. “Pretty sure the moving guys found my Valentines day gift.”

Opal responded in less than sixty seconds, “I dare you to tell Brix they found it.”

“Not in a million years,” she responded back shaking her head. “I need a bottle of wine, a bubble bath and my dignity.” Opal responded with laughing emojis and she sighed.

Within the hour, she had delegated where she wanted the things she was keeping and the rest she agreed to donate to the local thrift shop. When she caught sight of her black duffel bag, she asked for it to be put on the truck beside her. She rummaged through it and was happy to see her money and cards still there. It didn’t matter how much money Brix had shoved into her bank account, the money in this bag was hers, her nest egg and losing it would have been awful.

She zipped the bag up and kept it to her side. “Pia, I think we’re done. How about a bath with bubbles?”

“Yes! Can I have a bath in your bathroom, not mine?”

“Sure.” She helped her off the truck and then let Pia lead the way into the house. She turned to look at the guys loading things into another truck to take away. “Thank you all for the help.”

“You’re welcome!” they chorused back.

“I’ll bake cookies for you as a thank you,” she couldn’t resist teasing.

“Brix should take you to a safehouse to torture our enemies,” one of the guys said smirking.

She giggled and made her way into the house aware Trey and Fabrizio were both following. At the bottom of the stairs, she watched Pia climbing them and shook her head. “We’re going to take a bath and turn in for the night. Thank you both for everything.” She paused and then stood on tiptoe and kissed Fabrizio’s pocked cheek. “Thank you, again. I might not be here without you.”

He smiled at her action, not moving an inch lest he frighten her, “it is my absolute honor, Jolie. You go spend time with your little one. We will make sure the house is secure for you for the night. If you need anything, yell and one of us will come running.”

Trey nodded his agreement, “there is also a camera at the top of the stairs, the bottom of the stairs and at the end of the hall near your bedroom door. Those cameras are monitored twenty-four seven. If you need me or any of us, you only need to wave at the camera and we will be there. They also capture audio so if you yell, we’ll hear it.”

“Thank you, Trey.” She gave him a nod and made her way up the stairs.

She smiled as she heard Trey’s comment. “That is one tough broad.”

She knew from Malik the night before Trey had known Val. While he was older than Val, the same age as Brix and Malik, he had been exposed to Val’s insanity working with the elder brother. Malik told her Trey had once lost his mind over Val’s treatment of a dog and had refused to ever do any kind of work near the man again and had even gone so far as to say he would leave the family if he ever had to. Knowing Val, Jolie could only imagine what he’d done to a dog but knowing Trey hadn’t stood for it and refused to work anywhere near the man again made her respect Trey.

While she wasn’t completely comfortable with all the men in the house, proving it by locking her and Pia into her bedroom, she was acclimating.

Jolie walked into the bathroom and heard Pia making engine sounds. She was racing around the free-standing tub buzzing her lips together. Her words “I’m a mofo” making her want to go downstairs and yell at Luiz. She opted to ignore the child’s game hoping she’d lose interest and forget it by morning.

She pulled a large bottle of bubble bath from the box sitting on the vanity and opened it and sniffed it. “This is your bubble gum one. Do you want this one, Pia?”

“Yes, please mommy.” She paused in her running, out of breath. “Are my daddies going to be home soon?”

It felt weird still for Jolie to hear Pia ask for them despite Pia being enthralled with the idea. She swallowed the resentment of having to share her child and shook her head, “Daddy Brix told me he would be out really late.”

“Is he going to sleep with us in the big bed?” Pia looked out the bathroom door to Jolie’s bed.

“No. Daddy Brix has his own bedroom down the hall.”

“But you slept in the bed at the home-tel.”

“Hotel,” she corrected mindlessly, “and it was because Mommy had a nightmare. Mommy has her own room. Daddy Brix has his own room.”

“Daddy Malik has his own room?” she asked seriously.

“He does,” Jolie grimaced at the phrasing. The kid was getting two dads, like Norman had, except unlike Norman, both of hers were in the same house, underfoot and very much messing with Jolie’s mind. Her thoughts trailed again to the item the soldier, as Brix had called them, had tried to discretely advise her he’d noticed in her underwear drawer. With Brix and Malik underfoot, she had a feeling she may need to invest in a large stock of batteries for the tiny device or upgrade to one of those USB chargeable ones Opal had been bragging about recently.

Pia interrupted her thoughts, “mommy?”

“What baby?” She turned the taps on in the tub and dumped a generous glob of the bubble’s mixture into the running water.

“I’m glad we found Daddy Brix and Daddy Malik and Nonno and Uncle Rizio.”

“You are?” she looked down at her daughter who was removing clothing with a speed of someone about to do an activity they loved. Pia did love her bubbles. “Why?”

“Because you don’t have to be scared anymore.” She looked to her mother and jumped into the tub, almost falling over the high side. “You shouldn’t have nightmares about the bad guys because they will keep us safe.”

Her words made Jolie pause and she knelt down next to the tub and eyed Pia curiously. “Were you scared Pia?”

She shrugged as she splashed the water trying to make more bubbles. “Only when you were scared.”

“Mommy wasn’t scared,” she lied through her teeth. “What made you think mommy was scared?”

“Norman’s daddy said so. When school started. He told Norman not to bother me because you were a scared little girl and I was a scaredy cat like you. He said you were afraid of the daddies at the playground.” She blew the bubbles she collected in her hands. “He’s a big meanie head, like Norman.”

Jolie’s lips twisted with anger as she considered the idea Norman had been bullying her daughter for the entire school year because his father had insinuated, they were scared and weak. She reached out and took Pia’s face gently in her hand and looked at her seriously, “Pia, mommy is not scared. You heard Uncle Fabrizio downstairs, right?” When Pia nodded, she continued, “mommy is strong and brave. Just like you.”

As she considered the revelation, Jolie considered for the first time in her life, maybe Brix’s views on violence weren’t so horrible. Norman’s dad needed a punch in the nose.