Jax's POV
My phone began to rang so I quickly picked it up and headed onto the balcony.
"Hello." I answer.
"We have a problem." Gio tells me. For fuck sake.
"What's the problem?" I ask
I sighed and then listened to Gio explaining about some shipment.
"You need to get down here." He tells me.
"How do you expect me to do that?" I ask. I can't just leave Lara here to go to work. What am I even supposed to say.
"Drive." He says in a 'duh' tone.
"Gio, Lara is literally checking on Alannah right now. What am I supposed to say?" I ask.
"Wait till she falls asleep."
"I won't make it down there till like 3am." I sigh.
"Alright just make it as fast as you can." He says before hanging up.
I make my way back into the bedroom to see Lara asleep. I walk over to her and place my hand on her cheek causing her to flinch.
I guess she wasn't asleep then.
"It's just me." I say and she moves her hand on top of mine. I smile down at her as she yawns.
"Is everything alright, you were on the phone for ages?" She asks I sigh softly.
"It was just work, nothing you need to worry about." I say and she nods slightly.
She hadn't bothered to open her eyes the whole time I've been back.
She takes her hand from mine on her cheek and then gets more comfortable. I take my hand from her cheek and get into bed beside her.
I move closely to her and put my one arm under her neck and the other around her waist. I place my head in the crook of her neck.
She smells exactly like lavander and Vanilla. She always smells like lavander but now its mixed with Vanilla she smells so amazing.
It took about twenty minutes for me to be sure Lara was definitely asleep.
I gently remove my arms from her body. She shifts slightly and I move away and as quietly as possible head to my closet.
I only put on some trousers and a shirt, I tie my tie quickly which was hard as it was quite dark. I grab my phone and quietly head out of the room.
"Uh where are you going?" Mom asks as I start walking down the stairs.
"To the warehouse." I say grabbing my keys off Alfred.
"Does Lara know where your going?" She asks.
"Nope she's asleep." I say quickly fixing my tie.
"I thought she struggled to sleep without you?" She asks walking down a few steps to me. She starts fixing my tie for me.
"She can't that's why I'm trying to be as fast as possible." I say and she sighs but nods.
"Go then." She says and I smile and kiss her cheek before getting in my car.
I head to the warehouse and walk in. The men greet me but I head straight for my dad's office.
"Brazilian's?" I question once I see Gio and his dad on either side of my dad. They were all looking at a computer screen.
"Yep." Gio says looking up at me.
"Nice to see you got dressed." Dad says and I roll my eyes.
"You do know mom is awake don't you?" I ask and he sighs.
"That house is massive yet I still can't leave without it going unnoticed by her." He says.
"Anyway we're calling a meeting in the morning. We need to get leads ASAP. The Brazilians are taking it too far and well we're going to get his daughter and wife." Dad says and I nod.
"I want every single person that lives in New York who is part of this mafia here at 9am." Dad tells us, we nod. I sit down in a chair opposite them.
"Are we even close to finding out who she is?" I ask running my hand through my hair.
"Nope." Dad admits running his hand across his face.
"How the hell is it so hard to find out about them?" Gio says sitting beside me.
"No one knows a lot about Marcos right hand. We only know his first name and what he looks like." Dad says going through a draw and pulling out a file.
The tab of the file read 'Carlos (Brazilian right hand)'. I open the file to see two pictures of him. One was a photo of him and Marco's then the other one was the photo of him dad showed everyone with his child. I frown and hand the file back to dad.
"Not even their strongest allies know his last name." Alessandro says and I sigh.
I stand up and they look at me confused .
"I'm going home, we'll deal with this in the morning." I say and head out of the warehouse.
I get back home to see mom sat on the stairs looking down at her hands. As soon as the door opened she looked up.
"Where's your dad?" She asks playing with her ring.
"He shouldn't be too much longer he just had to let everyone know about the meeting in the morning." I say and she nods.
"Are you okay?" I ask and she nods and smiles softly at me.
"Go to bed Jax, you need to get a few hours in." She tells me and I sigh and kiss her cheek before heading up the stairs.
I quickly check in Alannah's room to see her cuddling one of her stuffed animals she brought. I smile and head back into my room.
Lara was still asleep which I was grateful for.
I quickly got back into my joggers and as I stepped out of my closet Lara stirred and sat up.
"Jax?" She whispers as she rubbed her eyes.
I make my way towards the bed and get into bed beside her.
"Are you okay?" I ask and she nods.
"Where did you go?" She asks.
"I just went to get a drink." I lie but she can't tell. I feel so bad about the multiple lies I've told her but I can't tell her yet.
I could just make out the concerned look on her face.
"Why can't you sleep?" She asks.
She sits up and grabs her phone. She squints as she tries to read the time on her phone. It's well past 3am I know that and I took her phone from her hands.
"I'm okay I just woke up thirsty." I lie yet again and she nods.
I lie back down and pull her onto my chest.
****
When my alarm rings I groan. I gently move from under Lara carefully so I don't wake her. I switch my alarm off and sit up.
I get changed into some workout clothes and head down to the basement.
"You look well rested." Gio says and I roll my eyes.
"Shut up." I say and he laughs.
"I can't believe my baby is having sleepovers and actually getting sleep." He says and I roll my eyes before heading over to the treadmill. He joins me on the treadmill beside me and hands me a bottle of water.
"What did Lara think of your parents?" Gio asks half way through our workout.
"Probably thinks my dad doesn't like her and probably thinks my mom is crazy." I say and he laughs.
"Why would she think that?" Gio asks and I raise my eyebrows.
"Well my dad hardly spoke to her and well my mom well you've met my mom." I say and he laughs.
"I'm sure she doesn't think that, you've met Lara she has the biggest heart and she's so kind." He says.
True.
The darkest parts of me are drawn to the lightest parts of her and it's the most fucked up thing I've ever felt. It's wrong. She deserves better.
After working out with Gio and telling him to meet me at the warehouse I head upstairs to get ready.
I walk past Alannah's room when I hear some crying and then a bang.
I open the door and see Alannah full on crying. I rush over to her pick her up.
"Hey what's wrong?" I ask and she cries.
"I uh haven't been able to get out of the bed I'm too little." She tells me and I frown.
"I'm sorry." I say and kiss her forehead
"I hurt myself." She says and I furrow my eyebrows.
"When I fell of the bed." She says.
"Where does it hurt?" I ask and she points to her tongue and then shows her palms which were bright red.
I kiss the palms of her hands and she thanks me and nestles her head into my shoulder.
I head back into my room and Alannah takes her head out of my shoulder.
"You're sweaty." She points out and I nod.
"I just exercised with Gio." I tell her and she smiles.
I place her on the bed next to Lara. She puts her head on Lara's stomach. As soon as Alannah's head rested on Lara's stomach, Lara's eyes fluttered open.
Lara sat up causing Alannah to sit up as well.
"What time is it?" She asks looking up at me.
"Half seven." I tell her and she nods.
"Good morning." She says kissing Alannah.
Alannah smiles up at her and climbs into her lap to cuddle her.
"I'm going to have a shower and get dressed." I say kissing Lara and she nods.
Once I was ready I blow dry my hair and see that Alannah was completely ready for the day.
Lara goes into the bathroom to have a shower and get ready.
Once Lara comes out of the bathroom she was ready and she smiled at me.
"Let's go down to have breakfast." I say and they nod.
Lara puts Alannah in a chair then sits beside her.
"Morning." Mom says walking in and kissing our foreheads.
"Morning" Lara and I say and she smiles.
"How did you guys sleep?" Mom asks and I pray she doesn't bring up the fact that I left in the middle of the night. I already told mom not to bring up anything about the mafia around Alannah and Lara as they don't know.
"Good, what about you?" Lara asks smiling and looking at mom.
"Good." She smiles as the chef brings in our breakfast.
"Where's dad?" I ask mom as she starts to eat her breakfast. We hardly ever eat breakfast without dad here. In fact most of the time dad's the first person in here.
"He said something about an early meeting this morning." Mom says and I look at my watch on my right hand.
"It doesn't start for another twenty five minutes." I say and she just shrugs.
"He just said it was really important." She says and Lara looks up at me.
"If you have to go, you can. Me and Alannah will walk home." She says and I shake my head.
"No it's fine I'll drive you, it's raining I'd rather you not walk." I say and she smiles slightly.
"They can stay here for a bit, keep me company." Mom smiles and I look between Lara and my mom.
"I don't know." I say shoving food in my mouth which causes me to get a scold from my mom.
"I don't mind, it'll give me and Alannah something to do." Lara says and smiling at my mom.
"Yay." Mom says reaching for Lara's hand and squeezing it.
"Don't be too thingy mom." I warn and she rolls her eyes.
"I can't remember the last time I actually had company with a girl that wasn't Gianna." She says.
I lean down and kiss both Lara and Alannah's foreheads before kissing my mom's.
"See you guys later." I say and pull a funny face at Alannah before leaving to make her laugh.
****
I had rushed to the warehouse as fast as I could. New York traffic actually is a joke half the time.
I get into the warehouse and it was completely silent. No one was hanging around so I made my way to the conference room
. I walk in and it was crowded. All men were in silence as they were still stood by their seats. I make my way to my seat and once I was sat dad told all the men to sit down.
"So a lot of you would know about the problems with the Brazilian mafia which we are facing right now." Dad starts looking up from the folder he has of Carlos.
"We are trying to get revenge. However, it has basically been impossible." Dad says.
"The right hand man is called Carlos. He has a wife and a daughter here in New York. All we know about Carlos is in this file." He says picking the file up.
"He is a very hard man to track down. We know nothing about his wife at all. We also know nothing about his daughter. The only thing we have on his daughter is a photo of her when she was a baby." Dad says looking around the room.
"We need everyone's help on this. I don't want a war, just revenge. I want people looking into a house under the name Carlos. I want anything you can find under his name. I want people trying to find security footage, anything you can find." Dad tells them.
"Anything you find, you bring it to me in my office. We will any treat any information as a lead." He says standing up.
"Wait what if the girl is dead?" Someone asks. I didn't know his name but I'd seen his face before.
"Something tells me she isn't." Dad says sitting back in his chair. He's willing to answer questions now.
"Wait when was that photo of the girl taken, surely you can find out her age that way." Someone else says.
"We don't know properly but we're guessing that she is around the age of a college student." I say.
I look over the file one more time and I swear I had seen Carlos' eyes somewhere before.
After the meeting we head back into dad's office.
"You boys are at the company today." Dad tells us and I nod.
"Um do you think this'll work?" I ask and he sighs and sinks into his chair.
"It has to." He says rubbing his forehead.
"Come on." Gio says and we get in the car and instead of heading to the company we go to my house.
"Aren't we supposed to be heading to the company?" Gio asks looking up from his phone.
"Yes but I'm going to get Lara and Alannah and drop them home." I say and he nods.
I walk through the front door with Gio by my side. The first thing I heard was Alannah laughing.
I follow the laughter into the living room.
"Jax is silly." Alannah says.
"I wouldn't say I'm silly." I say walking round the sofa and sitting beside Lara.
"Jax!" Alannah says running over and hugging me. I watch Lara hug Gio as I hugged Alannah.
Alannah runs over to Gio and mom looks at me.
"Come with me I need to talk to you." She says and I groan.
"Is she going to kill me?" I ask Lara and she just laughs.
"Don't be silly and I have no clue what she wants to talk to you about." She says and I sigh and kiss her. I follow my mom out of the living room and into the foyer.
"Alannah looks tired." She says and I rub my forehead with three of my fingers.
"She couldn't get off of the bed and she had a nightmare I think." I say and she nods.
"I'll get a bed frame smaller to the floor, is there any other changes I should make to the room?" She asks.
"You could put a door between our rooms so they're joined." I say and she nods.
"Okay." she says and heads back into the living room.
"Right you guys ready to roll?" I ask Lara and Alannah who were laughing with Gio.
"Yeah sure." Lara says standing up.
I already made sure Alfred put Alannah and Lara's bags in my car.
Once I pulled up outside the house. I went over to Lara's door and helped her out.
"Thank you." She smiles.
I grab their bags then take them to the door.
"Goodbye!" Gio shouts getting into the passenger seat. Lara gets the front door key out and picks Alannah up.
Alannah quickly hugs me and I kiss her cheek.
"I'll see you tomorrow." I say and she nods.
"I'm going to miss you." She says and I nod.
That's really cute. I'll see her tomorrow and she knows it.
"I'll miss you just as much." I say and kiss her cheek. She frowns and puts her head in Lara's neck. She does this a lot when she's tired or upset. I lean down and kiss Lara.
"I'll see you later?" She questions and I nod.
I kiss Alannah's temple and Lara's forehead one last time before heading back into the car.