A/N: Oh my gosh! Thank you to everyone who read, reviewed, followed and added to favourites! A special thank you to Shelly222 for your review! I don't think that the rest of the chapters will be updated as quickly as this one was; I just already had this one written when I decided to publish. Please excuse the mistakes.

Standard disclaimer applies.
Rating: T
Spoilers: up to Takedown Twenty, just to be safe

Chapter Two - You're a Dick Bag

Lester was standing in the doorway to my office and he looked pissed off. I'd been in Miami for six months. Eight months ago I'd been called away on a mission, three days after Steph's engagement. After two months of hell, I'd returned to Trenton, packed my bags, left Tank in charge and flown to Miami. I haven't talked to Stephanie for eight months. It's for the best though. This way she can live the life she's always wanted with Morelli without me around to confuse her.

Who am I kidding? It's just so that I don't have to see her married to him.

"Santos," I greeted him, hiding my surprise of seeing him here behind my blank face. I'd seen everyone from the core team at least once since I'd left Trenton, apart from Lester. He was the closest to Steph out of the core team. According to the rest of them, he's pretty pissed at me. So seeing him standing here in my office, with no warning that he was heading down here is a small surprise. "What can I do for you cuz?"

"You're un-fucking-believable, you know that?" he spat at me, the fury evident in his face and voice.

If anyone else had talked to me like that I would have terminated their contract and beaten the shit out of them for disrespecting me. However, Lester wasn't talking to me as my employee; he was talking to me as my cousin. He had travelled down here without my knowledge, so he hadn't used the company jet. He was in worn out jeans, white t-shirt and an open flannel shirt. He was obviously here for personal reasons.

"If you're gonna talk to me like that, the least you could do is shut the door."

"What? You don't want the Miami employees knowing how much of a dick you are? You don't want them to lose their respect for you like the Trenton office has?" he said louder. I saw a few heads turn at the sound of his voice.

"Santos," I said firmer.

"Fuck you."

I let out a frustrated breath and stood up. I closed the door behind him and sat down on the edge of my desk. "You come all the way down here to insult me?"

"No. Not initially. But then I got thinking about everything and I realised that the great Ranger Manoso, my big cousin who I looked up to since I was fifteen, is actually the biggest dick bag in the history of dick bags." His voice was louder now and I was glad that my office was sound proof.

"Dick bag?"

"Yes. You've outranked dick status so now you are numerous dicks. A dick bag," he explained.

"Thank you for that explanation," I said sarcastically.

"Fuck. You."

"So what were you thinking about for you to come to this great realisation?" I asked, trying to get him back on track.

"She got married, you know. Stephanie. Last month. She married the cop and hated all of it. She hated the planning, the ceremony, the hype, all of it. But she went through with it. You know why?" I'd seen this rage in Lester before, but I'd never seen it targeted at me. After ten seconds of silence he talked to me in a deadly quiet voice. "Because you fuckin' told her to."

"I told her no such thing-"

"Oh, I fucking stand corrected," he held his hands up in mock defeat. "You're right, you didn't tell her to. You know what else you didn't do? You didn't tell her how important she is to you, how amazing you think she is and how she deserves a thousand times better than the cop!" he was starting to yell and use wild hand gestures that I'm sure he picked up from Stephanie. "You didn't tell her that you wanted her," he said in a quiet voice. I flinched at that. He noticed. Every night I ran over our last conversation. How I should have told her I wanted her. That I loved her. But it was too late now. She'd gone and married the cop. That in itself proved that he was much better down here, away from her, than in Trenton.

"Yeah, she told me. She told me all about how you said they'd be happy together and that you're glad that they made up. She gave you a chance. She gave you the chance to step in and stop her from going through with the wedding. She gave you the opportunity," he spat at me.

I'm an opportunist, Babe.

"And you let her marry him. You threw her away. You fucking gave up on her! That was your chance Bat. Man. That was your chance to have her. You told her you were a man of action or whatever the fuck it was you said. You didn't stop her from marrying him and that action spoke a million fucking words, cuz."

"I don't need you to tell me what I've done, Lester. I fucking know what I've done and I have regretted it for the past eight months. You thi-"

"Then why didn't you fix it?!" he was about half a meter away from me and yelling right into my face. He was pissed.

"Because I can't give her the life she wants," I said quietly. His brow furrowed in confusion.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" he said at a much more normal level.

"I can't give her the Burg life. I can't give her a ring and kids and a dog and a white picket fence. She wouldn't be happy with me."

"Are you a fucking idiot?" My head shot up and I stared at him in shock. "Did you not listen to what I said not five minutes ago? She's miserable! She didn't want to get married. Whenever Morelli mentions kids she starts to hyperventilate. Those few months when she was sleeping around with you were the happiest she's been all year. She doesn't want the Burg life you dumbass."

"How do you know all of this?" I asked when he finally sat down on the couch. I leant back against my desk and crossed my arms over my chest.

He shrugged and ran his hand through his hair. He was looking a lot calmer now that he'd called me a few more colourful names. "She hangs out with me a lot." I looked at him with my eyebrow raised. He sighed and carried on. "About a week after they got married, I noticed she was spending more and more time around RangeMan. She's been working nine to five most days because Morelli made her quit bond enforcement. She's just doing searches for us and helping Tank with paperwork. But she'd be getting here at 0800 and not leaving until about 2100 and I thought it was weird. So one day at 1700 I took her up to my apartment, sat her down, gave her a beer and told her to spill. Hell, she was a newlywed! She was supposed to be asking to leave early so she could go home and surprise the hubby with some sexy lingerie, not working massive overtime.

"After three beers she spilled everything to me. About what was going on with you before she was engaged, all the bullshit lines you fed her, the DeChooch deal, the vordo thing, Hawaii, what you fucking said to her in the café, how you left and didn't even tell her you were leaving. She told me everything she hated about the wedding and being married. How the thought of having kids with Morelli made her want to throw up," he closed his eyes and tilted his head back to rest on the couch. "You know she refused to change her last name? She's still Stephanie Michelle Plum. Wouldn't even hyphenate it," a small smile twitched at his lips as he said it. I have to admit, I liked that she hadn't changed her name. That way she didn't totally belong to him. But she didn't belong to me either.

"So she realised that she doesn't like married life. What's your point?"

"My point is that she never wanted to marry him in the first place. My point is that she said yes to him because her first choice didn't want her anymore," he lifted his head up to glare at me again. We were quiet for a minute, him still glaring at me.

"In all the time I have known Stephanie, I have never seen her do something she didn't want to do. She can't be forced into things, she's stubborn. So this idea you have in your head, that she never wanted this, is bullshit," I told him sternly. Stephanie's stubbornness was one of the things I admired about her. She wouldn't let anyone force her into anything. Not even me. I've tried many times to convince her to go into a safe house when one of her stalkers has got a little out of hand. Hell, I've even tried stopping halfway through sex, telling her I wouldn't continue if she didn't promise me that she'd go to a safe house. She got up and walked to the bathroom to have some intimate time with my shower massager. That woman cannot be forced into anything.

"That may be true for a lot of things. But she was being pestered by her mom, the grapevine was saying that something was wrong with her because Joe wouldn't marry her, Joe's Grandma Bella was even worse than usual. She agreed to marry him because her family had put it in her head that Joe was her last chance at happiness. She gave you the chance to prove them wrong. To prove that you could give her happiness. And you sent her back to the cop."

"You said the entire Trenton Office has lost respect for me," I said, looking at my feet. I would never show this kind of weakness to an employee, but I knew this was my cousin right now, not my employee.

"They all know what you did to her."

"Has she lost respect for me? Does she hate me?"

Lester looked -or should I say glared- at me for a solid thirty seconds before answering. "You don't fucking deserve her, man."

"I know."

"No you don't know," he yelled over me. "She still loves you. After everything you did to her, she still fucking loves you. She defends you in the break room when the men are bad mouthing you. I don't even defend you. Hell, I join in with bad mouthing the boss. You broke her heart. You ripped it out of her body and tore it to shreds. But she still loves you. You don't deserve her."

"Why did you come here, Lester? You've avoided every single core team meeting here for the past eight months. Why are you here now?"

"Steph's been hanging out with me a lot. Usually when she wants to avoid Morelli or had a run in with her mother. We watch movies, drink beer and talk. She said something yesterday and I wanted to tell you. But I wanted to do it in person so that you couldn't hang up on me when I started calling you a dick bag," he stared at me and then nodded to the guest chair in front of my desk. "Sit down."

"Are you telling me what to do in my own office?"

"Sit your fucking ass down," he said in a deadly quiet tone. I wanted to hear what she had said that was so important for him to see me in person, so I turned the chair around to face the couch he was sitting on at the back of the room and sat. "I asked her what she would do if you walked into my apartment right that second and apologised for everything you did. If you told her you loved her and that you wanted her. She said she'd want you to prove it to her that you wanted to be with her. I asked what she would do if you convinced her. She said that she'd divorce Morelli that second." He ran his hand over his face and looked at me again. "This is your chance right now. You said yourself that you regret what you did. If you still love her, you'll come back to Trenton with me, tell Steph that you want her and that you'll give her any kind of relationship she wants. I guarantee she won't ask for marriage or a white picket fence." Once he was finished talking, he stood to walk out of my office. Standing, I stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

"How do you know that I love her?"

He smirked at me. "If you didn't, you would have physically removed me from your office and wouldn't have listened to me venting all my hatred towards you. You're forgetting how well I know you, cuz. In fact, I know you so well that I know that you can be good for Stephanie, despite how much of an asshole you've been to her. I know you can redeem yourself." With that he walked out of my office, barking a few commands at men to get back to work and heading towards the elevator.

Would she really give me another chance?

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