Touch (The Pagano Family Book 2)

by Susan Fanetti

  Luca thought he knew what the problem was. They’d been willing to consider accepting her as his girlfriend. But bringing her to Mass, to the family pew, had been a statement that she might be more than that. That she was his family. And they weren’t prepared to accept that.

  They were going to have to. Because Luca saw his future now, and Manny was in it.

  His father glared at both sons but said nothing more. For a few minutes, the three sat quietly, eating or fuming or thinking or who knew what. John and Luca’s cousin Vince came over and broke the stony silence.

  “John, dude.”

  John, the foreman of this site, turned. “Yeah?” Vince had been persona non grata to Luca and his siblings, blood family or not, for more than a year after an ugly drunken incident at a Christmas party, where he’d been highly inappropriate with Rosa, their baby sister and his first cousin. He was a douche in general and not a family favorite. But he was their dead mother’s nephew, and Carlo Sr. continued to look out for him. Like keeping him employed.

  He’d been working his way back onto the ‘do not punch’ list slowly, and now everybody was talking to him again. More or less. Nobody had liked him much before he put some heavy moves on Rosa. Now he was that guy who was always around and you tried to ignore. But he was still family, and, as far as Carlo St. was concerned, welcome.

  Somehow Vince, who was a born asswipe and ducked responsibility as readily as he breathed, got lots of extra chances from Carlo Sr. Because of an accident of blood. Manny, on the other hand, who owned any trouble she had—owned it too much, in Luca’s opinion—was looked on with suspicion. Luca wanted to punch Vince just on principle.

  Vince waved back the way he’d come. “We got a problem. Uh…somebody hit a pipe. There’s water coming up all over the fuckin’ place.”

  Luca noticed that Vince’s boots and the bottoms of his jeans were wet and muddy. ‘Somebody.’ Right. Fuck. The family drama was tabled, and the Pagano men ran over to see what had gone wrong.

  oOo

  Luca had had just enough time to shower and change after spending the afternoon digging out a blown pipe with the Quiet Cove Water Department—who were not amused. He’d left his father to get bitched out and deal with whatever consequences there were. Mistakes happened, but mistakes that brought the bureaucrats out were wicked pains in the ass.

  Speaking of pains in his ass, now he was sitting on the expensive, padded red leather of a chair in front of Uncle Ben’s expansive desk. Nick was sitting in the chair next to him. Uncle Lorrie had taken a seat on the sofa at the side of the room.

  “I think the Bea—Anthony will hang in pretty good. Take a couple guys down, anyway, and get some notice.”

  Ben nodded. “That’s good. Fred’ll be pleased. Nick said that you were unhappy with the strength of his will.”

  Luca turned to Nick. He’d said no such thing. When Nick only returned his look and didn’t elaborate, Luca played through the times Uncle Lorrie and Nick had come in. They’d seen him once shouting at the kid about tapping out, calling him a pussy. He turned back to Uncle Ben. “He’s still figuring out how to stick a hold out and run the timer out. But it’s hard to get him in one. I think he’s doing good. Is this why you called me in? Progress check?”

  Luca didn’t believe that for a second. A call to the warehouse office meant serious business.

  Uncle Ben leaned back. “No. I have a name. I want you to see what you can see about the dealings of an Alvin Church tomorrow night.”

  “Fuck!”

  Ben cocked a bushy white eyebrow at him.

  “Sorry, Uncle. Sorry. But Church—I can’t just walk in on Church. He’s backing Rafael Mendoza—that’s the top of the fight card. Anthony’s just the pre-show entertainment. It’s like asking me to see if the President’s got a minute.” The full import of his uncle’s assignment struck him then. “You think Church is fixing?”

  “Perhaps. I think he knows. And I’m aware of his status in your ‘MMA’ world—this is a new concern of ours, but we’ve done our homework. So if he knows, I would imagine that yes, he is involved. I want you to find us something more than my imagination before we confront the problem.”

  For a moment, Luca considered refusing. He might as well—nosing around Church would likely get him killed, and probably not quickly. The Uncles wouldn’t do worse than that if he just said no.

  Church was a bad guy, with lots of money, lots of excess, not much patience or, frankly, smarts. Where the Uncles were old-school Mafia and had succeeded with savvy control, Church was Scarface. A fucking bully. But he was a bully with pull. If he was crossed, then he tore the place apart, with no concern at all for the consequences, and that ‘shock and awe’ approach had made him formidable. Luca’s last name would not slow Church down, because Church believed his own hype. He would stand on a pile of bones and proclaim his invincibility until somebody took him down.

  So what Uncle Ben asked of Luca was inches away from asking him to lay down his life for this job. He should try to walk away.

  But the truth was, he liked this gig. He liked training Anthony, he’d been glad to reconnect with old buddies—most of whom had also retired and were training or otherwise still involved in the life—and he’d felt a surge of not-entirely-unpleasant adrenaline at the thought of finding something the Uncles could use against Church.

  And honestly, of all the dark dealings the Uncles could have demanded from him to pay his debt to them, exposing fight fixing was fucking honorable. He was the good guy here. He liked that. He might end up a dead good guy, but he still liked it.

  “Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I’ll be there tomorrow night, Luc,” Nick added at his side. “You check in with me.”

  “I will.”

  20

  Luca had put John in charge of Manny for fight night. That wasn’t how he’d sold it. He’d been subtler than that, and Manny hadn’t even realized that she would have a minder until they got there, and suddenly John was glued to her hip.

  When he went to the bathroom with her and stood outside the women’s restroom, then she was certain. Luca had made John her bodyguard.

  She sat on the toilet, peeing and deciding whether to be angry about being babysat. She decided no. It was her first fight night, and it was crowded and rowdy in a way she wasn’t used to. Clubs she could do. She understood the people, and the places, and she could put her mind in a zone that allowed her to not go psycho in the noise and crush.

  These people, this crowd, she didn’t understand at all. Everybody seemed hyper-aggressive and angry. So she decided she liked Luca taking care of her and making sure she had somebody he trusted keeping her safe. He himself wasn’t around. He was with Anthony, and had strictly forbidden her from going backstage.

  John was leaning against the wall when she came out of the bathroom. There was a line along the other side, and he had attracted a lot of attention from the women waiting to do their business. He was handsome. Longish hair and just a scruff of beard, like he’d forgotten to shave for a couple of days. Tall and dark like Carlo, but less intense looking. Carlo looked like—and, in Manny’s experience, was—a brooder. John looked like a guy who’d bring you chocolate when you were sick.

  He pushed off the wall and smiled down at her. “You ready to get some violence on?”

  She brought her fists up and mimed a couple of jabs. “Let’s do it!”

  oOo

  Anthony was part of some kind of pre-card thing, where the winner of one short round took on another challenger, and so on until they had a winner at the end of five matches. He was in the first match. Though she’d been working out at the gym, paying attention to the fighters training, and learning a lot about fighting technique herself, Manny didn’t understand much of this fight structure. But it looked brutal as hell.

  She spent as much time watching Luca in the corner as she did watching Anthony. It was almost as hot to watch him shouting at his fighter, his neck rigid with the e
ffort, as it was to watch him fighting. She’d only seen a little of that, when he sparred with Anthony. But he was gorgeous. She liked him all sweaty, with his muscles big and ripply.

  She liked how things had been with them for the past several weeks, since the E had given Luca butterflies. That was how she thought of it. It hadn’t changed the way she’d dealt with physical contact from anyone else, not much, anyway, but Luca was in her safe zone now. He was alone there. And that was just fine.

  She figured it was because he’d been there with her. What had happened wasn’t some magic fix—she hadn’t after almost twenty-nine years suddenly been cured—but he’d been with her, and he’d done exactly what she’d hoped. He’d given her a context for his touch that she’d been able to keep.

  And that had, in fact, made her a little better just in general—as if being able to have love and to feel love in this way, being able to relax completely with Luca, had given her more power over the other stuff. She felt different, since that night. Stronger. Less defensive.

  It was good.

  So when John touched her elbow, just briefly, to change her direction and lead her to their seats, the unpleasant sensation was totally manageable, even though she’d been surprised, and even though she was in an unfamiliar place.

  The crowd wasn’t as big for this part of the night as it would be later. People were still filing in even as the fight started, and only die-hard fight fans and people with vested interests in the fighters and trainers were really paying attention.

  Mixed martial arts was savage, but Manny really liked it. From a distance, it didn’t look like much more than people whaling on each other, but there was a ton of strategy going on, and it was something like ballet, she thought. The fighters had perfect awareness and control over their bodies. And, sometimes, over their opponent’s bodies, too.

  Manny thought she’d like, someday, to be able to spar. She was too small to do what Tonya did, and she didn’t have interest in that, anyway. But to be able to fight another person—that would be cool. Unlikely, but cool.

  Anthony won his first match with a knockout but tapped out in his second. Luca pounded on the fence in frustration. When he and Anthony headed down the ramp, John leaned over. “He’ll be back there a while. You want to go out and get a drink or something?”

  “I don’t really drink.”

  “There’s soda, too. Maybe popcorn or something?”

  “Yeah, okay.” They left their seats and went to the concessions.

  John bought her an orange soda and a big pretzel, and himself a beer, and they stood at a wobbly, tall table. The crowd was thickening, now that the actual fight card was going to start soon.

  “Looked like you enjoyed that.” John grinned over his beer.

  “I did. It’s kind of beautiful. That probably sounds weird.”

  “No, I get it. Especially the littler guys, like Anthony. There’s a lot of finesse in the way they fight.” He chuckled. “Luca was a different kind of fighter, though. Not so pretty, but a lot more awesome than what we just saw. Anthony’s like a snake or something, slithering around. Luca was a bull. He just went in and beat the shit out of whoever was in there with him. He always made first contact, and then he just didn’t stop.”

  “What happened to his knee?”

  “You ever ask him?”

  She shook her head. She never thought about his knee like that anymore, unless it was bothering him. The backstory hadn’t mattered; that scar, and his morning limp that she now knew about, were simply parts of him. “I don’t know why, just never have.”

  “I guess it’s no secret. He was fighting this guy he’d fought and beat a couple of times before—KOs both times—and they’d been trash-talking and the usual bullshit. Kept up with it in the cage, too, which wasn’t Luca’s style. He was all business in the cage. Trash talk was for before. But the guy said something to him, and he said something back, and all hell broke loose.” He paused and took a long swallow of beer, then reached over, took her pretzel out of her hand, and tore himself off a piece.

  As he chewed, he continued his story. “The guy went postal, stomped the shit out of Luc’s leg. Luc went down. That shit’s illegal, but when the ref tried to pull the guy back, he knocked him cold, then dropped down on Luca—who was still trying to get up, even though his leg was bent the wrong way—and practically ripped his leg off at the knee. It was fucking gruesome.”

  “Holy shit! What’d they say to each other?”

  “He’s never talked about it much. All I know is the guy said something about our mom. Luca won’t say what he said back.”

  “What happened to the guy?”

  John shrugged. “Banned from the sport, I guess. He had a rep for being on the crazy side. Guess it was more than just hype. For a while, we thought Luc would never walk right again, much less fight or any of the other stuff he loves. But he’s a bullheaded fucker.”

  “Yeah, he is. I love that about him.”

  John gave her a look she didn’t understand. His eyes were light brown, almost like a dark gold, and they seemed to lase into hers. “You do love him, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought that thing you have makes that…well, makes it not possible.”

  “No. It makes it hard. Not impossible.” She saw him looking unconvinced, and she sighed.

  She’d found herself in the position of educating the Pagano family more than once over the past weeks. Sabina, Carmen, and Joey had all asked a lot of questions. Oh, she really liked Joey. He was moody and snappy most of the time, but then, so was she. So sometimes they’d sit apart from everybody and just bitch. It was awesome. She’d never had a friend like that before.

  Well, she’d had her brother. Not so much anymore.

  She decided to do a little educating of John now. She decided to use music to make him see. “It’s like this. You play guitar, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you weren’t born playing. You had to learn. You did scales and drills and learned to read music, which looked like goobledy-gook at first, right?” He nodded. “You had to think about where to put your fingers and which strings to pick or how fast to strum or whatever, right?” Another nod. “But now, do you have to think about any of that?

  The light or something changed in his eyes, and she thought he was getting it. “No.”

  “That’s how I am with feelings—or, not really with feelings. I have feelings like everybody else. But I’ve had to learn how express them. I even had to learn which feelings are good and which aren’t. Figuring out what people expect and what I have a right to expect—that’s been the real puzzle. Those rules change all the time. But I’ve had most of it down pretty well for a while. With Luca, though, I had to learn a new song. Like a whole symphony, really.” Feeling sheepish, she laughed. “Which is a stupid lame way to say it, but I hope it makes sense.”

  “It does. That’s a great way to say it. You’re okay, kid.”

  Jesus. She was going to be twenty-nine next week. Would anybody ever see her as a grownup? “Kid? I’m like two years younger than you!”

  He laughed and put his hands up. “Sorry. I always forget that. You seem a lot younger.”

  “Yeah. I get that a lot. It sucks.”

  oOo

  They were watching the third fight on the card, and Manny was getting antsy for Luca to join them, when John nudged her and pointed down near the cage. Luca was talking to somebody. It looked serious, but she was just happy to finally be able to see him. Surely, when he was done with whatever they had to say down there, he’d come up here.

  But then the guy—several inches shorter than Luca, with balding, short black hair, wearing black sunglasses in this dingy space—poked Luca in the chest and held his finger there. John stood right away. Manny did, too, but that didn’t give her a great deal more height. Still, she could see over the heads of the people in the row in front of her, since the seats were tiered.

  Luca brushed the fin
ger away but didn’t otherwise react. The conversation looked hotter than it was before.

  “I’m going down there. Stay here.”

  Well, that was not going to happen. Manny was not going to be left alone up with this rowdy crowd she didn’t understand. “No way. I’m coming.”

  John had already begun moving toward the aisle, so she didn’t know if he heard her. She didn’t care. She followed.

  He saw her following about halfway down the steps and just stared at her for a second before rolling his eyes and continuing on his way. By the time they were on the same level with Luca, his discussion with I-wear-my-sunglasses-at-night guy was ending. He saw John and Manny and came over.