The women all seemed vaguely familiar; Nick was sure he’d seen them in or around the building, though he made a practice of not becoming overly involved or familiar with his neighbors. A civil nod when they passed in the hall or the lobby, that was all. Considering the work that he did, it was better to be mysterious and aloof. His father and Uncle Ben had not been pleased that he’d bought a condo instead of a free-standing house; they thought the privacy in his building insufficient. But Nick wanted a low-maintenance life, and he liked the contained space of the beachfront condo building, built just beyond the Quiet Cove town limit and outside the jurisdiction of the rigid zoning laws that insisted every building in town be three hundred years old or look like it was.
The unfamiliar man flailing on his mat drew Nick’s attention. What an oaf. Probably a new resident; there had been a couple of units on the market recently. Nick read him as there for no reason other than the hookup potential. Considering that he looked like a circus clown parody of yoga, Nick knew that potential was significantly less than the guy probably thought.
His attention finally moved to the leader, and her, Nick placed clearly. She lived across the hall from him, and her name was…Evelyn? Kimberly? Something old-fashioned like that. He only knew that much because she had insisted on introducing herself when she moved in a while back. A year ago, maybe. When they passed in the hall, she smiled brightly, and chirped, “Hi, Nick!” every time, needing, and getting, no encouragement from him.
She had a beautiful smile, though, one of those brilliant, toothpaste-commercial smiles that made her whole face glow and always seemed sincere. He’d grown to enjoy meeting her in the hallway, but they still hadn’t said more than ten distinct words to each other.
Before today, he wouldn’t have been able to describe anything more than her face, but now, with the beach between them, he took her in more completely. Her top was dark pink and low cut; he could see her cleavage clearly, despite the distance. She was heavier than he’d expected—no, heavy was the wrong word. Curvy, maybe that was right. She had hips and tits.
She said something to her group and then turned to face the water. Nick tended to like his women willowy, but something about what’s-her-old-fashioned-name’s ass in her snug black pants caught his interest enough that his cock stirred. Maybe it was the way she was stretched on her yellow mat, with her legs straight out at both sides. The woman was limber, definitely.
The door behind him slid open. “Baby, what are you doing out here?” His comare, Vanessa Morgan, stepped out, wearing his shirt from last night. Nick stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the small round table at his side. He didn’t smoke inside his home or his SUV, and he rarely smoked around people.
“Nessa. Don’t call me ‘baby.’” Nick grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled her to him. She came easily and wrapped her long arms around his bare waist. Vanessa was willowy. Tall, blonde, and so slender his hands could meet around her waist, she was a model trying to break beyond the New England market and into the New York big time.
Nick didn’t tap random pussy like most of his guys did. He liked to have a woman. He thought of himself as a serial monogamist, even before he’d been named capo. Since then, though, it was minimum expectation; his uncle believed that members of the administration should be role models for the men who worked for them, and he believed that family stability was a role they should model. That Nick was forty-five and unmarried was cause enough for consternation; he’d damn well better at least have a regular woman on his arm.
The woman he was putting on his arm these days, and for the past few months, leaned her head on his chest. “Coffee’s ready. Do you want me to make you breakfast?”
Nick slid his hand over the soft silk of her long, gold hair. “No. I’ve got an early meeting. I’ll grab a slug of coffee on my way to the shower. You should get going.”
She kissed his nipple, and he closed his eyes, enjoying the sensation, but irritated that she was trying to distract him. “Can I shower with you?”
He set her away, gentle but firm. “Not today, Ness. I need some time to myself this morning.”
She pouted just long enough to strum his nerves, but then she nodded. “Okay. I’ll get moving. I have a call at ten, anyway.”
“I’ll call you later.” He caught her before she turned away, one hand around the back of her neck, and pulled her close again for a kiss. When her arms snaked up over his shoulders, he set her away again. “Have a good day.”
Though she was clearly unhappy with him, she muttered, “You, too,” and went back inside.
Nick stayed on the balcony until he heard the front door open and close. The time might be approaching to end things with Vanessa. He had no interest in more than this with her, or with any woman, and he could smell the need for more coming on her.
~oOo~
On the books and in reality, since his father’s death two months earlier, Nick was Chief Operating Officer at Pagano Brothers Shipping. About thirty hours of each week he spent doing that legitimate work. Off the books, and for most of the rest of his waking hours, his work was different but also the same. Replacing his father as underboss and Uncle Ben’s right hand, he oversaw the daily operations of the shipping company and every other Pagano Brothers interest.
Usually, he, Uncle Ben, and Fred met at lunch for their daily meeting; in the past few years, as he neared eighty, Ben had slowed down in the morning and didn’t, as a rule, get to the office before ten unless there was strong cause to be there earlier. Nick knew that the old man was coping with debilitating arthritis and preferred to keep his morning hours private, until the stiff weakness he felt after waking had eased and he could walk with his back and shoulders straight.
This morning, though, he’d wanted an earlier meeting. The previous day had been too full of blood family obligations for more than a quick ‘job’s done’ update, and he’d put Nick off when he’d said he had good intel. Now, he wanted a full briefing.
When Jimmy Lupo, his driver and bodyguard, knocked on his office door and leaned in to let him know it was time, Nick closed his laptop and went down the hall to Ben’s office.
Fred was already there, sitting in one of the red leather chairs in front of Ben’s desk. He stood when Nick came in.
“Morning, Nick. New suit? Sharp.”
In a habitual gesture that he always noticed himself doing but couldn’t seem to stop, Nick tugged lightly on the French cuff of his white shirt, bringing it out from the sleeve of his Armani suit coat—midnight blue, three button. It wasn’t a new suit, though, and it would have been difficult to tell if it were. All his suits were Armani, all of them midnight blue except his tuxedo. Some, like this one, were pinstriped. Though he didn’t always wear a tie, and wasn’t wearing one now, he dressed for business.
“No, Fred. Not new. But thanks. And good morning.” Before he sat in the other chair in front of the desk, he extended his hand across it and shook with the don. “Good morning, Uncle.”
“Nick. You left the party early last night.”
Nick loved his Uncle Carlo, and his cousins, too. He would certainly do everything he could to keep them safe—and he had. But he didn’t enjoy their company much. He felt a wide distance between him and them, between their family and his. They spoke of the family ‘on the other side of the pews’—meaning the Pagano Brothers—and he heard the word ‘wrong’ when they said ‘other.’ There was judgment in the distinction they made. He’d felt it as a child, and he felt it more keenly as an adult. They knew who he was in the organization, what he did, and they judged him. He didn’t care, but he felt it. So he stayed on the edges and watched.
He’d always felt isolated among his generation of the family. Uncle Ben’s girls, much closer to his own age, had been silly, frilly little princesses as children. They’d each left the Cove as soon as they’d graduated high school, going away to college and then marrying and leaving for good. Carlo Sr.’s children, though substantially younger than Nick,
had at least been more fun, until they were old enough to make that distinction and see themselves as the better Paganos. His own siblings, an older sister and a younger brother, had both died in earliest infancy. While his cousins had all grown up in bustling, busy homes, Nick had grown up in a nearly empty house. He didn’t care, but it made him different. So he stayed on the edges.
And left parties early.
He answered his uncle as he sat. “Yes. Met up with Vanessa.”
“You should bring her more often. It’s good for family to see you with someone.”
Choosing to ignore that statement rather than be derailed into a conversation about his sliver of a personal life, Nick said, “Landers talked at length before we were done with him. He gave us Jackie Stone. If we can take Stone out of the equation, then that’s the last line between us and Church.”
In the past two months, Nick and his crew had located, secured, questioned, and disposed of seven men who had worked for Alvin Church or one of his affiliates in the collective of up-jumped street rats trying to take the Paganos down. Three drivers. Four shooters. The men who killed his father, and the men who shot up the funeral, killing three Pagano associates, nearly killing Nick’s cousin Carmen and her then-unborn daughter, and injuring five other people, three of whom were civilians. His interrogations of those seven men had brought him to Raymond Landers, one of Church’s affiliates, an aimless asshole who’d been little more than a pusher with a good corner two years earlier and had lately been strutting around Lower South Providence in a customized Benz and five-hundred-dollar jeans. He’d soiled those jeans more than once before Nick and Brian were done with him. Now, that Benz had been chopped into anonymity, and Landers had, too.
Before he’d gone, though, he’d thrown out a nugget of intel that could finally break apart this band of assholes—he’d given them a way to flip or neutralize Church’s main ally.
“What do you mean, he gave us Jackie Stone?”
“Landers gave us the location of a big handoff with Stone and his supplier. We interrupt that, and we compromise the fuck out of Stone.”
Ben winced at Nick’s language but didn’t comment on it. “His supplier—you mean drugs. Out of where?”
“You know where, Uncle, and it’s no matter. I’m not suggesting we take on his business. I know your feelings, and I share them. I’m saying we disrupt it.”
At his side, Fred leaned forward, making his big belly rest on his legs. “It’s risky, Nick. A lot of our relationships with law are balanced on our agreement to stay clear of drugs. Even being anywhere near a drop like that could hurt us.”
Nick breathed deep and kept his eyes on the don. “Uncle. If we can get in the middle here, there’s a good chance that one of two things will happen—either the Colombians kill Stone for us, or Stone needs us to get out of trouble. The balance of Church’s power goes to hell either way. We could end this—end Church and end any question of who runs New England.”
Ben’s eyes moved from Nick’s, and he stared at a point between Nick and Fred for several seconds. When he spoke, he did so without shifting his focus to either man. “When’s Stone’s meet?”
“Ten days. Near Danbury.”
“That’s a long way from home. Not our neighborhood.”
“Take it to The Council. Ask for help from the Marconis. It’s in all the families’ interest to shut Church down. We’re already taking heat from the others for not getting control of it yet.”
At that, Ben’s eyes returned to Nick and blazed, but Nick was undeterred. “It’s true, Uncle. Eighteen months, Church has been biting at our ankles, and he’s done us real damage. Innocents are getting hurt. Our businesses are taking hits. My father is dead, and they shot up his funeral. The other families are watching, and they know that if Church wins, if he takes down the biggest family in The Council, it changes their games, too. The families have been at peace and allied for more than ten years. They are our friends. We need to ask for their help before they become our enemies.”
Nick could feel Fred’s tension, but he didn’t turn to him. He kept his eyes on his uncle. But Ben didn’t speak. When he sat back in his deep desk chair, his eyes still locked with Nick’s, Nick tried once more. “Uncle Ben. You have my love and deepest respect. Always. I know it hurts you to see that the world is not what it was. But I know you know I’m right. I know this is why you brought me to your side. Because I see. I’m telling you now what I see. We have to fight the war we’re in.”
At last, Ben nodded. With a heavy sigh that told Nick his uncle was finally beginning to crack under the pressure of the life he’d made, the don turned to his consigliere. “Fred. Make the calls. Ask to convene The Council.”
~ 2 ~
Beverly Maddox glided, stretching one arm and then the other past her head, kicking her legs to propel herself through the water, turning and lifting her head at steady intervals to take swallows of air. As she got to the wall of the pool, she rolled, twisted, and pushed off, headed back the way she’d come. She loved the sensual perfection of swimming laps—the slide of the water over her skin, the heat coursing through of all of her muscles as they worked in perfect sync, the centering rhythm of breath and movement.
One of the draws of the condo she’d bought at the end of last summer was this pool—not Olympic-size, but rectangular, laned, and deep. It was heated, and the condo community opened it in April and kept it open through September. Since they’d opened it this season, Bev had enthusiastically started a new regimen. Four days a week, she got herself going out here, doing at least thirty laps.
Her ‘courtyard’ unit, substantially less expensive than the ‘seaside’ units, overlooked this pool, so she always knew when it was empty and free for her to come down and do her thing. And sometimes, when she was home alone in the evening, she’d sit on her balcony and stare down at the illuminated water, letting the rippling blue glow send her into a contented trance.
As she reached the wall again, she took hold of the side and pulled herself up to sit on the edge of the pool and catch her breath. As she lifted her goggles off her head, she heard the yip of a small dog and blinked her eyes clear to see Carlotta walking down the sidewalk, past the fenced pool. Jester, her little white puff of a dog, pulled happily on his leash.
“Morning, Carlotta.” Bev stood and walked to the fence, picking up her towel from a lounge chair as she did.
“Hi, Bev. I hope we weren’t too loud last night.” Carlotta and her husband lived in the unit below Bev. They’d had a party the night before.
“Nope. I could hear some, but I went to bed with an audiobook, earbuds in, and it was fine.”
Carlotta smiled. “Thanks. Mrs. Greeley kicked up a fuss.”
“Mrs. Greeley likes to fuss.” Every neighborhood had its old biddy. The Oceancrest had Mrs. Florence Greeley, elderly widow, snoop, and malcontent.
“She really does.” Jester barked and scrabbled on the sidewalk, tugging as hard on his leash as his little body could. “Well, I better get him to the dog park. Have a good day.”
“You, too.” Bev looked up at the cloudless blue sky. “Looks like it’s going to be a beautiful spring day.”
~oOo~
She went to work a few hours later with her sense of contentment intact, and that was good. She liked her job, for the most part, but it required a level of patience that she didn’t necessarily possess by default. She meditated, did yoga, and swam because those activities gave her peace and focus, so when people were jerks, she could let it roll off without leaving a mark. It had taken a lot of training to get to that place. She’d had to clear a lot of emotional hurdles.
She liked her job because she liked the people she worked with, not because she liked the work. There wasn’t much to like about being a waitress. And no, she was not a ‘server.’ She was a waitress, in a silly, peach-colored polyester uniform, styled to look vintage and suit the décor of Sassy Sal’s Diner, a faux-Fifties place done in garish pastels and all the Happy Days tri
mmings.
During the off-season, the clientele was mostly townies, and mellower. Almost everybody who lived and worked in or near Quiet Cove knew each other, or at least looked familiar, so the proportion of jerks was lower. Summer people, though, were a mixed bag. It was only April, but the days had been turning warm, and people were beginning to stream in from the cities.
Deep (The Pagano Family Book 4) Page 2