And Sky got her now, making their conversation a complicated dance on Bev’s side. “You sound wrong, sweets. I’m glad to hear your voice, but I’m still worried. I’m coming over on my way into the diner.”
“No, Sky. I don’t want company. I just need to rest. I’ll be okay.”
“Is that guy with you? Nick? What phone are you calling from? This isn’t your number.”
“Yeah. It’s good. I’m good. I lost my phone last night. I’m using Nick’s phone.”
“I still want to come over. I’ll stop at the Cove Café and have Edith make you that chicken spinach wrap thing you like.”
Bev looked around at the men in the room, who seemed to be simultaneously ignoring her and hearing every word. The last thing she wanted was for Sky to get caught up in this somehow. “Really, Sky. I’m good. I’m just tired and not in the mood for company. Okay?”
The silence on the other end of the line stretched out. When Sky finally spoke again, her voice had the depth of suspicion. “Is he keeping you from us? Chris said he couldn’t get to you this morning. Bev, I’m really worried.”
A big part of her wanted to say, YES! I’m in so deep I’m drowning! But she didn’t—and not only because she didn’t want her friends dragged in.
There was something more. Despite everything, despite her fear and frustration, she believed Nick was trying to keep her safe. She thought of him sitting next to her last night, keeping her company while she fell asleep. She wanted that man back. So she laughed lightly, trying not to stress her ribs. “You’re being silly. I was asleep this morning. The hospital gave me the good stuff. I’m not being kept from anything. I just need to rest. Okay? I’ll check in again, and I’ll see you Wednesday.”
Skylar sighed audibly into the phone. “Okay. You call if you need anything.”
“I will. Love you.”
“Ditto, sweets.”
When she ended the call, aching inside and out, feeling suddenly very alone, she nearly broke down into tears. But she managed to hold them back, unwilling to collapse in front of an audience of men she did not know, men she feared.
After that, she took a shower, where she did let herself cry, trying to breathe through the pain her sobs made. She then dressed in her own clothes—yoga pants, a camisole, and a zip hoodie—and bandaged her face and elbow again. Those wounds she barely thought of; the pain in her chest consumed her attention.
Betty, who’d been maternally fussy all afternoon, finally force fed her some roast and salad, and then, mercy of mercies, bestowed on her two Percocets with a bottle of Pellegrino. And then Bev went to the guestroom—her cell—and closed herself in and went to bed.
As she waited to fall into a medicated sleep, dark thoughts she’d rousted ages ago returned for a visit. In a matter of just a few hours, she’d lost the reins of her life again, and somebody she didn’t understand had laced them into his fingers. She was too trusting. She expected people to be good. No matter how many times they showed her they were not, she continued to expect them to be good and was left alone and astonished when they weren’t. She was either stupid or crazy, but either way, she never learned. Even now, she wasn’t learning; even now, her brain conjured up the memory of Nick lying with her on the sidewalk. That was the good man she wanted, and that was the thought in her head when the Percocet haze enveloped her.
~oOo~
When she woke, the room was dim; night had fallen. She felt a little better in body and spirit, so she got up, eased her hoodie back on, and went out to see what the world of her handsome prison was like now.
It was quiet and still dim. The hall sconces were lit, and there was a light on over the kitchen sink, but otherwise the only light in the apartment came from a single lamp on a table in the living room.
The place was deserted—or almost. Nick sat on his sofa, a glass in his hand. Scotch, probably. She had seen the bottle of scotch on his counter the night she’d brought the beer over, and he’d drunk scotch at Neon, too. His drink of choice, she guessed.
His mother was gone, all the strange men were gone, even Donnie was gone.
His eyes went to her immediately as she entered the room. “How’re you feeling?”
“Better. A little less sore. Where is everybody?”
“Working or home with their families. There are three men on the building, including one just outside the door, so don’t worry. We’re still covered. I needed some quiet.”
“I’ll go back to the room, then.”
“No. Sit with me. Do you need anything?”
She was hungry, but not really in the mood to eat. On the counter was a bowl filled with a bunch of bananas, some peaches, and a couple of apples. “Can I have a banana?”
“Of course.”
She took one and came into the room as she peeled it. She sat on the other end of the sofa, and he watched her eat. They didn’t speak.
When she finished her banana, feeling self-conscious with his eyes so heavy on her, she took the peel to the kitchen and found the place to throw it away. Then she went back around the counter and sat where she’d been.
“I don’t like it when you look at me like that.”
He didn’t apologize or respond to that statement at all. Instead, he said, “Tell me about your scars, bella.”
She felt sure that she would have told him to fuck off, except that he’d called her bella. It seemed like he was always doing or saying just one thing, just enough, to keep her in the stupid zone. So she didn’t tell him to fuck off. But she also didn’t tell him what he wanted to know, not yet. “Why? Why is it so important for you to know?”
“You tried to kill yourself.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t like quitters. I don’t like weakness. There’s no room for either in my life. Suicide is both.”
“So?”
“I do like you.”
That caught her off guard. He was different, again, from the man who’d trapped her in his office earlier in the day. “Which Nick are you tonight? Good Nick or Bad Nick?”
He cocked his head at that, and then he grinned. Not a half-smile, a grin—but not exactly mirthful, either. She couldn’t figure it. He was so hard to read, always. Inscrutable. “I’m always Bad Nick, bella. But I’m good to people I care about.”
“And you care about me?”
“I seem to.”
She tried to ignore the way her stupid heart skittered at that. “Why?”
“I like your spark. Tell me about your scars.” He’d barely moved throughout this conversation—or was it another interrogation?
“I’ve only ever told people I trusted.”
“So trust me.”
She wasn’t so far gone for him that she didn’t see the absurdity in that statement. “Why should I? You’re holding me against my will.”
“Aren’t you trusting me with your life, then?”
She laughed and then grunted at the sharp twinge that followed. “God. You know how twisted that sounds? I don’t have a choice. You took my choice away.”
“I didn’t drag you to my table last night.”
“So, what—I wanted a night with you, and now we’re stuck together?”
“Is that all you wanted? Tell me about your scars, Beverly.”
His dogged return to that single demand was wearing her down. But not enough to tell him the story. “It’s old news. I had a rough time as a kid. It got to be too much. I thought it was too much.”
“How old were you?”
“Fifteen. It was literally more than half my life ago. I’m not that girl. Are you the same person you were when you were fifteen—however long ago that was?”
“Thirty years. And no.”
“Good. Can we stop talking about it now?”
He didn’t answer in the affirmative or otherwise. He stared at her, still unmoving, his hand holding his glass of scotch on the arm of the sofa. Then he drank it down. “Why feathers?”
“What?” Maybe it was the concussion
, or waking up from a Percocet sleep, or maybe this conversation was just strange, but she felt two steps behind.
“Your ink.” He nodded at her arm. “Why feathers?”
Oh. That answer she gave him, free of evasion. She looked down at her wrist. She loved these feathers. They gave her strength. “When I did it, I felt crushed by the weight of everything that was wrong. The feathers remind me that we choose the weight of the problems on our shoulders. Now I choose not to let my problems weigh me down.” A philosophy she would do well to remember right now.
He smiled, and this one was real. Again, his face transformed, and he was Good Nick, with lively green eyes and a perfect mouth. “That’s a great answer.”
Some of her petulance from earlier reared up. “Do I get a gold star, or something?”
He didn’t lose that smile, but he cocked his head, squinting at her slightly. “Do you understand why you can’t tell people what’s going on?”
“I think I understand enough. You’re a mobster, or a Mafioso, or whatever you call yourselves, and you want to be able to handle the problem yourself. You don’t want people to have anything to tell cops or whoever asks.”
“I’m a Pagano. That’s what we call ourselves. And yeah, we have secrets. I need you to keep ours. Can I trust you to do that?”
“My feelings about the police are ambivalent. So yes. I’ll keep your secrets. I’m not sure what I even know.”
“It doesn’t matter. Just say nothing. To anyone. Agreed?”
“Agreed. Can I go home?”
“In the morning. You’re still not safe, so I’m keeping a watch on you. And I want you to stay in your apartment, or mine, until I say otherwise. But in the morning, when Donnie’s back, if you want, you can go back to your place.”
“I want.” She almost thanked him, but pulled the words back. She was not about to thank her captor for releasing her. “I’m going back to bed.”
He nodded. “Good night, bella. Your pills are on the counter, if you need them.”
She did, but she walked past them anyway.
~ 7 ~
As Nick stepped onto the front porch, Uncle Ben’s front door opened, and Sal, one of the soldiers on guard, moved aside.
“Morning, boss.”
Nick stepped into the foyer. “Sal.”
Aunt Angie came into the main hall, wiping her hands on a towel. “Nicky!” She tossed the towel onto her shoulder and hurried forward, her arms out. “How are you, carino?”
“I’m good, Auntie. I didn’t get hurt.” He let his aunt hug him hard. Angie was tall for a woman, taller than Uncle Ben with her heeled shoes, but she still pulled Nick down so she could get her arms around his neck. She had been a glamorously beautiful young woman and had aged into stately handsomeness as she approached eighty.
She clutched his shoulders and leaned back, then grabbed his cheek in one hand and gave it a hard, pinching shake. Nick closed his eyes and withstood this painful affection he’d been assaulted with his entire life. “Still. What kind of man does such a thing? Blowing up your car. This is America!” She let his cheek go with a slap. “Come, have an espresso. Your uncle isn’t down yet. This is early for him, you know.”
When she turned and headed back down the hall toward her palatial kitchen, Nick followed, rubbing his cheek. Italian women and their brutal affections.
He sat at the marble counter, and Angie poured him a small cup of strong, dark espresso. “How is Brian?”
“Good. Healing well. We’re bringing him home tonight.”
Her carefully-groomed eyebrows arched up. “So soon? It’s only a few days.”
“Hospitals get you home as fast as possible. And he’s safer at home.”
As if she saw the sense in that, she nodded. Then she got a sharp look in her hazel eyes. “And what of this girl who was with you? I saw the picture that’s all over the news. That wasn’t Vanessa you were kissing.”
Not even his mother had said anything about that, but Angelina Pagano, donna of the family, let nothing go unnoticed or unsaid. “Vanessa is over.”
One eyebrow outpaced the other on their climb up her forehead. “Good. I didn’t like her. There was disdain on her face all the time—she won’t be so pretty when she’s old if she doesn’t start smiling. But you move quickly, Nicky. Who is this new kissing partner?”
“Auntie, no. I kissed her hand to make her feel better. Don’t make more of it.”
It was more than that, and he knew it. He liked Beverly. Since the bombing, he’d come to like her a lot, and it was more than physical attraction or even a sense of responsibility. She’d fought him, stood up for herself. He’d seen the fear in her eyes, but she’d stood her ground despite it. That was real courage. Right alongside the fear was that spark, giving her power, giving her light.
His life was mostly darkness. Lately, since Church, it had seemed entirely dark. Beverly’s light felt like a beacon.
And that was some fucked-up thinking, and he needed to get control of it.
His smart, domineering aunt leaned on the counter, over her own espresso. “Have you looked at that picture that’s going around?”
It really was going around. It was getting shared out of context, too. Like that photo he’d seen a few years back of some protest or another, of a couple lying in the middle of the street, kissing. Somehow, he knew that his version of that was going to make his life more complicated. “Of course I saw it. Probably before you did.”
“No—have you looked at it? Really looked at it? Because I have. There’s something in the way you look at her I haven’t seen before. You like this one. You should bring her for dinner.”
“Jesus, Auntie. No.”
“Language, Nicky. Don’t blaspheme in my house.” She gestured to the crucifix on the wall. “He is watching.”
“Who is watching?” Ben entered the room. He was dressed in a double-breasted dove-grey suit, a white shirt, and a charcoal grey silk tie. He looked dapper and in control, the don everyone respected. “Nick.”
“Uncle.” Nick embraced him and kissed his cheek. “You look good this morning.”
“I slept well. I hope you did, too. Today is an important day.” He went around the counter and kissed his wife. “And who’s watching?”
“The Lord.” Angie turned and prepared an espresso for Ben.
“Ah. Yes. Not too closely, I hope.” He took his cup and saucer. “Come, nephew. We should talk before we go.”
Nick agreed. He leaned over the counter and kissed his aunt’s cheek, then finished his espresso and followed Uncle Ben to his study.
~oOo~
Ben sat on one of the long, leather sofas. Nick sat on the other, facing him. “We should talk strategy before the Council meets.”
“No. Strategy is for after. For the Council, I will simply explain to them our problem, how it’s also their problem, and what’s next. You’ll be quiet unless I say otherwise.”
Nick sat up straight, surprised and insulted. “Please? Uncle, I—”
Ben shut him down with a brisk wave of his hand. “No. Listen. You are the right man to be at my side. You are smart and careful—thorough. You see everything, and you see long distance. You are a good underboss, and someday you will be a great don. But I can feel your disrespect, Nicolo.”
“No, Uncle. You have my complete respect.” Nick felt an unfamiliar kind of wariness rising up in his chest. He had not expected this conversation at all.
Ben shook his head. “I don’t. You think I am past my expiration date. You think I’m making mistakes. You think I don’t know how to fight Church. Your frustration shows.” He leaned forward and narrowed his eyes. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
Chastened and uncertain, Nick answered quietly. “I love you. You’re my godfather. You saved my family. And you’re my don. You have my eternal respect and devotion. But no, I don’t think you’ve made your wisest choices lately.”
Ben sat back and laced his hands across his midsection. “We don’t speak of
your father’s troubles.”
No, they didn’t. Ben had put a gag order on that as soon as it had happened. Thirty years ago. “No. I apologize.”
With a nod and a wave, Ben set that aside. “But I want you to think about the rest of it. More than fifty years, your father and I ran Pagano Brothers. We took our father’s business and built it up. We made our own business side by side with it. And those businesses have been running unimpeded since. We do things the way we do them because it works. We keep a low profile. We don’t make things harder for elected officials or law enforcement. We make things easier for them, professionally as well as personally. And they make room for us to do our work. You think we’re struggling against Church because I don’t know how to fight him. I’m saying to you now that he’s not the first cafone to think he could reach high enough to spit in my face. And yet here I stand, my face dry. The old way is still the way because it wins.”
Deep (The Pagano Family Book 4) Page 9