Simple Faith (The Pagano Brothers Book 1)

by Susan Fanetti

  “You have to leave soon, so there wasn’t time for more, right?” She turned the burner on under the kettle. Already she had the coffeepot—a new addition to her kitchen; she didn’t drink coffee—brewing. “You didn’t like it?”

  “You know I did. It was like a visit from the orgasm fairy. But it was … unexpected, the way it ended.” Oddly, his feelings had been hurt, to have her just leave like that.

  “I’m sorry.” Turning to the other side of this galley kitchen, Lara began making one of her favorite breakfasts: a single piece of plain white bread, buttered and sprinkled with sugar. She called it fairy bread—which, considering how often he thought of her as a fairy, was apt.

  But as a food, it was pretty gross. “I will never get used to you eating that. There is literally nothing nutritious there.”

  “That is not literally true. The bread is fortified with vitamins, and butter is dairy.”

  “I’m pretty sure nutritionists aren’t putting Wonder Bread on their recommended menus.”

  She set the knife down and turned to him. “I’d like you to stop talking about the way I eat. You know why I do, and it’s not going to change. Lots of trained medical professionals have tried to help me overcome my food aversion, and aside from getting me to try fruits and vegetables—which I do eat, as you know—they failed. I don’t like the way I feel when you make comments.”

  He went to her and pulled her close. “Sorry. I’ll stop with the comments. But I won’t stop being worried. You barely eat, and what you do doesn’t have enough to keep you going.”

  “I take a multivitamin, too. And obviously, it does keep me going. I’ve been going all these years on it.”

  “You sleep fourteen hours a day, Lara.”

  “Please stop, Trey. It makes me anxious. This is who I am. Either you love me this way, or you don’t love me at all.”

  Trey’s breath stopped, and so did hers. Neither of them had used that word yet. Her eyes wide as saucers, she yanked herself around and out of his arms, turning back to the counter.

  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” she said to the sugary bread on the cutting board.

  “Didn’t you?” Trey circled her arm and turned her to face him again. She focused firmly on his chest, so he slid his fingers under her chin and lifted. “Hey, look at me.” Her eyes came up and gleamed warily at him. “If you did mean it the way it sounded, that’s okay. Because it’s true. I love you. The way you are.”

  The kettle whistled, and she left his hold and turned off the burner. “I don’t know how to be in love.”

  “Me, either. Lara, look at me.” She turned and did. “Do you love me?”

  “I don’t know what love feels like. How do I know? I think about you, and everything in my head jumbles up. My chest hurts. Everything you do and say, I feel it too much. You can make a joke about my food and it makes me want to cry, and I hardly ever cry. You can say you like the way I touch you, and that makes me want to cry, too. When you brought me back from the cabin and I woke up and you weren’t there and I didn’t think I’d see you again, I felt hollow and my heart hurt, and I know that wasn’t love, it couldn’t have been love because we barely knew each other. But it was just as strong as what I feel now, so how is this different? I need to know what it all means. I can’t find the sense. It scares me. You scare me.”

  She was turning herself in knots, but Trey was exhilarated, even as worry wound through it. This was the first time she’d indicated that she’d felt something real for him as far back as April. He grabbed her hands and pulled her close. “Hey. Listen. I’m no expert, but I feel the same way, and I’ve felt it since the cabin, too. That’s why I know I love you.”

  “You don’t know. You just said you’ve never been in love before. You can’t know.”

  “I do.”

  “How?”

  He cupped his hands around her face and made her look at him. “I’ve got a whole family full of models for love. Good models—my mom and dad, my aunts and uncles, they love each other like crazy. It’s not always easy, sometimes it gets pretty dark between them, but they always try. And I see the way they look at each other. I even see it in the way they fight with each other, like it kills them not to be on the same page. My folks almost split up a few years ago, and I saw how it was tearing them up because they love each other so much. And they got through it because they love each other so much.” It was over him they’d nearly split up, too. His decision to join with Nick. Trey refused to let that old guilt get its rotted teeth in him now. “Here’s what I think: I think you need to stop thinking. Love isn’t supposed to make sense. Turn off your brain for a minute, babe. Have some faith in what you feel.”

  That, at last, made her smile. “You have faith in everything.”

  “Nope. Only the important things. God. Family. You.” He grinned. “And the Red Sox.”

  She dove into his eyes and stayed there a while, searching. Trey let her look. Finally, she found what she needed. Her hands came up and slid into his hair. She pulled his head down until his forehead touched hers. “I’m still scared. But I love you, Trey Pagano.”

  ~oOo~

  “You’re late.” The irritation in Nick’s deep, quiet voice reverberated around the inside of Trey’s Audi.

  “Sorry, Uncle. I’m almost in the Cove. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Thank God he’d brought a fresh suit to Lara’s with him last night. He was trying very hard not to move into her place—not already, after only two weeks, and only just an hour ago saying ‘love’ for the first time, and hopefully not ever, because he wanted, he needed, to live in the Cove.

  “We are leaving in ten minutes, whether you’re here or not, and if you’re not …” Nick let Trey’s imagination fill in the rest, and his imagination was robust.

  “I will be there, Uncle.”

  Trey didn’t know if Nick had heard before he’d ended the call.

  ~oOo~

  Silvio Marconi was the don of the Marconi Family, the family that ran Connecticut, with a seat on the Council. Though the Paganos’ biggest problem was coming out of New Jersey, outside the ground covered by the New England Council, Rhode Island and Connecticut were the territories most vulnerable to incursions from organizations from the south. The Italian families of New York and New Jersey were the ones immortalized in fiction and film, and those Five Families and the New England Families had always operated with the careful cooperation of allies united in La Cosa Nostra. But New York and New Jersey were the home bases of multiple other organizations from multiple cultures that had not yet gotten solid purchase in New England. They were always trying, however.

  Nick and Vio had been friends since their boyhood, and they’d been allies as long as they’d led their families. Even on the Council, Nick and Vio were known always to vote together.

  But Vio wasn’t thrilled with the way Nick had pulled Trey up above his station. As Trey followed Nick, Donnie, and Angie through Vio’s seaside restaurant in Connecticut, he could see the Connecticut don’s narrowed look when he saw him.

  “Nick. Good to see you.”

  “And you, Vio.” The men embraced. Vio then shook hands with Donnie and Angie. But he held back from Trey.

  He made a point of putting his side, but not his back, to Trey—a message but not an outright slight. Trey was not full blooded, but his name was Pagano, and he was kin to Nick. “I thought this was an informal meeting among friends.”

  “It is,” Nick replied. “Friends, not a Council meeting. You know Trey.”

  Trey took that opportunity to offer his hand. “Don Marconi.”

  Still Vio didn’t acknowledge him. Trey could sense Nick’s growing umbrage. So could Donnie and Angie, who both widened their stances. Angie seemed to grow broader everywhere.

  “You know what is said about him, and about you. Not only in the Council. I’ve heard rumors of displeasure in the homeland as well.”

  “I don’t have time for gossip and rumors. Trey is here because I wan
t him to be. Do we have a problem?”

  Don Marconi stared at Don Pagano, and the combative vibe between these two friends was so powerful that the bustle around them, in this popular restaurant at lunchtime on a summer day on the Connecticut coast, seemed to stop.

  “You know I’m your good and true friend, Nick,” Vio finally said, his posture easing. “I only want you to think about what you do, and let you know that I will have to consider my family, should a choice need to be made.”

  “And I’m your good and true friend. You know I think before I act. Trey is here because he is an associate and is learning, and he is invested in this business. It’s his woman who was hurt.”

  Nick, Donnie, and Angie were the only people in his life who yet knew about his relationship with Lara. It was the first time he’d heard her described that way, as his woman. He liked the way it sounded, and the way it felt.

  He’d also noticed that Nick hadn’t denied that he had plans to make Trey. He’d merely deflected the point.

  If Vio noticed as well—and of course he had—he didn’t show it. The news of Trey’s interest in the Bondaruks, however, changed Vio’s attitude quickly. “Ah. My apologies, then, for jumping to conclusions.” He held out his hand as if there had been no interruption of the greetings. “It’s good to see you again, Trey.”

  Trey shook as if all was well. “And you, don.”

  Vio held out his arm toward a private dining room. “Come. Ed and Jerry are inside. We’ve got good food and good wine.”

  ~oOo~

  Seven men sat at a wide, round table in a quiet, plush dining room and enjoyed a good lunch together. The two dons. Their underbosses: Donnie, and Ed Alberici. Vio’s consigliere, Jerry Lovatelli. And Angie, who was Nick’s chief enforcer and head of security, but far more than that. Angie had proven his incontrovertible loyalty long ago and had been in the inner circle since.

  Nick didn’t have a consigliere, per se. He had a lawyer—a whole team of them, in fact—but since the death of Fred Naldi, consigliere to Old Ben Pagano and then to Nick, Nick had taken his counsel only from Donnie and Angie.

  The meal Vio served them was typical Italian fare: steak with a wine and mushroom reduction, olive risotto, roasted asparagus, and lots of bread and wine. While they ate, they talked of inconsequential things—Vio and Nick caught each other up about their wives and children; they all talked about their legitimate businesses; Vio asked Trey how his family was, and how Pagano & Sons Construction was doing, and suggested he might have a bid for them; and they all talked about baseball. The season was more than half over, and it hadn’t been a good year for Red Sox fans. After a dull first half, they’d come out of the All-Star break with a nine-game winning streak, and then stumbled back to dullness. They were in third place in the AL East.

  Then, as the bottles of wine were drained and cordial conversation found its end, their two pretty servers, both in sleek black dresses and sky-high black heels, carried in a whole cheesecake, and sliced and served it at the table. All seven men watched those hot women serve dessert, and not one eye was on the chicks.

  Just about every restaurant in the world offered cheesecake for dessert. But what most restaurants, especially chain restaurants, offered wasn’t really cheesecake. At least not the way Trey had grown up with it. ‘New York style’ versions got closer than those puffy, mile-high things that were like a cross between pudding and cake. But to get a real cheesecake, you needed to find yourself a real Italian restaurant and have them bring out a round brick like the one sitting on the table now.

  Italian cheesecake was dense as hell and heavy as fuck. And not all that sweet. Made with ricotta cheese, not that foil-wrapped ‘cream cheese’ sludge. You didn’t serve it with strawberry glaze or chocolate syrup or any of that crap. Maybe a little rosette of whipped cream. On the side. If you really felt the need to get fancy. But real Italian cheesecake deserved the plate all to itself.

  It you were ambitious, you could eat a whole slice, but rarely more than that. Because it clung to your throat and stuck to your ribs.

  There weren’t many foods in the world better than a slice of real cheesecake.

  The table was perfectly silent as the men, who obviously agreed with him, appreciated their dessert with small glasses of Frangelico.

  Then it was time to talk.

  Vio pushed his plate away and leaned back in his tall chair. “So, Nick. What do we do with these Ukrainians who stomp all over our turf?”

  “I have some information, and some ideas. I don’t think they’ll fly with the Council, though.”

  Vio shook his head. “No. There’s too much in-fighting in the other families right now. Abbatontuono is too old. Conti, too. And Tommy Sacco is an idiot. If you think we need the whole Council in on this, I don’t think we can do it. Not even a vote, much less a war alliance.”

  The Abbatontuono and Conti families were both led by men in their eighties. Vito Conti was pushing ninety. Neither man had a made son living, and both families were tearing themselves apart from the inside, with factions jockeying for control of the ailing men and the families they would soon leave behind. But the men themselves still sat at the Council table.

  Tommy Sacco was the son and heir of Gabriel Sacco, who’d been killed in a beef with a Colombian cartel a few years ago. Tommy was a hothead and a narcissist, and not what one might call a genius, though he thought he was the smartest man on the planet. There was infighting in that family as well, as capos tried to position themselves in the favor of their mercurial leader and advance their own agendas. Only the Paganos and Marconis were stable these days, so they would likely have to fight the Bondaruks on their own.

  “I don’t want to declare war on these assholes,” Nick said. “They’re nothing. Bugs under our shoes. But bugs carry disease, so they need to be exterminated.”

  “Agreed. So what’ve you got?”

  Nick nodded to Donnie, who pulled a sleek black notebook from his suit jacket. As he opened the book, he said, “A few weeks back, we got ahold of a Bondaruk record book. We had it decrypted, and it had some very interesting information. This is the part that might be of interest to you.”

  He pushed it across the table to Vio, who got out a pair of reading glasses and perched them on his nose. He scanned only the first lines before his head shot up and turned to Nick.

  “They got both of them on the hook?”

  “Yes. Both Connecticut senators. And more. In Rhode Island, they have the mayor of Providence and three CEOs, and others, but none so high up the chain.”

  “No one in Washington, not from your turf.”

  Nick shook his head. “We have our legislators locked down.”

  Trey knew the information they’d gleaned from the bagman book. What he hadn’t known already, Nick had briefed him about on the ride today. The Bondaruks had heavy blackmail goods on some key New England players and were using that leverage to set a foundation for their business.

  “I thought I had mine locked down, too.” Vio handed the book to Jerry, who studied it in more detail.

  “I assume what they’re using as leverage is known to you,” Nick said.

  “Yes, of course.” Vio took off his reading glasses and wiped his eyes. “We’ve been using it to keep them in line. How the fuck did these no-name cafones come up with it?”

  “Clearly, there are weak links who don’t appreciate the trouble we can bring to bear.”

  “Or they think the Bondaruk trouble is worse,” Trey said without thinking, and immediately sought a steak knife to cut his tongue out with. Sadly, the servers had taken away the sharp implements. Fuck, he should not have opened his mouth, not here and now. But he’d been so wrapped up in the discussion that he’d spoken without thinking.

  “Shut up, kid,” Angie snarled.

  “My apologies,” Trey said to Nick.

  “No,” Vio said. “Say your thinking.”

  Nick nodded. “Go on, Trey.”

  With his heart swimming aroun
d in his stomach acid, Trey tried to organize his thoughts into something worth saying to two dons, and do it without sounding like a scared little kid. He cleared his throat. “We’ve seen how they try to bring leverage to bear. This is what they tried to do to Frederick Dumas.” He had to be extra careful because no one, not even Nick’s close ally, knew that Lara was the asset. “They wanted him in their pocket, and they did it by torturing his daughter. They go for loved ones.” He cleared his throat again. “Dumas went straight to you. He didn’t flip. But the Bondaruks are banking on most people being too afraid of you to make that call and face you directly. They’re telling them to choose between what you”—he turned to Vio—“or you, Don Marconi, would do to them, or what the Ukrainians would do to their women and children.”

  He finished, hoping he’d said it right, and feeling like he was going to heave his delicious cheesecake all over this red linen tablecloth, and all the men around him simply sat there, their regard fixed on him.

  It was Jerry Lovatelli, the oldest man in the room, who spoke first. “They have no honor!” he said and spat to the side.

  “Are you suggesting we go for their women, Trey?” Nick asked, quietly.

  “No! No, Uncle. Not at all. I … I don’t have a suggestion. Just an observation about how they could flip people beholden to you.” Seriously, he was going to heave and then pass out soon. Too much adrenaline mixing with wine and rich food.

  “It’s a good observation,” Donnie said. “I don’t have a suggestion, either. Not yet. But we’ve got to get these people back in line.”

  “It’s not the first time we’ve fought scum without getting into the sewer with them,” Nick mused. “We make the Bondaruks play our game, and show them what they don’t know. My uncle used to say that the old way is still the way because it wins. “