Footsteps

by Susan Fanetti

  When it was time to go, Sabina helped Carlo bring the blankets into the cottage, and he took the opportunity to kiss her goodnight. Thoroughly. Being sober did not dampen her need for him in the slightest.

  Then Carmen walked her to her car, and Sabina went back to the beach house she no longer thought of as her home. She didn’t notice if the Escalade followed her. She didn’t care.

  That night, she dreamt vividly of Carlo. She woke in the dark, startled and panting, and realized that she’d climaxed in her sleep. Smiling, she lay back and dropped away again, her hands tucked between her legs, still feeling the tapering throbs of her pleasure.

  ~oOo~

  The sun in the room was the vivid bright of late morning when she next woke. She felt good. Before she even opened her eyes, she reached back and tried to find the dream she’d had. It was there, muted but still wonderful. She lay in the beaming sun and relived both the dream and the reality. Finally, she sat up and stretched. She opened her eyes.

  James was sitting in the large, white armchair across the room.

  “Good morning, darling.”

  ~ 9 ~

  Carlo was still awake when his father rose and started his day. He’d spent the night reliving his evening with Sabina. God, she was beautiful. And the way she’d felt in his hands, her skin warm and supple, her mouth and tongue taking all he could give her—intoxicating. Everything about that kiss—those kisses—in Carmen’s cottage had been beyond erotic. He’d jacked off twice in the night to the relived memories.

  He’d come so damn close to just taking her. She’d been coiled around him so tightly, so unwilling to let him go. She’d all but begged him. Maybe it had been the beer, but her complete lack of reserve—such a difference from before—had nearly undone him. Thank God for Luca. Because they had to show some restraint. They could not commit adultery, and they’d come close last night.

  Now that a deal had been struck, there was nothing to do but wait. The Uncles had taken on the task of freeing Sabina, and there was no checking in, no querying, no handling things otherwise. They had to trust that the deal would be honored, and Carlo would hear from them when it was done. He had quite purposely only stated what he wanted for Sabina and not put any bounds on how it got done. He didn’t give a fuck whether Auberon lived or died.

  They would wait, and Carlo would try to keep his hands to himself. As much as possible. It might be a good idea to limit their time together. But even as he thought that, he was lamenting that he still did not have a number at which he could reach her.

  He lay in his bed in his childhood room and listened to the hardwood floors creak as Carlo Sr. moved from bedroom to bathroom, then down the hall, down the stairs. Elsa, who slept in Trey’s room here, padded after him, the tags on her collar jingling. He heard the squeak—faint from upstairs—of the kitchen door opening, and knew that the dog had been put out in the yard to take care of her morning business.

  For as long as he’d worked, Carlo Sr. was up for the day by four-thirty every morning. Since he’d started the company, he was always at his office by six o’clock. He didn’t take on day laborers—every job in the company was filled by a full-time employee with benefits, and job crews were therefore stable teams. It made for more overhead, more paperwork, but Carlo Sr. had felt that people who worked together consistently worked together better, and that had proved to be true. Pagano & Sons was known for quality work and conscientious workers.

  Job sites opened at seven—unless they were in a location with neighbors who didn’t like that, in which case the jobs started at eight or nine. Carlo Sr. hated those lost hours. Though Luca was his chief supervisor and traveled every day to check in at every job site, their father got restless indoors and spent some of most days at a few—generally the more complex, high-profile sites.

  Their most high-profile job right now was a small beachfront cottage development—fifteen units and a main house, with four different layouts. Carlo was especially interested in that project because he had designed it. For only the second time so far, his career as an architect had dovetailed with his family’s company. And this was the first time that he’d been working independently when it happened. Pagano-Cabot was the design firm of record.

  Quiet Cove’s town council was persnickety about large developments. The town was known for its quirky, intimate, small-town charm, and there were no big hotels or resorts on the beaches within its borders. There might never be. The developer (not James Auberon) had fired its first design team after more than a year of fights with the council over environmental footprint and architectural compatibility. When the new requests for proposals went out, Carlo and Peter, still unpacking their new office, had put together a proposal that leaned heavily on Carlo’s intimate knowledge of the town. What they’d proposed, and what he’d ultimately designed, were cottages that looked like they might have been erected hundreds of years ago, but had the highest-end appointments. The buildings were nestled in natural space, designed by yet another Pagano, and had the perfect balance of charm, history, luxury, and privacy.

  This project was the first time Carlo and Carmen had gotten to work together. It was going well; he hoped they would be a regular team.

  The project had been delayed by a long, ferocious winter, and they were a little more than a month behind schedule, with a new grand opening projected for the Independence Day weekend. Despite the delay, the project was now humming, and his part in it was largely done. Still, he thought he might take Trey out to that site today and poke around.

  He needed to fill his damn day and keep himself occupied so he didn’t do anything stupid.

  But for now, he turned onto his side, pulled a pillow over his head, and tried to get at least a nap’s worth of sleep before Trey woke.

  ~oOo~

  After breakfast and a long trip to the park with Elsa, Carlo asked Trey if he wanted to have lunch with Pop-Pop at work. Trey shouted “YEAH!” and ran off, up to his room, and came running downstairs with his little, bright red hardhat on his head and his tool belt, with its plastic tools, in his hands. Laughing, Carlo helped him buckle the belt, then went to the pantry and pulled out three black metal lunchboxes—there was a whole shelf of them in there—and packed lunches for his father, Trey, and himself.

  He’d made a calculated guess that his father would be at the cottage job site, and he’d been right. Carlo pulled up near his big, red Dodge Ram. He hadn’t figured on his brother being around as well, but Luca’s matte black H3 was parked nearby, too. Oh, well. No lunch for Luca. Served him right for getting Bina drunk the night before.

  Not that he’d minded the result.

  As Carlo helped his enthusiastic son out of his car seat, a voice called to him from the site. “Hey, Carlo!”

  Recognizing the voice, Carlo rolled his eyes, set his son down, turned and closed the door. “Vince.”

  Vince Abandonato was a cousin, their mother’s nephew. He was also basically a shithead. Too much of a loser in life not to be harmless, he’d been the kind of kid who hung out all night at the mini-mart with a couple similarly uninspiring cohorts. Raised on the shore but had never learned to swim, much less surf, he simply never got anything done. But he had a chip on his shoulder about it, as if he hadn’t been given his due, and that was why success had eluded him. So he was a loser and an asshole. As a favor to his dead wife’s sister, Carlo Sr. had put him on a crew as a gopher right out of high school, and he’d sort of accidentally worked himself up to drywaller, a job at which he’d been good enough to keep. He was doing okay, as far as Carlo knew.

  He was in the Pagano sibling shithouse, though, because at the most recent Christmas party, he’d made a very heavy pass at Rosa—more than a pass, in fact. His first cousin. And the Pagano baby. Luca and Carlo had had to pull him off her. Then all the Pagano boys had taken him outside and beaten the shit out of him in the snowy back yard, while Dean Martin and Doris Day sang about how cold it was outside. When they’d sent him off, bloody and limping, th
ey’d gone back inside to find that their father had seen the whole thing. He’d nodded, once, and turned away, his arm around Rosa.

  Why he had not fired Vince was beyond Carlo, but here Vince was, hailing him like they were buds.

  “How you doin’, man?” Vince looked down at Trey. “Hey, little guy! You good?”

  “Yes I am. We came to see Pop-Pop.”

  Carlo nodded and put his hand on Trey’s hardhat. “Yeah, we did. Let’s go find him.”

  From behind him, Vince called out, “You ever gonna let up on me?”

  “No.” He answered without turning back. He put his own hardhat on as they entered the job site, going into the main house to look first.

  Carlo had started working for his father while he was in high school. He still loved job sites—the smells of sawn wood, poured concrete, drywall, spackle, paint, the sounds of tools and machinery, the shouts and calls of workers, all of it made him feel at home. He’d enjoyed the work, too, for the most part. What he’d hated was building to plans he could tell were flawed or substandard. It had made him feel compromised and indignant. He could see the flaws—he could read a blueprint almost from the first time he’d ever seen one, and he could read between its lines. He could see the finished, three-dimensional building on the page. And he was usually disappointed.

  Now, he designed buildings that didn’t disappoint him. And he got on the job site and out of the office, away from boardrooms, as often as he could.

  He heard his father before he saw him—in the kitchen of the main house, arguing with Luca, voices raised. Carlo grabbed Trey’s hand and held him back. Before he called out, he heard enough to know that they’d already learned that they’d lost the bid Luca had talked to him about, the one he’d thought their father had underbid. Carlo Sr. was on the warpath.

  Great timing for a visit, then.

  He wanted to hear more, because he was worried about his father. It wasn’t like him to shave a bid too close. He protected his company, and he protected his workers. The company had never struggled to win bids, often over lower bids. Their reputation for high quality work, on time and on budget, had always given them an edge. Even during the really hard years of the recent housing crash, Carlo Sr. had kept things moving—slowly, yes. Painfully. But he’d gotten everyone through, and that was because he’d never cut things too close. So why had he tried now?

  With Trey here, though, he couldn’t let the argument go on. So he called out, “Pop? You around?”

  A sharp silence chopped off the quarrel, then Luca yelled, “Kitchen!”

  Carlo smiled down at Trey, who’d heard enough that his little brow had wrinkled. “I bet Pop-Pop’s hungry, huh?”

  “Yes but we didn’t bring a sabbitch for Uncle Luca.”

  “Well, I bet he has his own sandwich.”

  “Okay, if he won’t be mad like Pop-Pop is mad.”

  Dammit. “Pop-Pop isn’t mad, and Uncle Luca won’t be, either. You know sometimes we get excited and talk too loud. It’s okay. Come on.” Hating the way Trey had suddenly become reluctant, his head down, Carlo led him to the large kitchen, which was nearly complete.

  His brother and father faced each other across the wide center island, which would soon be topped with stainless steel. For now, papers were strewn over the denuded tops of the cabinetry that made up the island. Both wore bigger versions of Trey’s hardhat, red with the Pagano & Sons logo in black, a little map of Italy, striped like the Italian flag, surrounding the ampersand. They were obviously angry. When Carlo Sr. saw Trey, though, his face relaxed completely into a sincere, loving grin.

  “There’s my little paisano! Come give Pop-Pop a hug!”

  Trey ran and did just that. “We brought you a sabbitch. And chips! And a pickle!” He looked over at his uncle. “Not for you, Uncle Luca.”

  Luca laughed and patted his hard, cut belly, a white t-shirt spread snugly across it. “That’s okay, bub. I’m good.” After locking eyes with Carlo for a second, he added, “You want to bring your lunch and come with me? I see you brought your tools. You think we can find something around here needs hammering?”

  Trey squirmed free of his grandfather. “YEAH! I have a drewscriver, too!”

  “Well, bring your lunch, and let’s get working!” With a meaningful look at Carlo, Luca took Trey off.

  Carlo turned and handed a lunchbox to his father. “What’s up, Pop?”

  “Not your business, Junior. You’re not part of the company.”

  Ouch. “I’m not asking about that specifically. But something’s going on with you lately.

  His father only glared at him. Then, with a terse nod, he opened a lunchbox and pulled out the sandwich, then dug down for the bottle of water at the bottom. “More interested in what’s goin’ on with you. You don’t listen anymore. Just do your own thing. Regardless of the consequences. To everybody.”

  “You’re talking about Bina.”

  “Auberon’s wife. Yeah.” He bit into his sandwich. Around his mouthful, he said, “You know we’re putting a bid in for one of his smaller projects—that condo redevelopment on College Hill.”

  “Pop! I’m supposed to let him hurt her so that you can get a job?”

  His father’s brown eyes went black. “No, boy. You’re supposed to keep your nose—and your dick—out of his marriage because he could flatten us with a wave of his damn hand—and do your family real hurt, too, if he wants to. You know he stops at nothing—nothing—when he’s crossed. What if he goes for Trey? That worth it?”

  He would keep Trey in the bosom of his family until this was done. Trey would be safe. “I went to the Uncles. They’ll help.”

  “Shit. Shit. I asked you to think on that.”

  “I did. And I made the call. It was the right thing to do.” He was sure of it. He had to be sure of it. Doubt at this point was folly.

  “That’s never the right thing to do.”

  “Didn’t you see her, Pop? Don’t you see? I can’t leave her trapped there if I can do something to help. And maybe our family is the only help that would actually work. He’s Teflon, but he’s not Kevlar.”

  Carlo Sr. sighed heavily and dropped the rest of his sandwich, still partially wrapped in the wax paper he preferred over plastic, into his lunchbox. “She’s…sweet. And I saw the marks. Auberon is a son of a bitch, and I’m sorry for her. I just don’t see how she tips the scales against your family.”

  “She needs me.”

  His father’s fight had deflated. “Trey needs you. I needed you. You walked away from me.”

  “Jesus, Pop. What is up? That’s old news. It’s been years. Why is it eating at you so hard again? I’m here. We’re working together. I’m just on the other side. This is what I love.”

  But his father wasn’t ready to tell him what was going on. He simply shook his head and picked the rest of his sandwich back up.

  As Carlo tried to figure out what to say next, his cell rang. He pulled it from his pocket—Peter.

  “Hey, Pete.”

  “Carlo, you gotta get back. Right now.” His friend’s voice was tight with stress.

  Carlo had been leaning against the island; now he stood straight. “What’s wrong?”

  “The office, man. Somebody broke in. Tore it to pieces.”

  ~oOo~

  Pagano-Cabot had one-half of the third floor of a small, brick building in downtown Providence—not quite in the heart of downtown, but close enough to feel its pulse. The first floor of the building housed two trendy boutiques. The second floor was a small legal practice and an accounting firm. The other half of the third floor was vacant.