He’d lost everything. Tomorrow, he’d go into the office, and he’d probably never walk out. He knew Nick. He knew Nick better than almost anyone alive. There was no way he’d simply demote him.
All the years he’d been the man to do Nick’s dirty work, and tomorrow he’d be the target himself. Would Nick fold back his own cuffs? Or would he deal him one more blow of contempt, like turning him away from the meet today, and delegate the deed?
Would it be Donnie, then? Donnie, who’d been his true partner all this time, making what Nick wanted happen?
Either way, somebody he loved was going to kill him tomorrow.
Jesus Christ. He put the bottle to his mouth, tipped his head back and let the scotch flow into his gut.
He’d lost everything. And for what? For pussy? After all these years on his own, after all he’d accomplished by focusing on what was important, all of a sudden he’d been acting like some nobody sfigato, chasing after a good fuck?
That was all she was. Just a good fuck. He’d thought he loved her, that all these crazy intense, unfamiliar feelings meant love, but no. These feelings should have been a warning. The stupid choices he’d made since New York—he should have seen how she was working him, how she was pulling him off his path, twisting him around, turning him inside out.
She’d said she was in love with him, but that was more bullshit, her Hail Mary pass to keep him in line.
It was too late to undo it all, but at least he’d die with his head on straight.
When he left this house in the morning, the smart money said he’d never be back. Angie set the half-full bottle on his kitchen table and tried to think.
The next people in this house would probably be Tina and Matt. Like when their father died. He’d had a heart attack at the market and never gone home again. All three siblings had met up, and they’d gone into their family home, a house their father had expected to return to, and it was like his life had been simply paused. Breakfast dishes in the sink. The morning paper—he still took an actual physical paper—on the island. His TV glasses lying over the remote by his recliner in the living room. His pajamas laid neatly over the end of his made bed. A book on the nightstand with a receipt from the pharmacy marking his place.
Cleaning up the life he’d left behind had exacerbated their pain. Even throwing out the trash—the filter full of grounds from his last pot of coffee, the eggshells from his last breakfast—had hurt.
Angie didn’t want his brother and baby sister to deal with all that. Not again.
So he spent the rest of the night making sure they wouldn’t.
He made sure everything was clean and neat. He took out all the trash and emptied the refrigerator and pantry of anything that could go off in the next few days. Then he laid out a clean white towel on the dining room table he never used and began collecting anything of their parents’ from his house. The glass art piece he’d given their mother as a gift. The carved onyx cufflinks that matched the ring their father had always worn, and that Angie had been wearing for the last year. Various bits and pieces of their history. Anything of family value they might not readily come to on their own, he laid out for them to find.
Then he wrote them a letter. He wasn’t a sentimental type, and he didn’t try to leave any powerful last words. On a single page, he simply told them how to get to his money and whom to contact about executing his will. He left a copy of the will itself on the table, too, in a sealed manila envelope.
He ended the letter I’m sorry. Love, A, and that was as emotional as he could get.
When that was all done, he took another turn through the house to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. In the living room, he stopped and considered the old upright piano and all the family photos arrayed across its top.
The piano had had a prominent place in the living room of the big red house. Their mother played, and she’d wanted all the kids to play as well. Maybe because he was oldest, and had their mom to himself for a while, Angie had taken to the piano far more than his siblings. He could still conjure the feeling of the warm press of her body as she sat beside him on the bench, hooking her arm around him to help him get the right fingering and arm position. As he learned pieces, she’d start to sing, and that had felt like a gold star; he’d known he was getting better when the notes flowed enough she could sing along.
He’d actually gotten pretty good, before he turned into a shithead teenager.
The photos across the top chronicled a long family history. His parents at a party, young and dressed for a night on the town, leaning close at a dinner table. His mom holding him in his baptism gown, his father smiling down on them both. Tina almost taking her first steps, gripping their father’s index fingers in her chubby fists. Their dad teaching Matt to ride a bike. Angie and his mother at this piano. The three kids lined up in matching pajamas, in front of a glowing Christmas tree.
Why had he fought his family so hard? He’d had a good family, a loving family. He’d always known that. But something had shifted in him in adolescence, and he’d never felt in step with them again.
He’d never felt good enough for them again. Not Matt, the good son who wanted nothing but what their father wanted for him. Not Tina, the tiny princess with the great big brain and even bigger heart. Just Angie. Nothing special.
He opened the piano bench. Inside was a jumble of his old songbooks and sheet music. He pulled out the tattered Elton John Greatest Hits Songbook, flipped up the fallboard, and sat down.
But when his hands were on the keys, he didn’t have the heart to strike a note.
Instead, he finished off the scotch and closed the fallboard. He took the old songbook to the dining room table and scrawled across the cover: Please don’t sell the piano. Somebody take it home.
He was as ready as he could be. The bottle was empty, though he’d never managed to get drunk, and the sky was brightening. Morning had come.
He went out to put the empty bottle in the trash bin and headed upstairs to shower and dress to meet his don.
~oOo~
Nick’s door was ajar. That had always meant ‘knock and lean in,’ but this time, Angie hesitated after his knock.
“Come,” Nick said from within, and Angie pushed the door open.
Nick was alone, sitting at his desk. He looked tired this morning. Angie wondered if he, too, had had a sleepless night.
“You wanted to talk this morning,” Angie said as he stepped in.
“Close the door, Ange.”
Angie closed the door. Nick didn’t leave his desk. For friendly chats, he usually moved to the sitting area, but this would not be a friendly chat. Angie sat in the chair facing the desk, the one he’d come to think of as his.
Sitting very still, Nick didn’t speak right away. He regarded Angie with blade-sharp eyes. Otherwise, his expression was impassive, almost placid. But a muscle twitched at the corner of his jaw—Nick’s only real tell for rage.
Angie tried to take a breath and discovered his lungs had turned to iron.
“Tell me,” Nick finally said.
He didn’t hesitate. “It’s what you think. I’ve been with Giada.”
“For how long?”
“Since the night she did Tommy.”
“That’s two weeks.”
“Just about, yes.”
“Two weeks during which I saw you almost every day. Two weeks during which we discussed important business repeatedly.”
“I never said a word to her about us. I would never betray you, Nick.”
“You did betray me, Angelo. Every time you looked me in the eye and didn’t tell me you were fucking the head of another family was a betrayal.” He spoke hotly, emotion shaking scattered syllables, and he cut off and sat back, composing himself.
Nick never lost control, but Angie had pushed him to the edge of it.
Angie didn’t answer the accusation, because he had no answer. Nick was absolutely right.
“I love you, Angie. You’ve been a de
ar friend to me for years.”
“I feel the same, Nick. Everything I ever wanted, I have here at your side.”
“Not everything.”
“I never wanted this. I never wanted it.”
“But now you have it. You love her?”
“It’s over.”
One corner of Nick’s mouth twitched. “That’s an answer to a different question. I asked if you love her.”
Angie’s tongue seemed to swell. The last thing he could do now was lie. If there was even the flimsiest sliver of a chance he’d survive this and be allowed to make amends, he had to be honest now—completely, baldly honest.
But what was the true answer? What he’d felt for her before, when he’d thought they were in this together? Or what he’d told himself last night, when he’d known her for a cold-blooded bitch?
He knew the truth and hated it with a volcanic fire. Her love might not have been real, but his was.
“Yeah. I love her.”
His eyes fixed on Angie, Nick took a long, measured breath. Then he stood. Angie stood, too, trying to understand where this talk was headed. Was it time now to take a one-way boat ride?
Nick came to the corner of the desk, and they stood facing each other. “It’s good to love, Angie. It makes us weak, and sometimes stupid, but it gives us strength, too. It’s good to see a future beyond ourselves. It makes us better men.” He took another step and pulled Angie into a rough hug.
Angie clasped his don equally hard and held on. His heart was like a rabbit’s, skittering wildly in his chest. He felt dizzy and didn’t understand. Was Nick forgiving him? So easily?
“I just wish you’d found someone else,” Nick said at his ear and then stepped back, firmly pushing Angie away before he dropped his arms. “You’re out. I want you out of the building in ten minutes. I want you out of the Cove by the end of the month. And Angelo, if I ever have the faintest suspicion that Giada Sacco knows anything about me or my business I haven’t told her myself, I will be the one to put a bullet in your head. Don’t make me regret not ending you now.”
Don Pagano went to the door of his office, opened it, and stood waiting.
Angie couldn’t move. “Nick—”
“You have reached the limit of my mercy. Ten minutes, or you don’t walk out.”
Unsure which option was better, but sure he didn’t want to watch his don point a gun at his head, he left.
He paused at the threshold and faced Nick one more time. “Mi dispiace molto, don.”
Cold green eyes stared silently. Angie went out the door.
Donnie stood in the hall. Grief slackened his face.
They faced each other for a moment, neither capable of speech, until Nick said, “Donnie. Come.”
Donnie hesitated one more beat and then walked past Angie into Nick’s office.
The door closed, and Angie stood alone.
He was alone. Everything gone. For nothing.
Jake, an enforcer Angie had recruited and trained long ago, came into the corridor from the reception area and went to stand before Angie’s closed office door. A guard to make sure he didn’t take anything he shouldn’t from his office.
Minutes ago, Angie had been Jake’s capo. Now he looked at him like shit on his shoe.
There was nothing in his office worth this pain.
So he walked past Jake, into the reception area, and straight out of Pagano Brothers Shipping, not turning to see his shame reflected in any other onlooker’s eyes.
His life was over. Nick had let him live, but he’d ended his life just the same.
~oOo~
When Angie got home, moving through space in a vacant haze, he went down to the cellar, where he still had most of the boxes, flattened and stacked, from when he’d moved into this place. He’d never gotten around to borrowing somebody’s truck to haul them off anywhere, and eventually he’d forgotten about them. Convenient. Now he could use them again, because he’d just been kicked out of his hometown.
He came up with the first stack, and his eyes landed on the table, where he’d arranged all his dumb keepsakes from his folks. Laid them out because he’d expected to be killed today.
Now he wished he had been.
The fucking stupid letter to Tina and Matt, propped in an envelope with their names scrawled across the back.
Fuck, he was tired. It took all he had just to keep filling his lungs. He needed to close his eyes for a second before he could face what came next.
He dropped the stack of flat boxes and staggered to the living room. Still wearing his full suit, his tie still snug around his collar, still harnessed in his shoulder rig, Angie dropped to his sofa and was asleep before he landed.
~oOo~
When he woke, the sun beamed from the other side of his north-facing front windows, with the tarnished-gold hue of late afternoon. He’d slept through the day. For that first bleary moment of waking, until he’d struggled to a seated position and had wiped his hands over his face, he was only groggy and empty-headed.
Then he wondered why he hadn’t even taken his damn tie off. When he remembered, it all dropped onto his shoulders like coils of iron chains.
What he needed was to be very drunk.
All his clothes felt like they were made of fiberglass, abrading him everywhere. Standing, he shed his tie and rumpled suitcoat, wrestled out of his rig, and kicked off his shoes, leaving it all wherever it fell. He went to his bar. The really good stuff was gone, but he had plenty of booze. He opened a Glenlivet, unbuttoning his shirt as he did.
He heard the high-end sports engine as he swallowed the first swig straight from the bottle, and wondered if Nick had changed his mind and sent Donnie in his Porsche to end him after all.
He didn’t bother to get his gun before he went to the door and whipped it open.
But it wasn’t Donnie.
Giada had parked her Maserati on his driveway and was coming up his walk. She wore one of her usual man-eater executive getups, this one a curve-adoring beige dress with a deep V neckline and a hem that cut at her knees, with red stilettos and handbag. And her customary dripping of gold statement jewelry.
“Coming back to the scene of the crime?”
She stopped halfway to his door and pushed her sunglasses up. Why did she have to be so goddamn gorgeous? “Angie, thank God. You’re okay?”
He laughed, and it burned his throat. “I wouldn’t say that, no.”
“What happened?”
“Fuck off, Giada. Go run your family and leave me the fuck alone.” He’d left the scotch on the bar and really needed it right now, so he walked away from the door and headed back to his living room.
He didn’t know why he failed to close—and fucking lock—the door, but he walked away from it standing wide open, and of course she followed him in. And then closed the door.
At the entry to his living room she stopped. “Angie. Please talk to me.”
“There’s nothing to say.” He had his bottle in his hand again, and he took the drink he needed.
“Yes, there is. There’s a lot to say. A lot to hear.”
He glared at her and took another swig.
She set her bag down like she meant to stay, and came closer, stood in the middle of the room. The late sun slanted over her body and made the gold and diamonds on her wrists shine and sparkle. “You’re alive. I thought—that’s good.”
“Is it?”
“Very good. But are you out? Angie, what did Nick do?”
“I’m out. Out of the family, out of the Cove.”
“He’s making you leave town?”
Angie had just said exactly that, so he didn’t say it again.
She took two steps closer and stopped again. “What are you going to do?”
He laughed. “No fucking idea. Go to Florida, take up marlin fishing. Be a goatherder in Nepal. Put my gun in my mouth. Who knows? The world of opportunity is wide open.”
“I’m so s—”
“—If you say you�
�re sorry again, I’ll break this bottle and cut my fucking throat. Even if I believed you—and I fucking don’t—what the hell good is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why the fuck are you here?” It was a question he’d asked her again and again, every time she’d pushed herself on him, and each time, she’d changed the course of his life.
Running him straight into shark-infested waters. Just as Donnie had warned him.
Now, she finished her trek through the room and stood at the bar, facing him across it. “I’m here because I was going mad with worry. I’m here because I love you.”
“You don’t have to bullshit me now, Donna Sacco. You got what you wanted, and my damage is done. Game over.”
She stared up at him, green eyes gleaming. “I know. And I’m still standing here telling you I’m in love with you, Angelo.”
“I don’t believe you,” he insisted, but the words were losing their power. As much as he hated it, he wanted to believe her. God, he had nothing. He’d even lost his home. He wanted—needed—to feel like there was still something to hold onto. If he was completely alone, he’d just drop into a void and disappear.
Giada came around behind the bar and stood right before him. She set her hands—gorgeous, perfectly manicured red nails, just long enough to scratch—on his chest, under his open shirt, over his silk beater. “What can I do to prove myself to you? Because if you can believe me, if you can forgive me, if you think you could love me after all this, then here I am.”
Her hands slid up, over his crucifix, around his neck. “You’re not alone, Angie. I’m here. I love you. And I’m so very sorry.”
Angie broke.
He’d spent his life finding the weak spots in men, carving pieces away until they reached the limit of their endurance and crossed it. Every man, no matter how strong his will or his spirit, had at least one breaking point in body or soul.
This was his.
He felt tears leave his eyes and wet his cheeks, and then it was a flood. He never cried, but now he couldn’t stop; he was sobbing, so hard he couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe.
The Name of Honor Page 22