“Giada’s right,” Angie said and turned to Nick. “You just said it yourself. The Feds will feast on the Contis. With only soldiers left, can we count on omertà to hold? There’s nothing left for them to be loyal to. And we’ve all got business ties with them. They could take us all down, and it’ll be New York all over again.”
Nick gave him a brief, irritated squint, but didn’t answer.
Vio, however, did. “Same with the Abbatontuonos. When Gianni goes, if Leo makes trouble ...” he said.
“We’re facing a fight with Sicily over the right to make our families as we see fit,” Nick said, willing to respond to Vio if not to Angie. “Can we fight them and each other at the same time?”
“New York will pitch a fit if we three get stronger,” Bruno said. “We need New York on our side if Sicily sends in the troops. Those motherland bastardi are hardcore.”
“I find I need a straight answer,” Vio said. He waved his hand, from Nick to Angie and back again. “What’s goin’ on with you? I see Nick can’t hardly look at Angie, and Ange, you’re throwing daggers. I’m worried.” He turned to Nick. “If you tell me whatever this is won’t blow shit up, too, I’ll believe it, but I need to hear you say the words to me.”
“It’s stable. It’s done.” Finally, Nick looked at Angie straight on. “Yes?”
“Yeah,” Angie agreed, keeping his look level while his heart twisted into a bloody knot. “Done.”
“Okay,” Vio said, with a last unsatisfied squint at them both. “If you say so. Then let’s get back to business and figure this other shit out.”
Nick leaned back and crossed his arms. He picked up the thread of conversation like it had never been dropped. “We can’t lose two families right now. Until this disagreement with Sicily is settled, we can’t afford to take damage from within, or lose allies. We need to do what we did for Giada. With the Abbatontuonos, we need to throw in with the man we want to lead, all of us together. Pick a leader, get him seated, get him beholden. The Contis—we let that go too long. That’s a lost cause.”
At Angie’s side, Giada tensed subtly at the word ‘beholden.’
“It’s Maine, though,” Angie said before she reacted more. “We can’t just throw up our hands.”
Nick glanced his way but didn’t answer. Another blink-brief tensing of his eyes showed he didn’t like Angie pushing him. Angie felt a little petulant pleasure at that.
“Angie’s right,” Donnie said. “We gotta do something about Maine, and fast.”
“We each send a team up there,” Giada suggested. “Enough to take the lead on the business and manage the men left. Repair the connections, get things running right, end the bloodshed. Any profit, we split equally three ways. Any disagreements get settled at the table. When the dust settles with Sicily, we see where we are and make more permanent arrangements.”
“I like it,” Vio said after a moment.
Nick took longer to answer. “I don’t like making such a big move so quickly.”
Angie almost smiled. Nick was almost pathologically patient in matters such as these. He virtually never reacted in heat. He wanted the board in his favor at all times, and he took the time to see that it was.
But in this case, that time was not available.
The table waited to see if he had more to say.
“Bene,” he finally said. “Let’s put it together. I’ll call down for more refreshments.”
~oOo~
Since they were in the Cove already, after the meeting—which lasted two more hours—Angie sent Giada back to Boston with Bruno and went to his house to pack up some things. The process had been slow, because he hated coming back to the Cove now, and stirring up so many painful feelings, and because he didn’t know what to keep and what to do something else with. There was no room in Giada’s perfectly decorated penthouse for his unremarkable shit. All he’d managed to move was his clothes and shoes.
It had been a month, and he didn’t know what to do with his crap. He should just sell it all, or give it away, or fucking burn it. None of it was especially valuable. Giada had everything.
But that was all her shit, and this was all his shit. His life had been completely sucked into hers, and here he stood, in the midst of the home that he’d made for himself. The home that had been his. The home he’d lost. He couldn’t pack it, or get rid of it, or destroy it. If he did, he was afraid he’d go up in flames himself.
Which was a fucking ridiculous thing to think, and yet here he was, an empty box dangling from his hand.
His front door opened, and his sister’s voice called out, “Angie? Knock knock.”
“In here, shrimp.”
A shrill squeal alerted him that Tina wasn’t alone. And then a tiny tornado whirled into his living room and barreled at him.
“Unca Angie!”
“Hey, Crispy!” He dropped the box and swept his youngest niece, Chrissy, into his arms. She was almost five, but small for her age, apparently taking after her mother in that way. But she talked a blue streak and threw attitude like a teenager.
“What’s the box?” she asked, fiddling with his crucifix, as was her habit.
“It’s a box.”
She rolled her eyes. “But what’s it for?”
“To pack up smarty-pants little girls, that’s what.” He bent down and set her in it. She squealed gleefully as he folded the flaps over. “Now, where’s that tape?”
“Mail me to Argentina!”
“Argentina?” He looked at Tina, who rolled her eyes and shrugged. “Why Argentina?”
“That’s where Aunt Bina is from!”
“Well, okay. Better get my address book.” He stood straight and smiled at his sister. “What’s up, Teenie?”
“We were driving back from ballet class, and I saw your car. I didn’t know you were home.” She came close and hugged him. Usually, Angie was only good for a couple seconds of family hugging, but this time, he held on.
“I’m just here for a minute, trying to figure out what to do with my shit.”
“SHIT’S A BAD WORD, UNCA ANGIE!” Chrissy shouted from the box. “LIKE FUCK AND ASS.”
Tina and Angie burst out laughing together, and it felt good. “Sorry, Miss Manners,” he said.
“I’m Miss PAGANO, silly.”
Pagano. His sister had married into the don’s family. Yeah, his little niece was closer to Nick now than he was.
“Right, right. Sorry again.”
“Well,” Tina said. “I’m glad you’re here, because I needed to talk to you, and I’m glad to do it in person.”
That didn’t sound like good news. “Yeah? What’s up?”
“We got some offers after the open house. There was a little bidding war. Best offer is fifteen thousand over asking.”
Angie blew out the breath that blow had knocked loose. “That’s good.”
“Yeah? You’re okay with it?”
Their family home had been empty for months now, and on the market for a couple weeks. He’d come to terms. Mostly. But right now, the truth landed hard. Soon, it wouldn’t be their family home anymore. All those years of life would be painted over, remodeled, redecorated. Forgotten.
“Yeah, of course,” he said. “Just point me to the dotted line.”
She smiled and hugged him again. This time, he pushed her off more quickly.
He looked around the room. “I guess I’d better get in gear and get this one on the market, too, before the season’s over, so I need to start filling boxes.”
“Do you want help?” Tina asked.
“Nah. I gotta do it myself. I just ... I don’t know. None of this ... stuff ... fits at Giada’s, and none of it should matter that much, but I can’t let it go.”
That was more than he meant to say to his sister. Sharing wasn’t his game.
Tina looked up at him with her huge dark eyes. “Ange, I—I don’t understand what happened, and I know you can’t tell me. And I like Giada. But this is ... it’s all so fast. It se
ems like you’re ... giving everything up.”
Having it taken away from him, rather. “I don’t have a choice, Teenie. And I’m glad to be with Giada. That’s good. It’s good with us. I love her, and she loves me, and that’s all I’ve got right now.”
“No, it’s not. You have us.”
Tina would never be able to understand, and it wasn’t her fault. He was the defective one, who’d been unable to fit right with his wonderful family. He loved her and Matt, and their kids, and he knew they loved him. But he would never be more than a bystander in their lives. A guest.
Which was what he felt like at Giada’s, too. A welcome guest, but a guest nonetheless.
“Could you take the piano?” he asked, because he needed to move away from that topic. “Maybe one of your kids could learn.”
“You can’t give that up, Ange. It’s yours. It should be yours.”
He went to the worn old hunk. The original dark walnut finish showed decades of wear—the wear of loving use, and of benign neglect. A complex Venn diagram of moisture rings from many sweating glasses perched on the corner over the years. The chipped corners from Angie and Matt crashing into it as they chased each other around the house. The smooth, pale spots where hands had lifted and lowered the fallboard thousands of times.
“It doesn’t fit in Giada’s place at all. Even if I could find a space for it, the whole apartment is professionally decorated with the same colors, and this ain’t it.”
He brushed his hand across the fallboard, his fingertips swirling over one of those worn spots. It wasn’t like he ever played the thing. He hadn’t played it since the day he’d had it moved into this spot, and before that it had been decades since he had. Why did it hurt so much to imagine losing it?
Tina came to his side and set her hand on his. “Angie. You have to fit where you live. If you don’t, and you can’t make room for yourself there, you shouldn’t live there.”
Turned out, they hadn’t moved on from the topic of his guest-ness at all.
“HEY!” Chrissy yelled from behind them, exploding the somber mood to dust. They turned and saw her standing in the box, pudgy fists on her hips, her wild curls bouncing. She wore a denim skirt and a tiny black t-shirt emblazoned with a glittery tiara and the words Self-Rescuing Princess. “YOU FORGOT ME!”
Angie went to her and picked her up. “We didn’t forget you. We were conferring about you.”
“What’s conferring?”
“It means talking. We decided we can’t mail you to Argentina, Crispy. You’d cost a fortune in postage.”
“That’s because I’m precious,” she asserted with the perfect confidence of a perfectly loved child.
“Yes you are,” her mother said and kissed her hand. “Besides, if you went away, we wouldn’t have you, and what would we do without you?” She looked at Angie as she asked. “Family keeps together.”
Chrissy thought about that for a minute, wrinkling her face in concentration, then bobbed her head. “Yes. What would you do without me?”
Tina smiled at her little girl and gave Angie a look he didn’t want to read.
~ 20 ~
Giada woke to the alluring sensation of Angie’s big hand brushing long circles over her hip and thigh.
Before he’d moved in, she could count on one hand the number of times she’d woken in her bed with a man, and that had been by design. Her past with Tommy had made her very touchy about being touched in her sleep, waking to a man with sex on his mind. The fact that her brother’s ‘attentions’ had stopped more than thirty years ago had not dulled those memories.
Now, she woke every morning in company, beside a man who always had sex on his mind. Usually, she woke earlier than he did, because she worked out before her day started. But sometimes, on weekends, for instance, or after a particularly late night, he woke first.
Thankfully, Angie was unusually intuitive, and much more considerate than he gave himself credit for. He also had a surprising regard for personal boundaries—surprising because it was his job, and his skill, to push through people’s walls and dig until he found secrets and buried truths. But he let Giada have hers.
When she’d mentioned her pleasant surprise, and why she’d expected otherwise, he’d had a ready answer. It was a boundary of his own, between his work and his personal life. As an enforcer and interrogator, he was cold and cruel. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to a mark to get what he needed. He pushed until he knew the answers, or until there was no one left to give him answers. If he were like that outside his work, he’d told her, his soul would have burned to cinders long ago. So he left the people in his life their secrets unless he had no choice.
Giada had only one secret from him, and if he’d pried, it might have ended them. It was a secret she’d kept as a child out of fear, and one she’d kept since so that it might someday finally fade into the ether, lost the way so many childhood memories are finally lost. To speak them would be to revive them. To relive them.
And at last they were, after so many years, beginning to fade. Now that Tommy was gone, and his presence could no longer breathe fresh life into them, and now that she was in daily, intimate contact with a man she could trust, a man she loved, the memories were losing their power. As long as they could be ignored, she had hope they might let go entirely someday.
So she was adjusting to being in her first relationship and sharing her life with a man. She’d picked a good one to share with.
She told Angie what she liked or didn’t like, and he accepted those limits without asking why. Occasionally, he’d give her a wry little smirk and call her a control freak, but, seeing as she absolutely was a control freak, she didn’t mind his teasing.
He respected her boundaries, and she was trying to bring them down for him. He didn’t mind her taking charge, but he preferred to be dominant in bed, and Giada had discovered that, with the right man, her own top-ness was less fixed than she’d thought.
It helped to know he wouldn’t push—he’d prod a little, test the firmness of the limit, but not try to cross it unless she brought it down herself. She could trust him, and so she could give up control to him.
It also helped that Angie’s brand of dominance wasn’t focused on his pleasure but on hers. He got off on getting her off.
Thus, she had learned that it was extremely enjoyable to wake with a broad, warm body at her back, wrapping her close, and a large, strong hand caressing her skin. He knew not to get too intimate until she was awake, and Giada had discovered the bliss of being caressed to consciousness.
Now, she sighed and squirmed closer to him, pressing her ass against the hard length of his wonderful cock.
A sultry chuckle stuttered over her bare shoulder. “There she is. Morning, beautiful.”
“Ciao, bello,” she moaned as his hand skimmed over her ass, into her cleft, and slipped between her legs.
“Mmm,” he purred when his fingers found her pussy and she quivered in his hold. “Wet and ready.”
As he fingered her he shifted, sliding his other arm under her and closing it around her, taking a breast in his hand.
“Fuck, Angie,” she gasped when his fingers closed on a nipple. “You know what I like.”
“Yes, I do,” he murmured, and his fingers, slick with her wet, slipped from her pussy to play at her anus. “I know everything you like.” With that, he pushed a finger in, just a little, and pressed at her rim. “It’s Saturday, belladonna. Wanna play a while?”
Oh, yes, she really did. But she’d just woken up.
“Let me go to the bathroom.”
Another chuckle as his lips caressed the skin behind her ear. “Okay.”
He backed off, and, reluctantly, she slipped from the bed and crossed the room, her legs unsteady and tracers of his touch still flaring all her nerves.
When she came back, he’d tidied up the bed and gotten the lube out—and one of her favorite vibrators as well. The covers on her side were folded neatly back, her pillows set asi
de, and he sat on his side, propped against the padded headboard and looking ridiculously hot, with his broad, beautiful chest bare and all his rich olive skin standing starkly out against her white linens and blush pink headboard.
Her whole apartment was so girly. She’d never thought of it—or herself—as girly until Angie’s big, virile, swarthy self had become a steady presence in her heart, home, and life.
She wasn’t truly sharing a life with him, not yet. She’d simply made room for him in the life she already had. He’d given up everything for her. She’d have to make some changes, go as all in as he had, make sure he understood that they were in this together. Completely.
His whole life had turned upside down. Not only was that at least significantly if not entirely her fault, but all of her attempts to help him had been too much like rescue. This was a man as assertive and dominant as she was, who’d lived a life alone like she had. He didn’t want rescue any more than she did.
She’d brought him into her life, but he didn’t have his own. They needed to make a new life together. Something that was of them both.
Angie cocked his head. “Okay, G?”
Giada realized she was still standing in the bathroom doorway, her thoughts detouring from the delights he clearly had in store for her.
She wanted to explain what she was thinking, but the thoughts weren’t fully formed yet. So she smiled at this surprising, enticing man. “Everything is great.”
He slapped the bed beside him, “Then get back over here.”
She hurried back to bed. Knowing what he intended, she slid in with her back to him, and he was on her at once, pushing her onto her belly, kicking her legs wide to settle between them.
Giada sighed and closed her eyes, tucking her face against her arm, hooking her hands over the top of the mattress, as Angie’s heavy heat encompassed her.
He began with just the weight of his body and the wet of his mouth, covering her shoulders, her neck, her back, with slow, sultry kisses, moving down to her waist and back up, tucking his face at her ear to whisper dirty things in two languages, then tracing another path downward.
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