“Mason. Stoneworker.”
“Yes, yes. That. Big man, very strong. He think all his boys be like him, you see?”
Paolo had been an only son. It hadn’t occurred to him not to be like his father until he no longer had one. But he nodded; he understood Luciano’s meaning.
Luciano nodded in reply. “I not want that. I like to sit with my mother. She was a weaver. The cloths she made, so …” he rubbed his fingers together. “So to please to touch. I make clothes with her, she teach me. That I like better than stone. Pappa no like that for me. Very angry I want this thing. Very angry.”
He went quiet and focused on the boxes, his back to Paolo. Paolo turned from the mirror and studied the man, wondering what purpose he had for sharing this clearly painful story.
He could imagine a mason would be unhappy with a son who preferred sewing to stonecutting, but his own estimation of Luciano increased. It took real strength to shove away such great pressure and choose what you wanted for yourself.
“You left home.”
Luciano stood straight but didn’t turn to him. “Yes. I lose all my family, everything, but my heart know what is right.” Now he turned and met Paolo’s gaze. “In the north, I make good life. Not a very … usual? … one, but good for me. With love. With family. Wife and child. My heart, it is full.” His next words needed a clearing of the throat to pass. “You will make that life for Mirabella, yes?”
Ah. Now Paolo understood. Mirabella’s father had found his moment to have The Talk with his soon-to-be son-in-law, wherein he would secure a promise that his girl would be taken care of and made happy for all her days.
“Yes, Luciano. You have my word. She makes that life for me, too.” He offered his hand.
Luciano clasped it. “You are good man, Paolo. I no think when we meet, but now I know it. I can trust you with my girl. She is yours now.”
It was a small thing, this pronouncement. Mirabella had been living with Paolo for months, they’d been man and wife in every way but in the eyes of the law or the Church. She was already his. But he understood her father’s meaning, and he set his other hand over their joined hands. “Thank you. I will treasure her always.”
The night before the wedding, Mirabella stayed with Luciano in his apartment over his shop. Not relishing the thought of even one night without her in his bed, Paolo stayed in the parlor until the wee hours, holding court while his men came to offer tokens and good wishes for the following day.
He sat with Aldo and Nello, in the cluster of thickly upholstered armchairs nearest the fireplace—which was cold; it was June and the summer was already muggy—and talked aimlessly, chatting like friends about the neighborhood and their families, and sometimes with purpose, about business. What they discussed depended on who was within earshot and how much status and trust they could claim.
One thing they discussed when only high-level ears could hear was the result of the death of Martin Deller. To all but a few souls, it wasn’t a death at all. He’d disappeared. A perfunctory investigation had occurred, and remained nominally open. But for now, the New York finance world proceeded as if Deller had chucked it all and headed west. His empire held, being run by his associates, and business went on. Someday, no doubt, he’d be declared dead and his affairs would be picked over, but for now, New York had simply closed over the gap he’d left.
Paolo found that remarkably encouraging for his own plans. He had no intention of disappearing, exactly, but he certainly wanted to leave the city eventually. The way Deller’s empire held, even temporarily, without his presence suggested that Paolo’s could continue to thrive if he weren’t personally based in the Five Points.
Finally, only he, Aldo, and Nello were left in the parlor. It was well past midnight, but Paolo was no closer to ready for his empty bed. It had been months since he’d slept alone and, though he’d never admit it to anyone, he was worried his old dreams, now long quiet, might stir to life without Mirabella beside him.
When Aldo made a move to be the next to go, Paolo stopped him. The real reason was his unwillingness to be alone in the house, but there was this thing he wished to speak of, a sensitive thing for the ears of only his most trusted associates. These two men.
So he said it now. “I want to talk to you both about something before you go.”
Nello laughed lightly. “Getting cold feet?”
Paolo shook his head. “Never. This isn’t about tomorrow.” Actually, it was, but a tomorrow farther out than the next few hours. “I’ve made some decisions about the business.”
Both men went still simultaneously, as if they’d stopped breathing. Paolo wondered what they’d been thinking but not saying, to be so surprised by his statement.
“The Long Island project is well underway,” he said.
Both men nodded. Aldo said, “It is.”
“You know I wish to leave the city someday.”
This time Nello spoke. “Yes … Don—”
Paolo put up his hand before Nello finished that thought, because he thought he could anticipate it. “It’s not my intention to move the entire family to Long Island.”
“No?” Aldo said, and Paolo heard the relief in his voice.
“No, Aldo. When the time comes, I want to give you charge of the Five Points.”
Aldo blanched. “Come again?”
“You stepped to my side while my hands were still wet with Fausto’s blood. You’ve advised me well—you’ve taught me well. I trust you with my life, my family, my business. It will be some years before I’m ready to move, and I mean to keep my hand in after I do, but when I leave this place, it’ll be you I hand the keys to.”
While Aldo sat silent and worked through all Paolo had said, Paolo turned to Nello. “You, Nello, I would ask you to consider coming with me. There will be new work there, especially at the harbor. But if you stay, it will be Aldo you’ll answer to.”
“You don’t want me at your side?” Aldo asked.
Paolo hadn’t expected the decision to hurt him. “I do. But I know you don’t want to leave the city. Am I wrong in that?”
The big man thought for a while before shaking his head. “No, not wrong. But I …” He cleared his throat. “I will go where you wish, always. You’re dear to me, Paolo.”
Only in the past few months had Paolo come to comprehend how well he was loved, how well he could love, and how powerful that was. “And you are dear to me, Aldo. Which is why I won’t ask you to leave your home. I trust you to take the lead for us here.”
Aldo sat quietly, his eyes on Paolo. Paolo held the gaze. He saw his friend—Had he ever truly thought of Aldo as a friend before? How broken had he been not to see it?—grapple with the news, the good and the bad of it, and work his way to acceptance.
Paolo had expected his decision to be received as happy news. He was offering Aldo greater wealth and power and not demanding he uproot himself and his family from a home he loved. But he hadn’t factored Aldo’s feelings for Paolo, or vice versa, into his consideration.
Friendship. He’d had it and not realized it.
Finally, Aldo nodded. “I will do this for you. Thank you.”
“Thank you, my friend.” He turned to Nello again. “My friends.”
The next morning, Paolo stood before the altar at St. Patrick’s, with Aldo at his side and Father Cantorelli behind him. It had been many, many years since he’d attended Mass regularly, and he’d been faintly surprised on Christmas Eve when he hadn’t simply burst into flames upon entering the sanctuary.
Even now, he was uncomfortable. As much as his heart had opened and his life had brightened, he was still an angry man, and at no one was he angrier than at God. He had no use for such a neglectful Father.
But being Catholic was something bigger than belief and faith. It was as much a part of his heritage as being Sicilian, as much a part of his identity as the color of his eyes and the breadth of his shoulders.
The same was true for Mirabella. Neither was she devou
t, but there had been no question that they would be married in a Catholic Mass.
The pews were full. It seemed all of Little Italy had come to see Il Bestione married—and a fair number of people from elsewhere were in attendance. Paolo’s business associates and rivals from other immigrant neighborhoods and from uptown as well had made an appearance.
And from Long Island, all the Laterzas had come. Their first time back in Little Italy since they’d left it, nearly four years earlier. Caterina was standing up with Mirabella, who had no woman in Little Italy to stand with her. Paolo didn’t really understand why, but the only women she seemed to get along with here were Carmela and the girls they helped.
She’d actually asked Carmela to stand with her, but Carmela had flatly refused, insisting that it wasn’t right for a madam to stand at the altar like that. Mirabella hadn’t cared, but Carmela had cared very much.
So Mirabella had asked Caterina, whom she hardly knew. But in their two weekend visits to Long Island, and a flurry of letters sent back and forth, she and Caterina had developed an easy camaraderie, something that might grow to be a real friendship, perhaps a sisterhood. Especially when they lived close.
He watched his sister walk down the aisle, wearing a lovely red dress that concealed her growing belly. She expected her fourth child near the end of the year.
Paolo was struck by how different Caterina looked. Not physically, she was as ethereally beautiful as ever, but in her carriage and expression she was dramatically different.
The sister he remembered had been a shy, quiet little mouse, always trying to be small, to avoid notice. She shrank from the unknown. In later years, after their younger sister had been killed, their father driven from Sicily, their mother raped, and the three of them taken into Cuccia’s slavery, Caterina had become sad and dim.
Then they’d come to America, where more horrors awaited them. Horrors that had broken them apart.
But now, his little sister was a woman well married. A mother with a flock of children at her feet. A homemaker—which was everything she’d ever wanted, to have love and a home and a family. Dario had saved her where Paolo had failed, and he’d given her the home of her dreams. The life of her dreams.
Now she was like an angel. She shone.
People had remarked on her beauty from the time she was born. Everywhere she’d gone, men and women alike had stopped and stared. Here in Little Italy, she’d been known as La Bellezza, The Beauty.
But never had Paolo seen her as beautiful as she was now. Happy and fulfilled. Fully healed. She had endured, and now she no longer had to. She was at ease.
Her eyes met his as she reached the altar, and she smiled a bright, unreservedly cheerful grin at him. Paolo met it with one of his own.
It didn’t hurt at all. The scarred muscles in his face had finally learned how to smile.
Because he finally had reason to do it.
The people in the pews shifted, and Paolo turned from his sister to focus on the other end of the sanctuary. Mirabella stood there, wearing a beautiful, beaded white dress and a long, flowing white veil. She held a bouquet of mixed red flowers in one hand, and her father’s arm in the other.
He knew there had been talk in the neighborhood about whether she ‘deserved’ to wear white, but Mirabella hadn’t given a fuck what the fishwives said. She and her father had designed that dress. Paolo had never seen it before this moment, but he’d known she was proud of it, that it was just what she wanted—and it was perfect. His heart rattled against his ribs at the sight of her.
All the way down the aisle, her eyes never left Paolo’s, and his never left hers. When her father kissed her and handed her to Paolo, she gave him a wry look, with one eyebrow high.
“You look very smug,” she whispered in Italian as he led her to the altar.
“I’m having a very good day,” he answered likewise.
“So am I. A good stabbing is an excellent way to find love, if you ask me. More people should do it.”
Paolo laughed.
The sanctuary rang with the sound.
EPILOGUE
ten years later
“They’re here! They’re here!” Salvatore shouted from upstairs.
The house filled with sudden thunder as Salvatore and Luca tore down the stairs and through the house. At the breakfast table, little Claudia flipped over at once and worked her way down from her chair to the floor.
With the grace of a mother accustomed to saving her home from her children’s habitual calamities, Mirabella caught the glass of milk Claudia had upset, before it could do more than splash. She set it back on the table.
“They heah, they heah!” Claudia echoed and stomped after her brothers.
Paolo bent to pick up the napkin his little girl had trailed halfway through the kitchen and handed it to Mirabella to wipe the little spill. “Something tells me they’re here.”
Mirabella chuckled. “Are you sure?”
At the front of the house, the door slammed open. Paolo winced. He’d repaired the wall half a dozen times. It would probably be better simply to install some padding and give up trying to convince his boys to take better care.
And a brisk December wind was now howling through. Soon there would be drifts of snow around the Christmas tree in the front room.
Before he joined the children at the front, Paolo swept his arms around his wife. “I hope you had enough Christmas peace this morning. That was the last of it.”
She snaked her hand up into his hair and drew his head to hers. “I’m not sure I would call what we did this morning peaceful.”
He laughed. “I felt very peaceful after.” He put his lips on hers and lingered there, but didn’t try to go deeper. Now was not the time.
As if she were thinking the same thought, Mirabella pushed him away. “Shoo. Go see to our guests, and make sure the children keep their grubby hands from the gifts until we’ve all had a proper greeting.”
Reluctantly, Paolo let her go, giving Mirabella’s still-flat belly a little pat as he left. They’d recently learned there would be a fourth child in this house. Claudia’s birth, and the whole pregnancy, had been much harder than the boys’, and they’d halfheartedly decided not to try again, but sometimes it didn’t matter if you tried or not.
The riot redoubled at the door as Caterina and Dario’s children entered the house. Though Sal and Luca were only nine and seven years old, their older cousins—fifteen-year-old Alessio and twelve-year-old Matteo—were happy to play with them, and Paolo’s boys worshipped the older boys like they were gods.
Ofelia, Caterina and Dario’s youngest, was ten and closest in age to Paolo and Mirabella’s boys, but she was a prim little miss who had no patience for the roughness of her cousins. However, she liked to dress up little Claudia like a doll, and Claudia liked it, too. Claudia liked anyone and anything that put her at the center of attention.
Lena was seventeen and long past the easy excitements of childhood. She was a serious, studious young lady who wanted to go to college. Paolo had told her he’d do what he could to help her. What he knew about college could fit a thimble with room left over, but he had built a significant web of influence and connections, and he was sure he’d be of use in her pursuit.
She slipped in after her younger siblings, and Paolo was struck, as he always was, by how much, how exactly, she looked like her mother. All the way to the tiny mole on her nose, almost in the same place as Caterina’s.
But she’d cut her hair dramatically since Paolo had last seen her, now wearing it in the ‘bob’ that the really fashionable city girls had taken on. Paolo didn’t like it. He felt a little spasm of disappointment for the loss of her pretty hair, and the way the severe cut made her look several years older.
But of course he didn’t say so. While the younger children clamored around them, not interested in polite greetings with their uncle, Paolo held out his arms to Lena. “Buon Natale, Maddalena.”
She smiled and settled into his e
mbrace. “Buon Natale, Uncle.”
“You cut your hair.”
“I did. Do you like it? Mamma was mad.”
He was loath to contradict his sister over her own child, especially when he agreed, but he was an uncle and could dissemble. “Do you like it? That’s the important thing.”
She fluffed at the bottom of her hair, where it curled slightly under. “I love it.”
“Then it’s perfect.” He kissed her cheek. “Your aunt’s in the kitchen. She’s made you something.”
Lena smiled brightly and kissed his cheek. Then she disappeared.
Paolo heard a racket coming from the front room, and he went and peered in. Not surprisingly, the children were ransacking the gifts, rattling each one as if they were trying to scramble its contents.
“Basta, you ruffians. At least wait until they’re unwrapped to break them.”
They all gave him the same look of sham innocence, but they set the packages down.
The rest of the Laterzas weren’t in the house yet, so Paolo looked out the door, saw Dario, Caterina, and Viola, Dario’s mother, still at their car, gathering gifts into their arms. He grabbed his coat and went out to help them.
The world had changed much in the past ten years. Cars and trucks were everywhere now, and carriages nowhere. The air itself sounded and smelled different, exchanging the stench of manure and the clatter of wooden wheels for the reek of exhaust and the rattle of engines.
A bloody world war had been fought, and the landscape of the world seemed somehow different in its aftermath. War itself seemed to mean something new now.
It was a very different world.
In their family, great changes had occurred as well. Apart from the obvious—that he’d built the house he’d hoped for several years back and completed the move they’d planned, and he was now a father of three, soon to be four, wonderful children—his business was three times what it was before he’d met Mirabella. He ran all of Long Island now and had influence over the bosses in Brooklyn and Queens as well. And, of course, Manhattan.
Il Bestione (The Golden Door Duet Book 2) Page 32