Married to the Mobster

by Leighton Greene

  “Did you…” take something? She finishes by mouthing the words only.

  I shrug. “Just a couple.”

  “Oh, honey,” she whispers. “I meant to tell you before you took any, I put them in an old bottle, so what’s on the label is not what’s in the can, okay? They’re heavy duty. So you be careful with the dose, okay?”

  I can barely nod my head this time. “Sure, babes. I’ll be careful.” It’s become really fucking hard work to lift the fork to my mouth.

  “Honey, you don’t look so good,” Celia says nervously, and I feel like things are beginning to slide.

  “M’okay,” I mumble, but the room seems to go topsy-turvy.

  “Mikey!” Celia shrieks, and damn, Mikey moves fucking fast, has his gun out pronto. Then he looks at me and holsters it again just as fast and moves to catch me as I fall towards the floor.

  The last thing I hear is Mikey muttering, “Shit, shit, shit—”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  FINCH

  I don’t like hospitals. I choose to take a firm stance against them.

  Hospitals never helped no one that I know; once you’re in, you might as well kiss your ass goodbye, and when I die, I want to do it fully conscious with my feet on the ground.

  So it’s a fairly fucking disagreeable experience to wake up in a hospital, let me tell you.

  At least it’s dim in here. The beep beep beep of the monitors is insanely annoying, though, and I start looking around to see if I can turn them off. There’s a dark mass in the corner, but I can’t make out what it is. I try to reach out a hand towards the machines to flick the off switch somehow, but I’m weak like a kitten.

  Like a baby bird.

  Only the black mass is moving, getting closer now, coalescing into—oh, shit.

  “Luca,” I say hoarsely. “What are you…” I devolve into silence. It’s exhausting trying to talk. How have I not noticed this before? I’m never gonna talk again.

  Luca comes right up, leaning over me. “You stupid little shit,” he says, gripping my hands tight. “Do you know how goddamn worried I’ve been?”

  I look up at him, trying to make out his face, only the room is really too dark. “Where’s Mikey?” I ask. “It wasn’t his fault.”

  Luca’s mouth goes into a thin white line, his lips pressed together as tight as they’ll go. “Mikey and I will be having a conversation later.”

  “Not his fault,” I say again, and it’s such an effort to say anything right now. Ugh. I want to sleep. But I won’t have poor Mikey’s blood on my hands, so I force myself awake. “Don’t…don’t be mean to him.”

  Luca gives an incredulous, quiet laugh. “How the hell did you get hold of the drugs, anyway?” he asks.

  I have to think that one over. “Mm. Not Mikey.”

  “No, I know that. Mikey wouldn’t be that dumb.”

  “Mm. I had them…from before.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Luca says calmly. “I searched your bags myself after we got into my place, and there wasn’t anything in there. I even found the ones you stashed in the lining of your bag, and flushed them myself.”

  Shit. I don’t want him to know about Celia. He’ll cut off my only supplier. “Thatsa…’vasion of privacy…”

  “Was it Celia?” he asks patiently, only there’s something running under that patient voice.

  “Noooo,” I say, shaking my head on the pillow.

  He lets out an angry breath. “So it was Celia. I told Frank to make sure—”

  “Don’t kill Celia,” I say sadly. “She’s a nice girl. She does keto and she likes my clothes. And she’s my only friend.”

  “I’m not going to kill Celia,” Luca tells me, pulling out his phone and calling someone. “I’m going to kill Frank.”

  I doze in and out of sleep, but I’m woken a while later by Luca, shouting in the hallway outside my room. I’ve never heard him shout like this before. I can only make out a few words. “…you to control your goddamn wife, Frank!”

  And I hear Brother Frank’s baritone, low and conciliatory. I wonder if security might come and throw Luca out if he keeps making a scene. There’s something I never thought I’d be hearing: my controlled, cold husband losing his temper so completely. And with his own brother, too.

  The door to my room bursts open and I watch between half-closed eyes as Luca stalks in, rubbing the back of his neck like there’s a pain there. Frank comes in after him, and he’s followed by a nurse, only Frank shuffles her back out again, saying, “He’s fine, it’s fine, we’re fine, he won’t shout no more,” and the nurse looks skeptical, but she goes.

  Luca is looking out the window. “Where’s Mikey?” he asks at last, glaring out the glass pane. I can see lights reflecting outside, blue and red. I guess it must be another guy being brought into the hospital to die.

  “I told him to lay low for a few days,” Frank says, in what passes for a quiet voice for Frank. “Bro, I never seen you like this before. Celia never meant no harm; you know she needs those pills for her anxiety.”

  Between my eyelashes, I see Luca whirl around on him and take a deep breath to keep yelling, but he glances at me and remembers I’m asleep. Only I’m not. I listen with the greatest interest as he whisper-shouts, “I told you not to let Celia near him if she had anything on her. Not only because he’s a fucking addict, Frank, but because I knew he’d try to off himself.”

  “You really think I was trying to die?” I ask, and they both freeze and stare at the bed, at me. “Hi, Brother Frank.”

  Frank comes over smiling and friendly, lays a hand on my shoulder. “Hey there, principessa, how you doing? Feeling any better?”

  “Get out of the way,” Luca snaps, pushing his brother aside. He lays a hand on my forehead. “He’s still clammy. Go get that useless nurse; she can actually work for her living tonight.”

  “I’m fine,” I protest, trying to bat away his hand. “And don’t be an asshole to the nurse, Luca. She gets paid shit money to do a shit job. Anyway, I just need to sleep,” I add.

  Luca brushes my hair off my forehead in a strangely motherly gesture. “Of course,” he says softly. “Frank, get out. Go and get Mikey from wherever you stashed him. You can tell him his Caporegime wants to see him.”

  “His—his what? Hey, Georgie, does that mean Tino bumped you up?” Frank booms.

  I notice Luca winces at the volume, just like I do. “Quiet,” he says, only he doesn’t really mean it. I can tell it means something good, from the way Frank is grinning and clapping his brother on the back.

  Luca, however, doesn’t look particularly pleased about it. He just nods. “The crews are being rearranged, and Tino’s made me Capo of my own. I can handpick my men.” He gives me a glance. “We’ll discuss it later,” he says to Frank, when he sees me hanging on every word.

  “Discuss it now,” I say at once. “I wanna hear all about my baby’s promotion.”

  Luca’s lip twitch, just for a moment, and then he’s back to his old self. “I told you, Finch. I won’t discuss business in front of you. Ever.”

  I roll my eyes. He wouldn’t have spilled anything at all in front of me if that were really true. Frank’s grin is about to split his face in half, but he tries to wipe it off. There’s a pause, as though Luca is waiting for my reaction.

  “Of course, husband,” I say, with a placid smile. “The less I know, the better.”

  I seem to have said the right thing. Luca flicks a hand at Frank. “Go,” he says. “We’ll discuss things later. And get your wife under control, Frank. I mean it,” he adds, with a dark look.

  That knocks the smile from Frank’s face. “Yeah, yeah,” he mumbles. “Hope you feel better soon, principessa,” he says to me, and then he’s gone with a wave.

  “I’ll let you sleep,” Luca says, but I catch his hand.

  “I want you to know, I wasn’t trying to…What I mean is, this was an accident. Please don’t blame Mikey or Celia.”

  He raises one eyebrow.
“I don’t,” he assures me. And then: “I blame you. You’re the fool who put that shit in your body.”

  My fingers clench on his. “It’s not easy, this,” I say sharply, and then I start coughing. He helps me lean up in the bed and rearranges the pillows behind my back. Then he brings me a cup of water and a straw. “Thanks,” I croak, once I can talk again. “Anyway, like I was saying—”

  “You think I don’t know?” he sighs. “I understand it’s difficult for you. It’s difficult for me, too.”

  “Fuck difficult for you,” I snap. “I can’t handle that fucking apartment, Luca. It is a prison cell, and I would rather die, even though this definitely wasn’t an attempt at that—”

  “It won’t be forever,” he says, frowning. “All I wanted was a few days to get the lie of the land, a few weeks to make my plans. I wanted you somewhere quiet and safe while I figured things out.”

  “That’s not what you said,” I break in stubbornly. “You told me this was my fucking life now, and I’d better get used to it.”

  He looks me over. “I suppose I did,” he says at last. “Maybe I should have been clearer. Would that have made a difference?”

  “Yes, it would have made a fucking difference!” This fucking guy!

  He nods. “Well, then, I guess I apologize.”

  I get the feeling he doesn’t apologize very often, because after he says the words, he tugs at his cuff. His stupid polyester cuff. He sees me looking at it and must read my mind, because he crosses his arms and looks annoyed.

  To annoy him more, I give him a toothy grin. “Apology accepted. Only, you have to tell me exactly when I’m going to be allowed out. On my own, too. No Mikey.”

  My husband turns to prowl about the room. “First of all,” he says, in this calm voice that tells me he is furious, “I don’t have to tell you anything. You are a marital hostage, angel, which you seem to keep forgetting. Second, you will never be allowed out alone. You will always have a bodyguard with you, because there are people who really, really want to see you dead.” He stops and glares at me, and I can’t help pressing back into the pillows under the force of his gaze. “And lastly, it certainly won’t be Mikey. He was only with you today because I couldn’t get anyone else at short notice. Mikey’s a good soldier, because he does what he’s told, but I obviously need someone with more smarts to keep an eye on you.”

  “I’m a wily one,” I agree. Luca rubs a hand tiredly over his face. “Why can’t you be my bodyguard? Isn’t that why Tino made you marry me? To protect me? As well as to control my Pops, obvs.”

  “I will protect you,” he says. “Protecting you is my top priority and my number one goal. You have my word on that. But I can’t be with you constantly, because I have a job to do. And that job is to make your life safer, before you say anything else.” I shut my mouth. I had been going to say something. “I was hoping to jump a little higher than I have, but being made Capo is better than nothing. It means I can make you safer.”

  “What’s a Capo?”

  His eyebrows shoot up. “And to think, you’re the great-grandson of the most feared Irish mobster in Boston,” he says. “Although I suppose it’s a term specific to our lot. A Caporegime leads a crew.”

  “I thought you already led the Fuscone crew,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “Fuscone was our Capo. In name, anyway. In reality, he left the day to day operations to me, although he hates me.”

  “Then why’d he let you run things for him?”

  He gives a wolfish smile. “Because I’m very good at it,” he tells me. “And because Fuscone is lazy, stupid, and incompetent, but he knows how to make himself look good by using his underlings.”

  “And now you’ve been made Capo for realsies? That sounds like a good thing.”

  “It sounds like it, yes. That is what Tino intended: for it to sound like a good thing.”

  I pick up on his tone. “But it’s not a good thing,” I say slowly. “Why not, baby? I thought you wanted to move up the ranks.”

  He moves restlessly again, frustration in his movements. He tugs at his cuff again; the suit doesn’t fit him well. I think about mentioning a tailor, but figure it’ll just trigger him at this stage.

  “How about this,” I say, when it becomes obvious he’s trying to find a way to talk to me without actually talking to me. “I’ll sleep, and you talk your business problems through with yourself, just to be saying it out loud, you know? Like, to help you think it over.”

  He regards me with cool eyes and then slowly his lips turn up. “Just talking to myself, hm? Alright.”

  I ostentatiously close my eyes, and listen to Luca prowling the room.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  LUCA

  “I made a play today that failed, and I’m trying to think through why it failed, and what the repercussions will be.”

  That’s how I start, and at first it feels dumb to be talking aloud to myself, without looking at Finch. But his idea isn’t bad.

  The less he knows about the business, the less danger he’ll be in. But he’s in it up to his neck, anyway. So perhaps in this case knowledge will be power.

  “Tino Morelli asked for my advice. Now, though, I’m wondering if he asked merely to see what my plans were, or…” I trail off, my mind working the problem over.

  “Or what?” Finch asks. His eyes are open again.

  I never share my thoughts with anyone, but I’m frustrated and angry and tired, and if there’s one thing I know about Finch, he’s no fool. He is, as he says, wily.

  Also, this particular business does concern him. Fuscone’s determined to kill us, and if Finch can see anything that I miss, it might end up saving us both.

  So I come and sit down on the edge of my husband’s hospital bed and tell him a bedtime story.

  My Don’s face did not move as I made my proposal to him.

  “Making me your Underboss will send a message to the other Families, and to Fuscone as well—that your blessing to split into his own entity is, in fact, a banishment. Making his most hated enemy your Underboss will send a message he can’t miss.”

  Augustino Morelli might as well have been a wax statue; even the finger that had stroked his lip stilled while I spoke. Then he closed his eyes and thought, but that movement to close his eyes was the only movement he made.

  “I appreciate your candor, Luciano,” he rumbled at last. “It is a bold move you propose. But I think…at this time, you need to learn more.”

  “As you say,” I said after a moment, and bowed my head to hide my expression. I’d overplayed my hand. “I have much to learn, it’s true. If I might ask, sir, where would you suggest I first turn my attention?”

  And with that, Tino gave me an up and down look. “When you reach a certain level in this Family, you become a symbol more than a man. You understand? You will dine with politicians and judges; rub shoulders with the wealthy and powerful. But you would not do this as Luciano D’Amato. You would represent me.”

  I nodded. “I always seek to represent you as respectfully and effectively as I can.”

  Tino chuckled. “Luciano, we must know our strengths. You are not what they call…how do they say it? Ah, yes: a people person.”

  It takes all my willpower to keep my mouth shut.

  I’m a killer and a criminal. Of course I’m not a goddamn people person.

  “I can learn.”

  He waves his hand. “Of course you can learn. But it will never come naturally to you. Your strengths are in your mind, your keen understanding of tactics and strategy. You will make an excellent Caporegime, and that, my boy, is what I will make you now. Eh? Well, what do you say?”

  I bent to Tino’s proffered hand and kiss it with reverence. “You honor me, Don Morelli.”

  But what I was really thinking was: this old man is a coward. He does not want to push Fuscone; he does not want to take risks. He thinks making a gay man one of his Capos is an extraordinary thing, a forward-thinking thing, a ste
p that will raise his profile, piss off some people.

  But if Tino Morelli had a younger man’s vision, he might see what is possible beyond his immediate need.

  “You think Morelli is underestimating you?” Finch asks thoughtfully.

  “Of course he is,” I scoff. “I would represent him far better than Fuscone ever could.”

  Finch casts a critical eye over me, and I begin to wish I hadn’t started talking about this at all. “Well,” he begins. “We’ve already talked about the suits, D’Amato. They’re atrocious.”

  “I can learn,” I snap. “I can dress up in a suit as well as the next man, I just need to have the money first to—”

  But Finch is shaking his head. “Style is not about throwing on a suit, baby. Besides, why waste your time learning about men’s fashion? Do you have an interest?”

  “Of course not. But if it means—”

  “Then outsource, baby. That’s what smart people do. They find the cleverest or best people in their fields, and rely on their judgements.”

  I glare at him. “And whose expertise are you suggesting in this instance?”

  “Mine, of course,” he says with a cheeky grin.

  It’s infuriating, but at the same time, I am relieved to see his smile return. His color is returning to normal, as well. He was so pale when I first saw him. When I first rushed to him.

  God, Mikey is lucky Finch pleaded for him. Not to mention Celia. Even Frank should be thanking this silly kid for speaking up.

  Finch reaches over to lay cold fingers on my wrist, and I automatically take his hand between mine and rub it to warm it up. “When we were in that warehouse just a few months back,” Finch says, “do you remember what you said to me?”

  I shrug. “I remember Sam Fuscone’s nephew looking for a beatdown from me.”

  Finch ignores that. “You wondered if we might have compatible goals. You thought we might be useful to each other. Well, I can be useful to you. You even said it yourself on the yacht: you wanted me to pick out some clothes for you.”