Hidden Worthiness

by Susan Fanetti

  Donnie was worried. “The Bondaruk hit went wrong, no question. But it wasn’t a failure of the plan. The plan was good. There was no way we could know the kid would be there.” The boy had come into the video store through a door that adjoined that shop with the laundromat beside it. They hadn’t known the shops adjoined. Not even blueprints had shown it; the doorway was a new, and unpermitted, change to the structure. It was also hidden, nothing more than a hinged cutout in the wall. “We couldn’t have known.”

  “Two Ukrainian-run shops side by side deserved more scrutiny.”

  “It’s a Ukie neighborhood, Nick.” But he was right. The plan was good, but they’d moved too fast, hadn’t considered the elements of such a sweeping mission in sufficient detail. Those doctored photographs had gotten in their heads, and they’d reacted. Donnie was usually the handbrake on Angie’s hot temper, but he hadn’t been this time—because Arianna had been in those photos.

  Nick’s wife and daughters were also in those photos, but Nick held his anger inside, stoked it hot and held it close, to release on his terms.

  Another long, contemplative silence, until Nick sighed. “The plan was bad. It was underdeveloped, and a child was killed because you acted without enough information. But it’s my mistake. I okayed you and Angie to run with this. I should have trusted my instincts. Instead, I trusted you.”

  This blow was far more devastating than his earlier lash. This one was measured. Intended. Nick had just told him the trust between them, rock-solid for twenty years, was broken. The blow that had broken it wasn’t betrayal, but disappointment. Worse than that—incompetence. It wasn’t trust that had been lost, it was faith.

  It wasn’t fair; Donnie had proved his skill and will scores of times over the years. He’d earned his place at Nick’s side. But the costs of this one mistake reached far, through the present and the future. Into Nick’s legacy. “What can I do?”

  “I told you this wasn’t a fuck-up you come back from. Those photos are disgusting and infuriating, but they’re garish. They’re flash. Too outrageous and fake to be anything more than a shithead kid pissing in my yard. You took those cartoons and gave Bondaruk exactly what he wanted. He will send an army next, and then they will go for our women and children. My wife. My children. You took empty threats and filled them up. Because you feel protective of a woman for the first time in twenty years, and you acted like a goddamn scrub.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry, don.”

  “Dammit, Donnie. My faith in you was absolute.” Nick sighed heavily. “We’ll see what we see when Bondaruk makes his move. Do you have anything else?”

  Donnie couldn’t remember the last time Nick had dismissed him. He stood up. “No. Thank you for your time.”

  Nick nodded, and Donnie left his office. Rather than turn toward his own office, he headed to the exit. He needed to get somewhere alone and quiet and think.

  If he’d lost Nick’s faith permanently, he’d lost everything.

  ~oOo~

  Alone and quiet wasn’t getting his head clear; even racing along the coast, putting the Porsche through its paces, pulling far enough ahead of Dre to get a call of complaint from him, couldn’t calm his thoughts. They clamored because there was no solution, no way to sort things to fix the problem. The only thing he could do to regain Nick’s faith in him was his job. When the Bondaruks made their move, Donnie would be at Nick’s side. Until then, there was only waiting.

  But he had to talk to somebody, and he knew exactly who: the one person in the world who knew Nick and Donnie equally well, as the men they were at their core.

  He turned turned sharply around and headed back to the Cove, leaving Dre to follow if he could.

  ~oOo~

  Greenback Hill was what the people of Quiet Cove called the most exclusive neighborhood in town, where the houses were mansions perched on a bluff facing the ocean, and they all had expansive lawns with pools and tennis courts, and winding stairs leading to private beaches. It wasn’t a large neighborhood—Quiet Cove wasn’t a large town—and from just about any point in the Cove, you could look up and see those houses looming.

  Nick’s Uncle Ben had lived in one of the finest homes on Greenback Hill, befitting the most wealthy and powerful man in Quiet Cove. Nick was even more powerful than Ben had been, and likely wealthier as well, but he hadn’t taken his place at the top of that perch. He lived just a bit lower on the bluff, in the house he’d bought as a wedding gift for Bev, when he was Ben’s underboss. Valuing stability where he could have it, he’d kept his family in the same home he’d started it in.

  Not that that home was a shack. It was a large, beautiful Cape Cod with a view of the ocean and an big yard with a pool. But it was homier than the Greek Revival mini-museum his uncle and aunt had called home.

  After twenty years, four children, two Golden Retrievers, several smaller critters, countless sports and hobbies, and a small army of childhood friends moving through it, the house showed itself as a well-loved home. They’d done a big remodel a few years ago, once Bev decided that all the children were old enough to stop trying to destroy the house on a daily basis, but even the new construction and change of colors and fabrics hadn’t shaken the essence that this was a home and life was lived well in it.

  The style of the décor, and of the house itself, was too traditional for Donnie’s taste, but since the first day he’d stepped into this building, he had not known a time he wasn’t envious as hell of this home.

  He’d been discarded by his blood family and had lived alone for the past twenty years, with no hope, until just now, that he might ever have anything more than himself. Nick and Bev had brought him into this family as deeply as they could, but he was, at best, only an honorary uncle. This home, this family, was not his, nor would it ever be.

  Nick had said Donnie had behaved like a scrub because he’d acted in defense of Arianna, but he didn’t understand. Nick had had love when he wanted it. He’d made a family when he’d wanted it. He got what he wanted, when he wanted it. He couldn’t possibly understand what it meant to Donnie to have someone, finally, as he approached midlife, who might be with him, might love him. Might let him hope.

  He hadn’t acted like a scrub. He’d acted like a desperate man.

  As he raised his hand to press the doorbell, he caught Dre at the corner of his eye, pulling up at the curb to wait for him.

  The door opened, and Bev smiled at him, her blue eyes lighting with the pleasure of the unexpected. “Donnie! Hi!” She lifted her arms, and Donnie went in for a hug. When she kissed his cheek, he closed his eyes. Suddenly, he didn’t want to talk about Nick at all. He only wanted to be with his friend and share something good with her. Speak his hope and make it real.

  “You have some time to talk?”

  She set him back. Snuggles, their Golden, nosed himself between them, and they both bent to offer pats. “Sure. Is there trouble?”

  He shook his head. “No trouble. News.”

  Her eyes narrowed for a moment as she studied him. “The kids’ll start wandering home from school in about an hour. Until then, I’m a free agent. Come sit in the kitchen with me. You want coffee, or something stronger?”

  “Coffee’s good.”

  He followed her into her bright, spacious kitchen and took up his customary stool at the island. Bev poured coffee for them both and pushed a plate of brownies his way.

  “Careful with those. Carina put cayenne in them. They’re not bad, but surprising unless you’re ready.”

  Leave it to Carina to add hot pepper to a chocolate brownie. Donnie laughed and took a nip from the corner of a brownie. Then another, bigger bite. “That’s actually pretty good.”

  “I was surprised, too. Sometimes, her experiments are horrifying—she did a thing with salmon and maple syrup that I still have flashbacks about—but they turn out pretty well most of the time. She’s got a knack, I think.” Bev picked up a brownie for herself. “So, what’s the news?”

  “O
kay. So. I’m ... There’s ...” The words wouldn’t come out. The idea of announcing to anyone that he was in a relationship was too surreal to be contained in language.

  Bev’s eyes went round, and her grin exploded with light. She grabbed his hand. “There’s a girl! Donnie, is there a girl? I mean—something real, not one of your gorgeous interchangeables?”

  He grinned. “There is, yes.” When Bev leapt up and hugged him, he laughed and tried to set her back. “Easy, Bev, easy. It’s brand new, and I don’t—I don’t know how serious it is.”

  “If you are letting it happen, it’s serious! If you’re saying it out loud, it’s serious! Oh my God, Donnie! That is wonderful! Tell me all about her!”

  “She’s a ballerina with the Rhode Island Ballet.”

  “A ballerina!” Bev clapped her hands like he’d given her a gift. “Donnie, that’s perfect! What’s her name? I want to meet her. You have to bring her to the house!”

  Donnie caught Bev’s fluttering hands and held them. Bev knew little about Nick’s business and wanted it that way, so he had to come up with another reason that he wouldn’t bring Arianna to the Cove just yet. He couldn’t say that it was dangerous to bring her home.

  The other reason was just as true, he realized.

  He framed his words carefully as he spoke. “It’s very new, and I want to keep it just her and me for a little while, okay?”

  Bev calmed and let her megawatt smile dim to incandescence. “Of course. But I’m so happy for you. I’ve hoped for this for you every single day. I can’t think of anyone who deserves this more than you do, Donnie.”

  She meant all those words with full-bodied love for him, but they were scaring him. Too much hope for his desiccated heart to hold. “I don’t know about that.”

  She leaned in and set a hand on his scarred cheek. “You are the man who lay on the floor that night in horrible pain and tried to give me strength and reassurance. In the worst moment of your life, you thought of someone else first. I wish you could see how deep your worthiness runs, Donnie. You deserve everything good, everything you want. And I want to know the woman who deserves what you’ve held so close all these years.”

  ~oOo~

  Donnie left Bev before the kids got home. He loved them dearly but wasn’t in the mood for their clamor. He wanted Arianna.

  She was rehearsing, dancing the Sugar Plum Fairy again this year, but he thought he could find his way to the studio again. Watching her dance would calm him.

  Intimidating Berrault would calm him as well.

  The front office staff smiled and welcomed him. One of them even told him which studio the principals were rehearsing in this afternoon. So Donnie went into the bowels of the theatre.

  The public spaces of the theatre were elegant in a gaudy, old-fashioned way. Lots of deep red fabrics and gilt surfaces—and, of course, the giant tit looming over the lobby. The theatre itself had the same slightly decaying grace. Once the lights went down, Donnie felt as though he could have been watching a ballet, symphony, or opera—they all shared the venue, and he kept the box year-round—a hundred years or more in the past. He liked it. Though his own personal tastes in décor were different, to him this was how classical performances should be housed.

  The spaces behind what the public could see, however, were dreary and utilitarian at their best, and dungeon-esque at their worst. The air was damp and smelled of mold. Old pipes moaned eerily at random times. The floor was cracked, showing concrete under antique linoleum.

  None of that mattered when he arrived at the studio—one much larger than the one he’d seen her dance in before. The music for the Sugar Plum Fairy’s pas de deux billowed into the corridor, played live on a piano. He peered through the window in the door and saw Arianna, in a dark red practice leotard and filmy pink dance skirt, pirouetting in Sergei Petrov’s arms.

  The Sugar Plum Fairy was not a sensual role—The Nutcracker was more or less a children’s ballet, after all—but Donnie was jealous of these men who partnered Arianna. It had been worse watching Trewson making love to her on stage in The Phantom, but it wasn’t easy now. There were so few clothes between them, and Petrov’s hands were in places Donnie wanted only his hands to be.

  “Mr. Goretti.”

  Donnie turned at Baxter Berrault’s voice.

  “Good evening. You can go in, if you’d like.”

  “I’ll wait until they take a break.”

  Berrault nodded, then stood awkwardly. He likely wanted in the room himself, but Donnie stood before the door.

  “Baxter.”

  “Yes?” The coward swallowed hard and didn’t quite meet Donnie’s eyes. He was used to that, people didn’t like to look at him, but it wasn’t distaste for his appearance that held Berrault’s head down. Donnie could smell the fear on him.

  “I’m wondering how much of a lesson you need to remember to always treat Arianna with respect. She’s told me some things about you that make me eager to teach you that respect.”

  The man’s complexion lost all its color. “There were ... misunderstandings, I think.”

  “Is that what they were? Are you sure?”

  “I made mistakes.”

  “Yes. Now the question is ... will you make more?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I hope not.” He dropped his hand to Berrault’s shoulder, and the man flinched hard. “I’m paying attention, Baxter.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good.” He listened for a second. “The music’s stopped. I’m going in. Are you?”

  Berrault looked like he’d rather find a corner and cry, but he nodded and managed to straighten his spine. “Yes, I am.”

  Like he was the one who belonged, Donnie opened the door and ushered the ballet’s director and choreographer in.

  Arianna broke into bright beams of happiness when she saw him, and Donnie forgot all his worries for a moment.

  “Hi! I didn’t know I’d see you today!” She ran to him in that graceful glide of hers and wrapped her arms around him. He drew her close. But when she tried to kiss him, he pulled back.

  He wanted to kiss her. Now that he’d reclaimed that feeling, and had it with her, he wanted never to stop kissing her. But not in front of people. Not where others might see and be disgusted on her behalf.

  Frowning, she rested on her heels. “Donnie?”

  He couldn’t tell her that here, or maybe at all, but he smiled and cupped her face. “I missed you.”

  The words eased her disappointment, and she smiled again. “I missed you, too. We’re in the studio for another hour or so. Can you stay and watch?”

  “That’s why I’m here. And to have you after.” In private, he’d kiss her as much as she wanted.

  Her grin regained all its brilliant power. “You are the best surprise!”

  ~oOo~

  Trewson grinned at Donnie across the breakfast bar. “What’s your poison, Donnie?”

  Having already sampled the limited libations in this apartment, he’d stopped on the way. He lifted the bottle of Macallan in his hand. “I brought my own.”

  “Nice.” Trewson reached for the bottle, and Donnie handed it over. “Rocks, water, soda, straight—how d’you take it?”

  “Straight.” He glanced at Arianna, standing at the stereo with her phone in her hand, selecting music. Julian’s girlfriend stood beside her, conferring.

  He had not intended for the evening to be a double date. However, he was very glad to meet Tess McGovern.

  Arianna had said Trewson liked ‘big’ girls. Donnie’s own tastes ran to slender, small women—ballerinas, for instance—so his perspective was maybe a little skewed. He considered Bev a big girl, especially after four children—medium height, soft curves, ample chest. But Tess was quite large—taller than Trewson, at least as tall as Donnie’s six feet, and solid. She owned every inch of her look, too. Her long hair was dyed in rainbow colors and seemed to actually sparkle. Her makeup was dramatic, so dark her pale eyes glowed. She
wore a snug, dark blue velvety dress with black tights, and she’d had high-heeled black boots on when she’d come in. She must have stood six-four in those things. He found himself attracted—not desirous, she wasn’t his type at all, but impressed. She drew notice.

  Arianna looked like a china doll standing beside her, and that made Donnie ache with need.

  Trewson came up beside him and handed him a novelty juice glass full of two-hundred-dollar single-malt scotch. “She’s been happy lately,” he said.

  Donnie sipped his scotch and nodded.

  “I just want her safe,” Trewson added.

  Donnie didn’t respond. This man was his woman’s best friend, and short of sinking him in the ocean, there wasn’t much he could do about it. But as her best friend and frequent partner, Trewson got way up in her personal space, so Donnie would need, and take, some time to get right with that. He wasn’t at the heart-to-heart stage, particularly not about Arianna’s well-being.

  The women had apparently chosen music appropriate to this awkward gathering, and Arianna set her phone in the receiver. Music he actually liked rolled into the room: The Beatles.

  Arianna glided toward them, and Tess followed. Both women, beautiful in their ways, smiled at their men. Donnie pulled Arianna close as soon as he could reach her, and she tucked herself in at his shoulder. In this moment, in this room, with his troubles fifty miles away and this woman in his arms, he was happy, too.

  Trewson turned back to the kitchen and picked up three wine glasses from the bar. He handed the ladies their drinks and kept one for himself. He lifted his glass and grinned at them all. With his eyes on Donnie, he said, “A toast. To bright beginnings and happy ever afters.”

  Donnie lifted his glass and gave Trewson a nod. “Salute,” he said.

  ~oOo~

  Arianna ripped at the buttons of his shirt, “Oh my God, oh my God, get this off!”