Prayer (The Pagano Family Book 5)

by Susan Fanetti

  She had sat before she’d checked the bench to see what music was in it, and she hadn’t played in several months, so she didn’t have any song warm in her head. She just let her fingers play over the keys until they found what they wanted.

  What they wanted surprised her a little, but she supposed it shouldn’t have. The last song John had played last night was one she knew well: ‘The Wayward Wind.’

  Her mom was a Patsy Cline fan and had all her albums and a big songbook with most, if not all, of her released music. ‘The Wayward Wind,’ about a man who couldn’t stay put, had often been on heavy rotation on the turntable and on the piano. Katrynn had learned it in middle school.

  Katrynn could sing, but she didn’t while she played now. She just played, softly, thinking more about the night before than about her father. But about halfway through the song, her mother came to the doorway and leaned on the jamb, a paring knife forgotten in her hand, and she began to sing: the next of kin to the wayward wind.

  Katrynn picked up the harmony, and they finished the song together.

  When she was finished, her mom said, “You know I don’t mind, darling. It’s how he’s always been. I wander, too. I just don’t leave home to do it.”

  “I know, Mom.” Even if there were rough edges on this life, it worked for her parents. Her mom would find someone to keep the loneliness at bay until her dad came home, and then they’d be as happy and in love and together as ever. It worked for them.

  They had a great love, and they had decided long ago that they would never hold each other down, that they would never settle for less than the life they needed or wanted.

  What her parents had was not at all what Katrynn wanted, but she understood the impulse not to settle for less than what was right. What was right for her, what she wanted, was someone who would neither need nor want to wander from her.

  She’d been wrong to think she was ready to give up hope, ready to settle for whatever she could get.

  She didn’t want to settle for someone. She wanted someone to settle with.

  ~ 5 ~

  On Monday morning, John sat in the waiting area at Pagano Brothers Shipping. He was dressed for work: jeans and work boots, a flannel shirt and t-shirt under a thick hoodie. His heavy-duty coat was in the truck; the weather continued warm for February. Sitting in the corporate reception area, with a gorgeous brunette behind the desk across the room, John felt awkward and nervous and completely out of place. There was a concern lurking in the back of his head that he should have worn a suit for this meeting.

  But that was ridiculous. He had to go to work after this, and he worked construction. Besides, Nick was his cousin. He was family. As much as it felt like he was sitting outside the principal’s office, he was not.

  No, he was not. He was sitting outside Don Pagano’s office. Because he’d started a fight that had done significant damage to the don’s wife’s business. More than that.

  But Nick was family. More than ever. That should count for something.

  For most of John’s life, the two branches of the Pagano family—John’s father and his family on one, and Uncle Ben and Uncle Lorrie and their families on the other—had been connected but not especially close. Ben and Lorrie had taken over the shipping business from their father, and they had built the empire that was the Pagano Brothers, a major force in the world and in the underworld. Carlo Sr. had not wanted the underworld in his world, and so he had gone a different direction. He’d built Pagano & Sons Construction, and he’d kept his family largely innocent of the darkness in his brothers’ world.

  Although the split had been accepted by the Pagano Brothers, and the relationships among everyone were affectionate, the difference had made distance between Carlo Sr. and his brothers, to the extent that, although they all lived in or near the same town, they all saw each other at Mass every Sunday and on holy days, and they all spent parts of holidays and special occasions together, John and his siblings had grown up mostly thinking about their Uncles and that branch of the family as almost mythical. Especially once Nick, the youngest surviving child of their generation on that branch and substantially older than John, had hit his teens.

  That distance closed several years ago, when Nick married Bev. She had singlehandedly brought the family tree together. From what John could tell, she’d done it simply by refusing to acknowledge that there were two sides of the family. She wanted the whole shebang, and she got it. This past Christmas, after Nick had become don of the Pagano Brothers, Bev had even managed to revise decades-long traditions and bring the whole family together at her and Nick’s house for Christmas Eve dinner.

  Nick was closer to John and his siblings than he had ever been before. For the past few years, it had been unusual for any month to go by without some big family event, be it a holiday, an anniversary, a birthday, or just a backyard or beach cookout. In fact, they were all getting together the very next weekend to celebrate the seventh birthday of Carmen and Theo’s daughter, Teresa.

  Nick was one of them now, more a brother than a cousin, and he hadn’t been before.

  They were close. John should not have been nervous about this meeting.

  But it was almost eight-thirty. It didn’t matter how close John and Nick had become. Don Pagano was making him wait. Making him sweat.

  He was in serious shit.

  ~oOo~

  “Mr. Pagano?” The knockout behind the desk had stood up as she’d called his name. John stood, too.

  “Yeah?”

  “Don Pagano is ready for you. Mr. Naldi will meet you just through those doors.”

  Nick had sent out his consigliere to meet him. Jesus, he was laying it on a little thick, wasn’t he?

  “Thanks.” With a nervous gesture, John smoothed his hands over his chest, like he could sharpen up his black hoodie somehow, and went to the doors.

  Fred Naldi had been Uncle Ben’s consigliere until Ben’s death last summer, and he was now Nick’s. He had to be in his seventies, and he was very overweight. John had a passing thought, as he took Fred’s offered hand for a shake, to wonder who would someday take his place.

  “Hi, Fred.”

  Fred gave him a smile more of sympathy than greeting. “John. You look rough, son.” He nodded at John’s mangled face.

  “Yeah. Had some trouble.”

  “So I hear. Nick is waiting.”

  John nodded and followed Fred into Nick’s office.

  Nick stood when they came in, but he didn’t hold out his hand. Instead, he waved slightly at the red leather chairs arranged before his heavy desk. “John. Have a seat. Fred, I’ll call you if I need you.”

  Fred left with a quick nod. John sat and tried not to look around too much. He’d never been in this office before. Carlo had, and Luca, a few times, and Joey had briefly even worked for the Uncles, but John was the good son. He’d never crossed the Uncles, or, until now, Nick, and he’d never had cause to ask for a favor.

  The room felt like an executive’s office: plush carpeting, lots of wood in a dark walnut stain, deep red leather upholstery, a few good pieces of art. On the desk in front of Nick was a large collection of photos in silver frames—Bev and their daughters, mostly, with a couple of Nick’s mom, too—and, sitting on a leather blotter, a pad of heavy white paper and an expensive pen. There was a tablet at his side, but it was closed, and his phone sat on top of it.

  Nick was dressed in a way perfectly familiar to John: an expensive, dark wool suit, a crisp white shirt with French cuffs, and a sedate silk tie done in a Windsor knot. Even now, spending more casual family time together, Nick looked more out of place in jeans than he did in Armani. Even on the beach, he didn’t dress down much.

  With an errant and totally inappropriate thought, John wondered when he’d last seen Nick’s bare torso, if he ever had since they’d been kids. That should have been strange—in the Cove during the summer, some men barely bothered to put a shirt on at all. But he thought it would be weirder to see Nick leaning back
against a log on the beach, hanging out, with a can of beer balanced on his bare belly.

  Yeah, that would be completely weird.

  Nick hadn’t yet spoken, and John finally figured out that he was supposed to speak first. Acutely feeling his jeans and hoodie, he cleared his throat and sat up straight. “Nick, I don’t have enough words to say how sorry I am about Saturday night. I don’t even know where to start. I will repair all the damage. I’ll get on it today.”

  All of that was absolutely true. He felt terrible about all of it, and he had no good excuse. Nothing he could get his head around. The ground had been crumbling under his feet for months, and he felt like he was one step from pure freefall.

  Lying in bed Saturday night, his conscience throbbing as hard as his face, he’d put serious thought into going back to Italy for a while. He’d even texted Giada. She’d replied quickly, and they’d spent a couple of hours chatting that way, until she took it to a sex place. Normally, he’d have been very good with that, but he’d felt too guilty to get into it, After the damage he’d done, it hardly seemed fair that he’d get to end the night jacking off with a hot Italian chick.

  Giada had been more than a little insulted when he’d cooled off their exchange. Another woman he’d let down. He sure was on a roll.

  But running out of the country was no solution. He had a good life here. He just needed to find his footing in it again.

  “You understand that there is damage you did that can’t be repaired,” Nick said in that scary-deep rumble that implied threat.

  John guessed he was talking about the chair. Bev’s friend’s chair. “I can do furniture work. I might be able to fix that, too.”

  But Nick shook his head. “Beverly knelt in the middle of that room and cried. She hugged a broken piece of that damn chair and sobbed. Can you fix that?” Anger bit into his tone, and John swallowed hard.

  God, he’d fucked up so much. He didn’t seem able to stop. None of this was like him. He was the good son, dammit. He didn’t let people down. The one thing that had given him was a solid self-concept.

  “Jesus. I’m so sorry, Nick. No, I can’t fix that. But I’ll talk to Bev. I’ll apologize and do what I can.”

  A clock ticked somewhere in the room while Nick stared at John and John made himself stare back. Finally Nick relaxed a bit, sitting back maybe an inch in his chair. “You weren’t straight with me at Carmen’s. There is something going on between you and Katrynn.”

  “I was straight with you. There’s nothing more than I said. I told you what I did. She came up to me at the shop, and I thought I had a chance to make amends, but…” He couldn’t say the rest of it, that he was worried he’d done something more than he remembered. He couldn’t say that out loud to Nick or to anyone other than Katrynn herself. “But she still doesn’t want to let me.”

  “Then you should leave her alone. Why did you hit Calhoun?”

  Because Calhoun was a smug son of a bitch, because John was about ninety-nine percent sure he’d left that enormous bruise on Katrynn’s neck, and because John liked her and was losing control of himself. How to say that to Nick?

  “I don’t know. I don’t like the guy. At all.”

  Nick took a breath. In anybody else, it would have been a sigh. Coming from Nick’s chest, it was something else. More dangerous than a sigh. John realized that here, in this room, having this conversation, he was legitimately afraid of his cousin. Not just nervous. Afraid.

  “I don’t like him, either. If you hadn’t been in Beverly’s shop, I might have sent Sam in to hold him down for you. But you were in Beverly’s shop, at an event that was important to her, and you did damage you can’t repair. On top of that, now I’ve got Calhoun’s lawyer calling Fred and asking how I’m going to make it right. He’s threatening to press charges against you and to sue Beverly. He’s threatening to make a stink in the press. He’s making all kinds of threats. The bastard is trying to extort me.”

  “That seems very stupid.”

  “Of course it is. It’s a nuisance, nothing more. But it’s a messy nuisance, at a time when I have bigger issues to contend with. I don’t need the mess, and I don’t need the publicity. I’m going to have to pay him off to keep things clean and quiet. It pisses me off that I have to put money in that bastard’s hands. This is what your little crush has brought to me.”

  “I don’t have a crush.”

  “John, I don’t fucking care. You’re here because you owe me a debt. Yes, you will repair the shop. Yes, you will make your amends to Beverly. But that won’t repay your debt.”

  “I have some money. I can pay off Calhoun.”

  “A hundred thousand dollars?”

  John’s heart stopped. “Please? How can it be that much?”

  Nick’s only answer was that green-eyed stare.

  John thought fast. “Um, okay. I’ll go to the bank. I can put up the beach house for a second loan. It’ll take a few days.” To dive headlong into a financial cesspool for that bastard made John crazy, but he had thrown the first punch. Sucker-punched the guy, really.

  After letting him swing for a while, Nick shook his head. “I’ll pay, and I’ll make sure he goes away and stays there. That’s not where your debt comes from, and I think you know that.”

  No. With the Pagano Brothers, the debt had been incurred when John’s actions had crossed into Nick’s business. And repayment was never financial. It couldn’t be cancelled with a check or a stack of bills.

  John sighed. “What do you want me to do?”

  “It doesn’t work that way. When there is something I want you to do, I will let you know, and then you’ll do what I tell you. Until then, the debt stays open.”

  Yep. Serious shit.

  ~oOo~

  Since he’d gotten to the office late, John took a late lunch that day and stopped by Cover to Cover around three in the afternoon, after he’d done his rounds at the few interior job sites they had running this winter. He came in with his small toolbox; he planned today only to understand what needed to be done and what materials he’d need. And he also hoped to get a moment with Bev—and that he wouldn’t run into Katrynn, though that hope was slim.

  The double doors to the Reading Room were closed, and there was a neatly handwritten sign on one that read, The Reading Room is closed for renovation. We regret the inconvenience.

  Inconvenience. Nick had called it a ‘nuisance.’ Small words to describe John losing control of his life.

  A salesclerk was at the desk, a guy John might have seen once or twice but didn’t know. He hadn’t been at the party Saturday night. The guy blinked at the sight of John’s face, then recovered and gave him a professional smile and said, “Good afternoon. May I help you find something to read?” So he didn’t know John, either.

  “Hi. I’m looking for Bev. I’m here to start work on the Reading Room.”

  “Oh, good. Bev’s gone home for the day. Hold on, please.” He picked up the handset of a phone on the desk and pushed a button. “Hi. There’s somebody here to work on Chris’s room.”

  Too late, John realized that if Bev wasn’t here, then there was only one person the clerk could have called.

  The clerk confirmed John’s fear when he said, “The manager will be out in just a sec.”

  “Thanks.” He didn’t feel especially thankful.

  Katrynn came through the office suite door before the clerk had stopped nodding.

  Stopping at the desk, keeping it between them, she said, “Hi.”

  She was obviously still trying to camouflage her neck. Today she wore a white shirt under a black blazer, with jeans. Wrapped around her neck was a red and white checkered scarf. Her hair was in its usual ponytail—and she was wearing her glasses. Black horn-rims.

  John had seen her in them a few times. He thought they were hot. In fact, he thought her whole ensemble, though it covered her from jaw to toe, was hotter than the form-fitting dresses she’d worn at the parties. She looked older and younger simultane
ously. She looked smart. She was smart.

  “Hi,” she said again, and John realized he’d been staring.

  “Hey. I’m going to fix what I broke. Today, I need to take some measurements and get a sense of everything I need to do. I’ll start work tomorrow. Unless that’ll be in your way.”

  She took a set of keys from a drawer in the desk and came around to his side. “No. The faster you get it done, the better.”

  He followed her to the double doors, and she unlocked them. He got two steps into the room and then stopped, shocked.

  How had two men caused this much destruction?