Deep (The Pagano Family Book 4)

by Fanetti, Susan

  “That’s excellent.” He slid his hand into his suit jacket and handed her a flat, square, light blue box. “For you.”

  He hadn’t given her a gift since that night. Well, every day he gave her a gift, being there, loving her, letting her lean on him without pushing her for anything. But he hadn’t handed her a box like this since that night. It scared her—did this mean he was tired of waiting for things to be the way they were, that he would begin to push?

  “Nick…”

  His hand clenched around the box. “Don’t, Beverly. Don’t reject my gift without even seeing it. If you don’t like it, that’s one thing. But don’t just push it away. You’ve left me no other way to love you.”

  So yes, then. This was the end of his patience. She turned and walked away.

  She went to the sofa and sat down. He stood where he was, just inside her front door, and stared at her.

  Seeing no point in ducking the obvious, she said, “I understand if you need more than I can give you. You can go. I’ll be okay on my own now.” That was a bald-faced lie, but she couldn’t handle him being around if he was going to push her to do things she wasn’t ready to do.

  “Do you love me?” He hadn’t moved—or maybe even blinked.

  “Yes. But—” He put up his hand to stop her.

  “I love you. With the way things are for you, I don’t know how to express it.” He walked over, but he sat on a chair rather than next to her on the sofa.

  “You just did express it.”

  He scoffed. “Words. I need to show you. But I don’t know how.”

  “You do every day, and not just in words. Your patience and concern for me is love. Your smile is love. I feel your love in all of that—more than a piece of jewelry could make me feel. Don’t you know that?”

  “I guess not.”

  “I’m worried you’ll run out of patience with me. You’re so physical and I…I don’t know when I’ll be ready for that.”

  Now he came to the sofa and sat with her. “Bella. You think I don’t have more control over my body than that? Yes, I want to love you with my body. Yes, I miss it. But my patience is not at an end. For this, there might not be an end at all. What I want is to love you. I’ve never loved a woman like this before. I like it.” He stared down at the blue box in his hand. “And I like giving you things.”

  This time, when he handed her the box, she took it and opened the lid. She gasped. And then she cried. The box held a rose gold bracelet. A dainty chain, and a single, fragile rose-gold feather. He took the bracelet out and lifted her left hand. As she held her arm steady, he looped the chain around her wrist and fastened the clasp.

  “I thought you might need an extra these days. Ti amo, bella. Sei il mio sole.”

  Sniffling, she lifted her arm to admire the gift. “You say that, I think, most of all. What does it mean?” She’d never asked; she’d been happy to assume his words in Italian were sweet nothings. But that phrase he repeated so often, it must have meant something more.

  He cocked his head and grinned at her. When he looked at her like he was now, it was possible to believe that he was nothing but a kind, beautiful man, and that they were nothing but a normal, loving couple. “It means ‘I love you, beautiful. You are my sun.’”

  She didn’t feel very sunny. She dropped her head, but his hand came under her chin and lifted. “There are some clouds now, true. But you are the brightest part of my life. You found something light in me—I think maybe you made whatever’s light in me. So I’m not impatient with you.”

  Feeling shaky with emotion, Bev took his hand and brought it to her lips. That kiss wasn’t enough, though. She leaned in and put her hand on the back of his neck. Surprise and concern furrowed his brow, but he leaned down with her pressure, and she kissed him.

  It was their first real kiss since that night. Bev’s heart was pounding—not for fear of him, but for fear that the terrible images of that night would fill her head. They didn’t. It was okay. It was good.

  She kept it light, a simple press of lips to lips, and Nick didn’t take over or deepen the kiss at all. Bev thought it might have been the best kiss of her whole life.

  ~oOo~

  They had dinner at Nick’s uncle’s house. Since she’d spent a few weeks with them, recovering after that night in the diner, she’d grown deeply fond of Nick’s family—those she’d met, at least. There were a bunch of cousins and another uncle and aunt, too, but so far, they were only rumors. But Ben, Angie, and Betty had quickly become the closest family Bev had, too. In the few weeks that she’d been back in her own apartment, they’d established a routine of weekly dinners. And Angie and Betty had taken her out weekly for a ‘girls’ lunch’ as well. She felt surrounded and supported.

  When you went to dinner at Ben Pagano’s home, you dressed for the occasion. Though none of Bev’s clothes fit her very well, she’d managed to put together what she thought was a fairly decent outfit of a simple, dark blue sleeveless sheath with a grey crocheted cardigan over it. The sheath had once hugged her curves, but now it hung more straight—the style worked either way, she thought.

  But when Nick came back, dressed in another of his invariably navy suits, this one without pinstripes, he frowned.

  Bev stopped in the process of stepping into her grey pumps and looked at her dress. “Is this wrong to wear?”

  He shook his head like his was shaking off a thought. “No.” He came to her and pulled her pendant out from under her dress, laying it over the fabric. “You’re beautiful as always. Are you ready?”

  There had been something in that look, but she decided not to push the question. She picked up her grey clutch. “I am.”

  ~oOo~

  Fred Naldi and his wife, Monica, joined them this time. Bev had met Fred a couple of times, but she and Monica had never met before. Usually, Bev enjoyed meeting new people, but this time, she felt awkward and shy—all the more strange because Monica was a quiet, mouse-like woman, and usually Bev went out of her way to make shy people feel comfortable.

  Maybe it was that she hadn’t been expecting the Naldis to be joining them. Their quiet dinners with family felt intruded upon. But that wasn’t like Bev, either. All through the evening—cocktails, helping in the kitchen, setting the table, the meal itself—Bev found herself fighting off a kind of petulant resentment. It made no sense at all to her.

  Angie and Betty had both fussed, as they always did, about her weight. Angie poked at her collarbone where it showed at her neckline. Betty kept putting bread on her plate and was gravely disappointed when she turned down a slice of cheesecake.

  It wasn’t that she was trying not to eat. It wasn’t even that she wasn’t hungry. It was that food tasted different, less appealing. Like her eyesight, her taste buds seemed to have dimmed.

  Nick had said his share, too, but on this night, he called his mother and aunt off—and that was good, because Bev had felt strangely shaky and defensive all night.

  By the time they got back home, that petulance and defensiveness she’d felt all night had flowered into something like anger. Gone was the flutter of happiness she’d felt at their kiss. She’d kept quiet on the ride—it turned out, though she hadn’t seen him do it until recently, Nick could drive, and when they went out, it was just the two of them now—but by the time they were at her door, she just wanted to be alone.

  Nick had spent every night with her since the night at the diner. Since they’d been back home, he’d stayed at her apartment, going to his own place only when she was out, or to shower and dress, or sometimes to deal with business.

  Tonight she turned and put her hand on his chest. “I want to sleep alone tonight.”

  “No.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You don’t just push me away, Beverly. If there’s something we need to talk about, then we’ll talk. But I won’t let you just push.”

  “I don’t want to talk. I want to be alone.”

  As an answer, he took her keys out of
her hand, unlocked her door, and strode into her apartment, propelling her forward with his body. “First, we talk.”

  Mad as she was, she didn’t fight him. But she didn’t want to talk. She didn’t know what was wrong. Or there was so much that was wrong that she didn’t know what was causing her current stress.

  He led her to the sofa and sat her down, then sat next to her. “What is it? You’ve been sullen all night. I would never have thought to use the word ‘sullen’ to describe you.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just wasn’t in the mood tonight, I guess. Sorry if I didn’t perform up to your expectations.” Her tone had a sneer in it. Where the hell had that come from? Why did she feel like this?

  He was just as vexed by it as she was. “And now we have passive-aggressive bullshit, too. Beverly, no. I know you’re struggling, but speak to me like the woman you are, not like a pouting teenager.”

  “Don’t condescend to me. If you don’t want to be around me, then go. That’s what I wanted anyway.”

  Nick was quiet, his jaw twitching rhythmically, and Bev knew she’d made him angry. He never lost his temper, though. If anything, he spoke with more care, more quietly, the more furious he got.

  “You won’t talk, so I will. The first time you wore the dress you’re wearing right now was the night I took you to Dominic’s. Do you remember?”

  She nodded—it had been only a couple of nights before the diner. Despite the heightened security, or maybe in part because of it, she had experienced the same pseudo-celebrity feeling she’d had coming out of Neon. Nick was important, and at Dominic’s, like at Neon, he had a permanently reserved table. They had had an absolutely fantastic meal and had been waited on hand and foot. And then they’d come home, and Nick had tied her to her bed with scarves and fucked her practically into a coma.

  She shuddered as that happy image careened into an image of the next time she’d been bound.

  Nick noticed, and she saw the hurt darken his beautiful eyes.

  “That night, you wore the fuck out of this dress. It hugged every beautiful curve. I could barely keep my hands off you. Now it looks like a sack. I’ve been worried about your weight, but I hadn’t realized how much you’ve really lost until tonight. I haven’t had my hands on you enough to know. Earlier, I thought things might be getting a little better, but they’re not. You’re fading away right in front of me. I’m not helping you at all.”

  “That’s not true. You’re helping a lot. I’d—” she stopped, remembering what he’d said about his feelings about suicide, and then she decided to say it. “I’d probably have killed myself by now if not for you.”

  They stared at each other. When it became clear that he wasn’t going to respond to that, and when she couldn’t read anything at all in his expression, she went on. “I know how you feel about quitters, so if that makes you want to go, I understand. I want you to stay, but I didn’t say it to make you feel like you had to.” She recognized the irony of telling him she wanted him to stay while they were arguing about her wanting him to leave, but that made about as much sense as anything else.

  “I’m sorry I’m weak. But what happened that night—I can’t stop thinking about it. Even when sometimes I do for a second, it’s like my brain says, ‘Hey—wait! You forgot about the knife! How could you forget about the knife!’ Sometimes, I just want the pictures in my head to stop. I just want to stop. But you’re always there, being so gentle with me. Loving me. And I want to stay for that.”

  He reached out and took her right hand. Turning it over, he caressed her tattoo. “You’re not weak, and I’m not going anywhere. It hasn’t even been two months. But I don’t understand what’s going on with you or me, lately. I’m barely in control of myself—and I don’t mean I want to jump you. I’m so fucking angry. I thought making you safe would ease the rage in my chest, but it hasn’t. At all. Hearing what’s going on in your head—I want to kill someone, but there’s no one left to kill. When I picked you up for dinner, I saw how the dress fits you now, and realized how thin you are. The sweater, too, makes you look so grey.” He brushed a fingertip over the mark on her lips. “I let this happen to you. I have nowhere to go with that.”

  It didn’t faze her at all that he had killed the men who’d hurt her, and Donnie, and Bruce. She was glad. It made accepting the things he did as his work all the easier knowing what he would do for her.

  She smiled. “You told me you don’t have regrets.”

  “But I do. I think I always have.”

  “Il vero amore è senza rimpianti.”

  His eyes widened, and the dark mood between them was broken as he smiled warmly. It wasn’t easy to surprise Nick, but she’d managed it. “Where’d you learn that?”

  “The internet. I was trying to look up the thing you say about sunshine and I came across that. I liked it, so I tried to memorize it. How’d I do?”

  “You did pretty well. Do you know what it means?”

  She’d spent so much time trying to memorize the Italian words that she’d almost forgotten their meaning. “I think…it’s like, ‘love means never having to say you’re sorry.’ Or something like that.”

  “Something like that, but not quite. It’s better. It’s ‘true love has no regrets.’ I think it’s more than just not saying you’re sorry.” He laced his fingers with hers. “So tell me, bella. Knowing what you know, experiencing what you’ve experienced, do you regret falling in love with me?”

  She gave him the simple truth. “No. I should. I’m probably crazy not to, but I don’t. Do you regret loving me?”

  “No. Sei tutto per me. You’re everything to me.” Smiling, he added, “It must be true love, then.” He leaned in, slowly, giving her a chance to turn away. She didn’t.

  He slept with her that night, as every night now, dressed in his boxer briefs and a t-shirt, holding her in his arms.

  ~ 17 ~

  Nick stared at his office door as it closed behind the most recent hustler to come to Pagano Brothers Shipping with his hat in hand. The men still standing after Church’s collapse had been lined up for weeks now to pay tribute to the men who’d taken him down.

  Though he enjoyed their fearful obeisance, he loathed the idea of sitting down with anyone involved with Church. But wiping out all of his contacts would create another vacuum, and that was what had caused all the trouble in the first place.

  When, three years before, the Pagano Brothers had taken personal vengeance on a powerful business associate, they had crossed the careful separation between family and business that Nick’s uncle and father had built up over painstaking years. James Auberon had been as influential as Ben in Rhode Island business and politics, in worlds both legitimate and otherwise. Removing him had caused a seismic shift in both worlds—especially the underworld.

  Church had exploited the gap created by that shift. He was crude and without finesse, and it had taken him some time to build up the power and associations he needed to become more than a gnat at Ben’s ear.

  Ben himself had given him his first in. When he’d accepted as payment on an old debt the sponsorship of two mixed martial arts fighters—when the fighters had essentially been sold to them—he had brought the Pagano Brothers into an unfamiliar world. Then, he’d learned that that world was corrupt in a way he considered dishonorable. Fights were being fixed as a matter of course, and Ben decided that the Paganos would purge the fight world of that plague.

  Nick had advised his uncle and father against taking on the fighters—whose contracts had since been sold away—and he had advised against meddling in the way of that world. Ignoring that advice had been one of Ben’s few missteps in half a century. But it had nearly been enough to bring down everything they’d worked for in that time.

  They were out of the fights now. Though Nick had often been frustrated, sometimes infuriated, by his uncle’s stalwart adherence to his old ways, an adherence that had only become more impenetrable after the debacle in the fight world, he had to ad
mit that his uncle’s old ways at least had the potent benefit of balance. And as Nick received tribute from the men who’d survived their alliance with Alvin Church, he saw the balance in action.

  The Paganos controlled much of the underworld. Yet they were predominantly legitimate. The shipping company ran about eighty-five percent clean. The myriad clean businesses the Paganos owned in whole or in part all ran at a profit. Sometimes, managers and co-owners needed some persuading, but not often. A few businesses straddled the grey line, laundering unclean money. In the dark of their world, the Paganos stayed on the side of a line Ben had drawn long ago. No drugs. No guns. No human trafficking. They had girls, but they were there by choice, paid well and taken care of. Any associate or client who laid a violent hand on a girl working for the Paganos would be lucky to keep that hand.