by Xander Hades
I spent the better part of an hour running scenarios through my head, but no matter which way I played the whole thing out, there wasn’t any other solution. I might have pulled this out in an instant, but my instincts had been good. Solid. We might actually be able to pull this off, but we needed Deanna to act the part of the willing bride.
So ok. Marriage to me wasn’t exactly at the top of her list. There must have been something about that shooter made had her change her mind. The whole thing had embarrassed her maybe? Or worse, shaken her confidence?
It was just dumb luck that her message to Fingers had backfired. It was a beginner’s mistake. One I might have made myself. I wasn’t all that familiar with this job yet either. So, yeah, it blew up in her face. Not the end of the world. We could still deal with it. Were in fact still dealing with it.
I didn’t know if she realized this or not, but the reason I didn’t want her to take The Outfit, one of them anyway, was that she used the men under her without thinking about them as people. Maybe she was starting to figure that out. I’d certainly tried to impress the matter on her. In a weird way, maybe the shooter had done her some good.
Hopefully, the damage she’d done would hold for a while.
Right now I needed the men to be listening to me. I mean REALLY listening to me. At least until after the wedding. Beyond that? Well, I’d have either earned it or not at that point, and if I hadn’t, well it wasn’t going to matter a whole lot anymore then would it? But right now I had my focus in on a wedding that could either be a circus or a bloodbath. If things went badly, if I underestimated the men under Dominic and, more importantly, under Fingers, I would bring about a war the likes of which had never been seen before within the Outfit.
If one fought in such tight quarters, no one would get out in one piece. There would be a massacre, creating a bloody end to The Outfit that would be felt all the way back to Sicily.
And it all hinged on one thing, really. Beer.
I pulled the phone from my pocket and called Rico.
“It’s me. No, she’s fine.” I sighed. Rico was efficient but nosy. He once claimed he couldn’t be efficient if he didn’t know what was going on, and so it was ok for him to be nosy. I had let it slide. Big mistake. “No, Dominic was not happy. He’s probably off somewhere looking for a lozenge, but we worked it out. We’re going with my plan.”
I grabbed at a throw pillow digging in my back and fired it to the other end of the couch, settling back more comfortably. “Find me someone who can plan a wedding. Then find a large venue in New Orleans, something to fit a lot of people, but outdoors, lots of open spaces. Set a date for three weeks from Sunday. Yeah, the wedding planner should be from New Orleans too. I’m going to send you a number. Call it, use my name, and order beer. As much as they can get by the date the place is booked for.”
There was a slew of sputtered questions. Or protests in question form. Yeah, it was short notice, yeah I knew what I was doing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
“I know three weeks isn’t enough time, but it’s all the time we can spare. I’m not worried about cakes right now, if you can get one by then, fine. Don’t worry about it. No, don’t worry about it. My father can posthumously afford one wedding for his two boys and if it bankrupts us, we’ll earn it back, but if we don’t do this and fast, there’s no cut for anyone ever again.”
Rico was probing again, but this time I hung up on him. I liked him, I liked him a lot. And I did trust him. I just wasn’t in the mood to listen to him.
I leaned back on the couch, letting my head fall back as I closed my eyes. My thoughts kept returning to her, to Deanna. For the life of me, I could not work this out. I had loved her from the beginning, when we were thrust together as toddlers to play under the eye of our mothers. I had never made a secret out of that, either. I didn’t see a point in denying the truth and the simple truth was that I’d loved her. I’d thought she loved me too.
Ok, so a few years went bad because she lied to me about sleeping around. I did stupid things too. Like going to ASU.
But here she’s marrying someone she knows is in love with her, someone she was pressing to marry, and now I’m the enemy. I agree. Set the date. And she flies off in a wash of tears.
I shook my head to clear it. I had to plan a wedding and a betrayal in less than a month. Just in case I was very wrong, I needed to plan for a three-sided war too.
I wasn’t so sure I really wanted this job after all.
But then love can make you do crazy things.
Chapter 19
Deanna
Be careful what you ask for. The old saying went. You may get it. I thought I had everything figured. In fact, I had. And I was getting everything I wanted.
And at the same time, I was losing everything I’d worked for.
I lay on my bed crying like a damn teenager. Here I’d thought myself so strong and independent. Daddy, I could stand up to, or at least manipulate. Tony was easy. Michael. Michael wasn’t the boy I knew. That was my big flaw. I didn’t expect him to be… this.
I should have been making plans, I should have been ready to manage him, to move, to do…something. And there I lay, feeling sorry for myself.
OK, so I’d lied to him. I made up a long and salacious history of being a tramp, of sleeping around, being a whore. When in truth, I’d never had anyone but Michael. I lied because I believed he was using me as much as Daddy was, as much as Michael’s father had been. And he wasn’t. Not then.
Only now he was. That was part of the change in him I hadn’t counted on. The part that took my plans away from me. That made me consider that maybe I wasn’t going to get to call all the shots, that the empire wasn’t going to be mine after all.
Would you want him to be different?
I thought about it. What if Michael had been more like Tony. Shy. Uninterested. A businessman who was more content among the bookkeepers and was ready to leave all the long-range planning to someone else. What if Michael really had taken me up on my offer, him off sculpting his…whatevers…while I ran the show?
I got up and went to my dresser. The angel in chains was still there, where it had been since he’d given it to me back when we were stupid teenagers in love. I hadn’t understood the symbolism of it then, but saw it now, in the lines of the angel’s body, straining and defiant, the chains that bound her to earth delicate yet unrelenting.
Trapped. He’d understood it even then, how much I’d wanted to fly. How much I couldn’t.
I traced one wing with the tip of my finger, marveling at the detail in each feather. How many hours had he put in creating this? What had he felt, thought, as he’d sanded the harsh edges?
I’d called this a piece of junk...was it only days ago? He’d flinched and I’d pretended not to notice. It had been a lie. I’d never thought of it that way. I’d always been a little in awe of his talent. At his ability to create, not just in clay or wood, but something beautiful out of…me.
I set the figurine down with great care in the center of the dresser. I’d kept no other memento of my childhood, no ticket stubs or dried flowers, programs or souvenirs. Not that I hadn’t had friends in high school besides Michael. But somehow the act of graduating had put a distance between us that couldn’t be bridged. While we were all still students, we’d had some sort of equal footing. But being the daughter of a Mafia kingpin hadn’t exactly inspired close friendships and gradually everyone else had drifted away.
And in this moment, I was feeling…well, a little lonely. Like this was one of those moments where on TV or in a movie the heroine would call up that best friend who would help her to see reason, to figure out the thing that was staring her right in the face, that she was too close to see.
God, I needed that.
But who did I have?
I sank into the chair by the window, pulling my knees up and tucking my feet under me. For the last few months, I’d spent my time with Tony. Though truth be told he’d spent most of his time on his phone text
ing his boyfriend while I’d talked AT him about plans, about our joint future together. He truly hadn’t cared. I would take lunch with girls from my old sorority, but I shied away from the idea of calling any of them up. We weren’t really all that close, and I wasn’t sure which of them I could even trust. The feds had tried to infiltrate the Outfit over the years in some very creative means. More than one sudden friend at school had turned out to be wearing a wire.
It was odd how now that I was thinking about it, how I realized how much Michael had encouraged me to go out and do normal things. We’d gone to basketball and football games, pep rallies, proms. Regular normal stuff. Like regular normal teenagers. He’d always been pushing me to try new things, that I might grow. Change in good ways and become more confident as a person. Like the time he’d coaxed me into going off the high dive when I’d been twelve and too scared of heights to try it, though I’d loved the feel of plunging into the water since I’d learned how to swim.
And here I was trying to change him.
To make him less.
Is that what I really wanted? To reduce him? Not that I could if I tried. He certainly wasn’t about to let me step on him the way I had planned to do to Tony. It might sound horrible, but… Tony had been…. Tony. I hadn’t cared about him. Any more than he’d cared for me.
I returned to the bed and flopped down, pulling imaginary strings from the covers.
But I did care about Michael. More than I’d wanted to admit.
No. Not care. What I felt was deeper than that. More...primal. I’d been empty since that day he’d left me behind and traveled all the way to Arizona to go to school. I’d been shattered when he’d refused my phone calls. As angry as I’d been, my vengeful act of destroying him had destroyed me.
And now, just when my heart was healed, he’d come along and torn the whole thing asunder once more.
I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing him there in my dreams. Every caress of the wind from the open window became the touch of his fingers upon my skin. My need for him shattered all my illusions about sex, about myself. Never had one woman hungered so for one man.
Or wanted so much more. Because it wasn’t just the physical. I enjoyed our repartee. His quick mind. The conversations that flowed so easily when we both relaxed enough to let down our guards.
I wanted to spend time with him. To just be in his presence. To talk about everything and nothing. To just…be.
In short, I was in love with the man. Head over heels in love. Straight out of the cheesy romance novels. And it would cost me everything.
So what if I had it all? What if I…well, what if I married…Michael? On his terms. Could I be happy with that? His wife and second-in-command of one of the largest Mafia empires in the country?
It was heady. A thought that should have left me wild with delight. Not alone anymore, but partners with the man I loved and admired. The man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. But…
But he’d never even asked. He was treating me… like I’d treated Tony. Like I’d tried to treat Michael.
So, maybe I deserved it. Right? Hell, I knew I did. But it still hurt. The problem was that I didn’t want him to change either. This new Michael was strong and independent. The one I had known was a dreamer, an artist. Hell, he’d been a flake. Maybe this new Michael had been there all along, only waiting for him to grow up to be discovered. Whatever the case, I’d been infatuated with the youthful Michael…but I was wildly passionately in love with the man he’d become.
If Michael let me manipulate him now, I would have lost all respect for him.
Yet even now, I found I would do it. Even if I would hate him for it.
Isn’t he manipulating me?
The quiet question rose up from the depths, trouncing love and daydreams. This was the bitter truth that I’d been avoiding all along. Deep down, I didn’t want to accept the death of my dreams. I didn’t want to accept a weak Michael either. I couldn’t have both.
I’d never been so confused in my life. Love. Hate. So closely intertwined as to become one.
So for the first time since my mother died, I hid in my room and cried, just like the child I’d used to be. And the big tough woman that thought she could run The Outfit disappeared, slipping through my fingers like so much water.
Sitting on my bed in the same bowed position of the angel on the dresser, though my chains were invisible, binding me nonetheless.
Hell, I hated Michael for that too.
Chapter 20
Michael
I had to hand it to Rico. He was good at what he did. There was not a soul he knew in New Orleans, and he’s never even been there, but he found people. And by the time I got home, he had calling in favors from people he’s never even met. He greeted me at the door with the venue already booked. The luxury hotel looked perfect from what I could see online, with space enough in its elaborate gardens for the wedding of the century and then some. But I hated risking so much without checking it out for myself first.
“So congratulations, Michael,” Rico said to me as I sat signing the stack of contracts and agreements he’d compiled that seemed somehow necessary to bring off the wedding of the century. I paused in signing documents for a marriage certificate, looking up at him blankly. “On… getting married?” he prompted as though it should have been obvious. Given what I was signing, it should have been.
Instead, I nodded, half distracted. “I’m taking a big chance with this.”
“It always is.”
“What it?” I laid down the pen and looked at him.
“Boss-man.” Rico looked at me like I was the densest creation God ever made by accident. “I meant getting married, what are you talking about?”
“Rico,” I said, explaining to him in the same over-patient tone. “I’m taking a big risk. I am wagering The Outfit and a lot of lives on the information you gave me and from that punk that took a shot at Deanna.”
Rico’s eyes grew a lot larger and he shook his head slowly, sadly as he gathered the papers to fax out to their various destinations. “I don’t believe you, man, I really don’t.”
“What are you talking about?” I raised my voice. OK, I yelled. He just was sounding so much like Tony who always told me that I was clueless that it irritated me. If he wasn’t Rico, I would have… well, done something, I’m sure.
“Did you realize that you’re getting married? To have and hold, sickness, health, part at death… any of that ring a bell?”
I blinked a few times. “You getting to be romantic on me?”
“Always was. Me, I like a pleasant life. I like to go home, whenever I can, of course, to a happy woman who makes me happy. In order to get that, I make her happy. You go into this like a business venture, Boss-man, and you’re going to live the rest of your life with a business merger. And I know this girl. She’s the kind to keep accounts.”
I drew a deep breath. “Rico, this is arranged. Her father and mine, they set it up. Hell, she’s in on it, tried to trick me into it.”
Rico shrugged. “I have calls to make Boss-man,” he said and turned, shuffling the papers in his hand. “But you love the girl. And you can’t bullshit your way out of that one.”
“It’s merger,” I insisted, rooting around on my desk for Rico’s notes on the ceremony. “It’s no difference than if I was marrying Dominic. It’s business.”
“Boss-man,” Rico sighed. “you wouldn’t have carried Dominic a quarter mile in your arms to safety.”
It was an image that I didn’t want. Or need. I leveled a glare at him. “Rico, I couldn’t carry Dominic a quarter mile to save MY life.”
“Ain’t what I mean. And you know it.” Rico left and closed the door softly behind him. It amazed me how closing a door softly could be even more eloquent than slamming it. There I was left sitting at my desk in the middle of the room, thinking how for the second time that day I’d been abandoned by the gentle snick of a door catching and the whisper tread of footsteps retr
eating.
It was rather disconcerting.
I’d been raised in a household of slamming doors.
I had work to do, I shook my head and tried to put it in the back of my mind, but it wouldn’t stay there. Finally, I picked up my cell phone and paged through the numbers. I had replaced the phone three times since college, but I kept the important numbers fresh. Hoodoo was in there, listed under important contacts. I was hoping the other one was still good.
There’s a lot that goes into planning a wedding, especially if the bride isn’t interested in the details. I spent the day making calls and plans and having my guys run all sorts of stupid errands that earned me more than one raised eyebrow. Eventually, we all wound up in the kitchen, chugging beer and eating monster sandwiches delivered from a nearby deli looking at bridal magazines. You’ve never lived till you’ve been in a room with a half-dozen mobsters eyeing hemlines and trying to determine whether to go with a modern cake or something more traditional, especially since Rico had been able to scare up a baker after all. The discussion on flavors got excited to the point of gunshots, but only the ceiling suffered any damage, and the guy responsible felt so bad, I let him manage the gift registry by way of making amends.
I figured that Fingers would get wind of it soon. I was pretty sure that one of my guys was feeding information to New Orleans. He had family there, so I wasn’t blaming him too much. Also, sometimes a mole can be kind of useful. I made sure that Nico was the guy sending out the invitations so I could pretend not to notice if one or two went missing.
