Simple Faith (The Pagano Brothers Book 1)

by Susan Fanetti

  His family had owned this house longer than he’d been alive. First, it had been his Aunt Carmen’s. Then she’d had a kid and gotten married—in that order—and moved out. Uncle John rented it from her after that, and eventually bought it, and when he’d gotten married and had a kid, they’d built an addition, and they’d stayed. Until their twins were born. For a few years after that, the family had used it casually, as a beach base and guest house. Trey had lost his virginity in the loft, in his junior year of high school. He’d gotten drunk for the first time—really drunk, not sucking-the-wine-puddles-from-the glasses-after-Christmas-dinner drunk—and stoned for the first time, on separate occasions in the living room. All his illicit firsts had happened in this little house.

  The innocently illicit firsts, anyway.

  After Trey graduated from Princeton, he’d asked Uncle John if he could rent the place, and he’d been here on his own since then.

  Hooking his longboard at its place on the porch wall, Trey pulled a towel out of the weather-beaten cabinet by the door and knocked the sand off his feet. He stripped out of his wetsuit and dried off, shivering against the last kiss of cold in the breeze. Inside, his work cell chimed, and he went into the house, rubbing his head with the sandy towel, and grabbed the phone off the island counter.

  Nick. “Good morning, Uncle,” he answered.

  “Trey. This is the third time I’ve called this morning.”

  Trey glanced up at the clock over the refrigerator. It wasn’t seven in the morning yet. But no one kept Don Pagano waiting. “Sorry, don. I was in the water.” When Nick didn’t respond, Trey asked, “Is there trouble?”

  “An issue came up in the night. I want you here.”

  Shit. Had the Swintons gone sour already? He’d only left the bar a few hours ago. “With Cyclone?”

  “No.”

  “Gessie’s First Communion is today.” Normally he’d never have dared push against a summons from Nick, but today was supposed to be sacrosanct, set aside for their family. Gessie was one of his little cousins, Uncle Joey’s middle child. They had a family breakfast before the Mass, and then a cookout at Joey and Tina’s place afterward.

  Nick usually did all he could to keep work and family on separate planes; if he was letting work interrupt family, something big had come up.

  “I’m aware, Trey. I want you at the office in thirty minutes.”

  Thirty minutes was generous; Nick had heard Trey say he’d been surfing and was giving him time to make himself ready. “I’ll be there.”

  Nick ended the call, and Trey stared at the phone for a second, thinking. Missing Gessie’s First Communion would set his father off, and he was not in the mood for one of their free-for-alls. Not that he ever enjoyed them, but sometimes he was in the mood to provoke them. Today was not one of those times.

  Trey and his father, Carlo, had been butting heads for more than a decade, since he’d started high school. Before that, they’d been incredibly close—he’d gotten teased through the last half of elementary school because on some busy-work handout in third grade, he’d filled in the line, ‘My best friend’s name is ____’ with ‘Daddy.’ It had been true, and he’d asserted that truth, even in the face of ridicule and bullying.

  But then, the summer before ninth grade, everything went wonky, all at once. Like he’d gotten up one day that summer and the world was different. His father wanted a particular kind of life for him. Trey had wanted it, too. They’d been working together toward it for years. But that summer, Trey hadn’t wanted to do what his father wanted. He hadn’t even known why not, or what else he’d do. He simply hadn’t wanted what his father wanted. Simply because his father wanted it.

  They’d had their first real fight that summer, and then fought all summer, until, the August he turned fourteen, they could hardly be in the same room together for ten minutes without shouting. Trey remembered what that was like—just being sure, in his bones, that he absolutely could not, would not do what his father wanted, but having absolutely no idea why not. Even if it had been something he’d wanted, too—even if it still was something he wanted. It became his mission to find another way to be. He’d seen how it tore his father up, but he couldn’t stop himself. When his father’s frustration had hit it boiling point and he’d begun to ‘lay down the law,’ they’d broken apart.

  Almost twelve years later, they’d never again been best friends. The life Trey had chosen, he hadn’t chosen to spite his father, but after years of him acting out of spite, his father couldn’t believe he acted any other way. When Trey joined the Pagano Brothers and moved to the other side of the pews, his father had considered that the highest form of betrayal. He’d almost cut Trey out of the family over it. Trey’s stepmother, and aunts and uncles, had intervened, and after months of strife there had eventually been a truce between them, but some damage seemed permanent.

  Trey hadn’t had a best friend, someone to confide in, since middle school, honestly. Since his father had held the title. The only kids he’d ever been able to tolerate, he was related to. He had his family, his cousins, his aunts and uncles, his stepmother—who was the only mom he remembered or needed. His life was full of love and friendship. But he missed his old man.

  Who would totally lose his shit when he found out Trey was missing Gessie’s First Communion.

  Setting the work cell down, Trey went to his bedroom and picked up his personal. He called his mom’s phone—she was a reliable buffer between Trey and his father, and unfailingly reasonable.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” she answered warmly.

  “Hi, Misby. How are you this morning?”

  “I’m well. You’re calling early. All is well?”

  “Uh … I have to work this morning. I’m probably going to miss the breakfast, maybe the Mass, too. I don’t know yet.” He heard her sigh, and guilt poured through the phone into his head. “I’m sorry, Misby.”

  “Your father…”

  “I know. I’d be there if I could. I want to be there.”

  “I know you do. I’ll tell him. I’ll make it right.”

  “Thank you. I love you.”

  “I love you, too. Be safe.”

  “I will be—and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  When he got off the phone, he put his ass in gear to get showered and dressed. You went to Don Nick Pagano’s office in one of only two ways: well dressed, or bound and gagged. Either way, you got there on time.

  ~oOo~

  Pagano Brothers Shipping had gotten its start as a little one-truck operation run by Trey’s great-grandfather. The elder two of his three sons, Beniamino and Lorenzo, had built that little enterprise up into a successful company and built the Pagano Brothers organization on the same foundation. When Beniamino died, Nick, Lorenzo’s son, took over and, with savvy and ruthlessness, increased the power and influence of both.

  Trey hailed from the other side of the family. His grandfather, Carlo Sr., had been the third and youngest Pagano brother, and he’d rejected his brothers’ decision to expand their father’s company into illegal trafficking, a decision that was the origin of the Pagano Brothers organization. Instead, Carlo Sr. began a construction company, and their hometown of Quiet Cove had become the base of two separate sides of the family: The Pagano Brothers, and Pagano & Sons. Now Trey’s true uncles, Luca, John, and Joey, ran Pagano & Sons.

  Carlo Jr., Trey’s dad and the eldest of Carlo’s six children, had never wanted to work in the family business—like his own son, he’d been a disappointment to his father. He was an architect heading an elite firm in Providence.

  Though the two sides remained family and bound together, the separation had always been apparent, all the way down to where they sat for Mass at Christ the King Catholic Church: Carlo Pagano and his family on one side, and Ben and Lorrie Pagano and their families and associates on the other side of the pews. Everyone in Quiet Cove knew exactly who and what all three Pagano brothers were, and everyone respected them all.

&nbs
p; But Carlo Sr. had badly wanted his family to stay out of Pagano Brothers business. His oldest son felt the same.

  Carlo Sr. had been bitterly disappointed when his youngest son, Joey, had crossed to the other side of the pews, but Joey’s tenure had been cut short by a disabling bullet.

  Carlo Jr. had been enraged when his eldest son had crossed over. Trey was now in his third year in the organization and had no plans to leave it.

  His father would have to come to terms with his choice.

  Trey parked his Audi Q5 at the end of a short row of vehicles he knew: Angie Corti’s Hellcat, Donnie Goretti’s Porsche, and Nick’s Navigator. That was the inner circle.

  He checked his watch—still had five minutes to spare, but he didn’t like being the last one in.

  With a fresh sense of urgency, he keyed in the access code on the front door; it was Sunday, and the shipping part of the company was closed. In the reception area, Ray, Nick’s driver and bodyguard, sat comfortably on a sleek, black leather chair, reading on a tablet. He looked up as Trey came in, and they shared a nodded greeting as Trey headed straight for the don’s office.

  One of the dark double doors was ajar, and Trey pushed it open as he knocked.

  The room had a classy décor that told a story of a wealthy, high-level executive with tastes that ran to modern European style: clean lines, dark wood, firm leather, and earth tones. Doodads and knickknacks at a minimum. The wide window overlooked Quiet Cove Harbor, but Nick kept the view obscured with simple, semi-sheer white drapes.

  Nick sat on the front edge of his vast desk. Angie and Donnie sat in the two leather chairs that faced the desk. Angie was still dressed as he’d been at Cyclone last night, and he looked like he hadn’t gotten anywhere near a bed in the few hours since they’d left the club.

  “Trey. Excellent.” Nick stood and came over, his arms out for their usual quick hug of a greeting.

  “Hello, Uncle. If I’m late, I apologize.”

  Nick checked the Rolex on his wrist. “You’re not. Donnie and Angie were here with me when I called. Let’s sit.” He gestured to the sofa against the wall, and the hairs on Trey’s neck twitched. Was this meet about him? Had Cyclone gone wrong after all?

  Knowing that showing anxiety would tweak Nick’s patience hard, he simply walked with him to the sofa and sat. Donnie and Angie shifted their chairs. Trey focused for a second on Angie; he was most likely to give him goodhearted shit, so if he looked overly serious, Trey would know he was in trouble.

  He didn’t—he didn’t look amused, but he wasn’t turning his murder look on him, so whatever was wrong, it wasn’t Trey. That allowed him to let out a surreptitiously held breath.

  “You said trouble came up in the middle of the night, Uncle?”

  “Yes. I had a call from Frederick Dumas, and I spent the early hours with him in the ER in Providence.”

  Frederick Dumas was the Pagano Brothers’ chief finance guy. Trey had done quite a bit of work with Dumas and sometimes had a thought that he’d like his job, when Dumas was done with it. His degree was in international finance, with a minor in information technology.

  His father had wanted him to be an architect, or at least an engineer.

  “What happened? Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine. It was his daughter who was hurt. Lara. They hurt her to get a message to him. You understand why it’s doubly dangerous that they got to Lara.”

  Trey nodded. Lara was the brains of the Dumas operation. She was an elite cryptologist and created all the encryptions for Pagano Brothers—not just their financial data, but their job codes, their asset locations, their schedules, everything. She knew everything. Her father was the one with the good financial sense, but otherwise, he just mashed the keys his daughter told him to mash and served as the mature masculine face their business associates trusted.

  They’d gone for the daughter to get information from the father, but it was the daughter’s brain where it all was stored.

  Trey had met Lara Dumas only once, and from a distance—nothing more than a brusque wave from the other side of a large room. All he knew of her was blonde, slight, and unsmiling. And that her brain should have been about seven sizes bigger than her skull could contain.

  “What did they do to her?”

  “What they always do to women when they want to hurt the men who care about them.” Nick said that sentence with a dangerous snarl. “Then they turned her out to wander naked in the streets.”

  “Jesus. Who did it?”

  Nick nodded at Donnie, who pulled his phone from his suit coat pocket, flicked his thumb across the screen a few times, and handed the device to Trey.

  He squinted at the screen, trying to make sense of the image on it. That was … skin, wounded skin. Shit, that was a brand. In the angry, livid wound, he could make out the shape that had been burned into someone’s skin—Lara Dumas’s skin. Once he realized that the scar showed the original image in reverse, he saw it: a B capped with a crown.

  It was difficult to make out the details in the swollen burn, but Trey knew that if he saw the thing that had made it—a big ring, he guessed—the B would be drawn with flourishes, and the crown would be elaborate as well. “Bondaruk.”

  A Ukrainian bratva based in New Jersey. Minor players in the underworld of the Eastern Seaboard, but they’d been making some noise in the past year, attempting to raise their profile.

  Nick nodded. “Yes, good eye. Bondaruk.”

  “Is this a message to you?”

  A surprising hint of a smile lifted Nick’s mouth. “We’re not yet in agreement on that. I don’t think so. I think they’re trying to flip Dumas and had no intention of me finding out until it was too late.”

  “I think it’s nuts not to act like it is a message direct to you, don,” Angie said. Though Sam was Nick’s bodyguard and Donnie was his underboss, Angie was their security expert. By nature suspicious, he was the one who saw deepest into the dark corners.

  “And we will,” Donnie answered. “But we won’t tip our hand.”

  “They go for families,” Angie pushed. “That breaks the code.”

  “These Ukie bastards don’t give a shit about our code.”

  “Easy, Donnie,” Nick admonished. “I’m not taking any chances with our families, Ange. You know I won’t. But tipping our hand puts everybody at risk.” Nick turned back to Trey. “This is where you come in. I have an assignment for you.”

  “Of course.” Trey sat up straighter.

  “They’ve shown they can get to Lara, and we have to protect that asset at all costs. I don’t know what kind of pressure she might withstand, and I won’t take the risk they’ll find out that it’s her who has the knowledge and take her again. I need her somewhere secure and under guard. That’s you, Trey.”

  His first impulse was to resist the assignment. He hadn’t the first clue how to keep someone hidden, and, setting aside the shooting range, he’d fired his weapon two times in all the time he’d been with organization. Last night was the first time he’d led anything significant, and he’d had Angie right at his side.

  But to push back would be to challenge the don’s decision, and no matter what his last name was, he did not have that kind of juice. The other two men in the room were the only men in the organization who could tell Don Pagano to stop and think again. They both seemed on board with this crazy plan, so Trey nodded.

  “Tell me what I need to do.”

  ~ 2 ~

  One, two, three, four. Down. One, two, three. Across. One, two, three, four. Up. One, two, three, four, five.

  Lara Dumas lay on the uncomfortable hospital bed, with its plastic-coated mattress and scratchy, bleachy, ill-fitting sheet, under a loose-weave, stiff, wholly insufficient blanket, and stared at the ceiling. Hospitals were the foundation her nightmares built themselves on, and, despite the powerful sedative she could feel moving through her veins, it took all her powers of concentration to stay in this bed, not to yank the tubes from her arm and run
from this room, this real place, in this real hospital, in the midst of a real nightmare that rivaled the worst of her sleeping terrors.

  Her father, she knew, was just outside the door, giving her the private distance he knew she needed and staying close enough to help, if she should need that. He always hovered right at the edge of her crises, as close as she could bear and farther away than he could stand. She knew that, but couldn’t let him closer, no matter how much she loved him.

  Alone in this private room, with her father standing sentry outside it, Lara had spent her time making order. All night, she’d organized the twelve-inch tiles into different patterns in her head, counting them again and again and again. First, she’d simply counted the tiles: fifteen across and twenty down, accounting for two one-by-four spans of fluorescent lights. The room was a perfect three hundred square feet, and that symmetry had brought a piece of order to her rioting, shifting mind. Then she’d counted the divots in the tiles; those were more random. Something machine-made would never produce a truly random result, so she’d devoted two gloriously focused hours to discerning a pattern in that seeming chaos.

  Even chaos loved order. Chaos was only a pattern that had not yet been discerned.

  Since she’d analyzed the divots, Lara had spent the last hours of the night, and the first hours of the morning, arranging the tiles into different configurations, seeking all the patterns that could be held within the boundaries of fifteen-by-twenty, with two variants of one-by-four.

  And in that way, Lara spent the end of the worst night of her life in control of the pains in her body and the memories of their making. If her demons fed on them, and of course they did, she didn’t acknowledge it. Even when the nurse came in to do a check and give her the next dose of meds, Lara was able to stay focused on the patterns and keep the rest at bay.

  The meds were most of the reason she could stay in this awful bed, in this awful place. The familiar dullness of Thorazine padded the corners of her mind, the haze doubly thicker than her usual meds. Not even Thorazine could stave off her demons without her vigilant focus on order, however.