Simple Faith (The Pagano Brothers Book 1)

by Susan Fanetti

  He went in first, with Tony behind. They were in a short hall, which led to four doors on the sides and then opened at the end to the main club space. Tony checked all the doors—a staff room, a staff-only bathroom, a storage room, and an office—but no one was in any of them.

  It was just about eleven in the morning, which was the perfect time to do this kind of work—before the staff arrived, but when the manager, in this case one or both of the owners, was prepping for the new day.

  The Swintons needed a refresher course about the way things worked in the Cove. They didn’t fully grasp Nick’s power here—where every leader of the governmental and legal apparatuses was beholden to him—and they thought they could play fast and loose with their obligations.

  They were wrong, and it was Trey’s job to correct them. His responsibility.

  He walked into the club space, which was brightly lit. Kenny Swinton stood at the corner of the glass-block bar, aiming a shotgun at the end of the hall. At Trey.

  Trey stopped. His heart leapt into his throat, and his balls crawled into his belly, but he didn’t raise his hands or pull his Beretta from under his suit jacket. Behind him, Tony did pull, but Trey stood still, keeping his body, the visible parts anyway, relaxed.

  “That is a very stupid idea, Kenny,” he said, letting the slow tempo of his words keep his voice steady, allowing him to sound far more assured than he was. He’d only had a gun aimed directly at him once before. It was no picnic. But that had been an assault rifle, and this was a shotgun, and he was nearly out of range. He’d get hit, if Swinton fired, but it probably wouldn’t kill him.

  Not that he wanted even a non-lethal chestful of shot.

  “You want to put that on the floor right now, asshole,” Tony snarled.

  The shotgun shook in Swinton’s hands. “You’re here to tear the place up, or to tear me up. I can’t have that.”

  Trey shook his head. “I’m here to discuss your options. Which are dwindling rapidly as we speak.”

  “Options? I have options? Like what arm I want to lose?”

  “That’s not how this works, Kenny.” Not yet, anyway. “We’ve offered our hand in friendship, and we’d like to come to terms and do this as friends and neighbors. But that’s the first option, and it’s the one that’s just about expired. You have until the count of three to put that shotgun on the floor, or you will never be a friend to the Paganos.”

  The shotgun shook harder, but Swinton didn’t move to put it down. Trey opened his mouth to actually begin counting.

  “Three, motherfucker,” Tony said and shot Swinton in the leg. His piece was silenced, but the sound at Trey’s side was ear-thumpingly loud. Movies and television got it wrong when they made a silenced gun sound like a whisper. It was a shout.

  The Mossberg went off as Swinton squealed in pain, but he’d been on his way to the floor, so the shells went wild, into the ceiling and wall.

  “Fucking hell,” Trey barked and strode quickly to Swinton, who sat on the floor, leaning against the bar, holding his destroyed knee with both hands. Tony was a crack shot.

  The Mossberg lay forgotten near Swinton’s feet. Trey grabbed it first and disabled it, then handed it to Tony.

  “You crippled me! Jesus Christ!” Swinton whined.

  Trey crouched at his side. “You’re lucky. I’d have wanted him to aim for your gut. This is how things work here, Kenny. You know the vig. You know it’s due the fifth of each month. You missed this month, and now we’ve got this current situation, with you shooting at two of Don Pagano’s men, one of them his blood, so that’ll be a hundred-fifty percent premium on next month’s double payment, and of course interest—at fifty-five percent—on the one-month loan of this month’s payment. We’ll send an associate to collect, and he will not be late.”

  Swinton goggled at him. His complexion had gone opalescent, and beads of sweat swelled across his forehead and upper lip. “We’re just getting going here, and the season’s over. A payment that big’ll hit our payroll.” His pain sharpened the points of his words.

  “It’ll be a hardship, I imagine. I hope you understand better now, so things like this won’t happen again.” Trey reached out and gave the man’s ruined knee an affectionate pat. Swinton screamed. “Do we have an agreement, Kenny?”

  The impulse to resist was strong in this one. Kenny let the question hover unanswered for long enough that Trey turned to Tony, ready to let him loose, when Kenny gritted out, “Yes! Fuck you, yes.”

  “Excellent. You’ll hear from us again on the fifth of October. Be ready, Kenny. Do not fuck around with us again.” Before he stood, Trey slapped the man’s knee again, this time with no false front of friendliness. The son of a bitch had aimed a shotgun at him.

  This time, he hit him hard enough that Swinton nearly passed out from the pain.

  On the way out, he stopped at the bathroom and washed the blood from his hands.

  ~oOo~

  Trey knocked on Nick’s office door. When he heard the curt word, “Come!” he went in, stopping a few feet from the door. Nick was alone in his office, sitting at his desk, scrolling through a document on his tablet.

  “Hi, Uncle. I just wanted to let you know that I’m headed out for lunch with my dad, unless you need me.” He wouldn’t be disappointed to have to cancel this lunch. The last time his father had called and asked to have a meal with him had been almost three years ago, and they’d ended up shouting at each other in the middle of Trattoria Dolce. Which was where his dad wanted to meet him today.

  “Come in, Trey.” Nick closed the cover on his tablet and waved at one of the chairs before his desk. Trey closed the door, came all the way in, and sat. “What happened with Swinton this morning?”

  Nick rarely wanted details from work so low on the chain. “It’s all set, Uncle. They’re in line.”

  “Trey. I got a call from Chief Minsky.” Butch Minsky was the Chief of the Quiet Cove Police Department, and a friend of the organization. “Kenny Swinton is at St. Gabriel’s, and Kevin is raging up and down the halls. If they were in line, I think his raging would be less public, don’t you? Tell me.”

  Trey could serve Tony up—he’d acted on his own, and not the way Trey would have directed him to. But Nick would not respect Trey passing the buck. He’d been in charge today. What Tony had done was on him. “He had a shotgun on me. I gave him a chance to put it down, and he didn’t. So I had Tony put it down for him.”

  “There was no other option than blood?”

  “Not that I saw, no. Kevin wasn’t there. Kenny is the older brother. I assumed getting him in line would pull Kevin in as well. Is there trouble?”

  “No. Minsky put a lid on him. But you need to take a strong, hands-on approach with this client. They are not entirely sold on the program, and I don’t like interlopers causing upheaval in my town. Don’t give them the opportunity to forget your face. Understand?”

  That meant spending time at that club. Trey bit back a sigh. “Understood.”

  “You’re seeing your father now?”

  “Yes. Lunch at Trattoria Dolce.”

  “Good. I like to see things improving between you. Fathers and sons should be at peace with each other.”

  Yes, that would be nice.

  ~oOo~

  Without question, the best restaurant in Quiet Cove was Dominic’s, an institution in town for approaching fifty years. The owner who gave the place his name had been chef since the day it opened and still worked a full schedule, well into his seventies. His granddaughter, Andrea, had come up in that kitchen and, about three years ago, with her grandfather’s guidance, she’d opened Trattoria Dolce, a small casual dining place in the heart of the Cove.

  Dominic’s dining room was over the water and had wide glass walls to maximize the effect of the view. It was fine dining and pure elegance, with a menu that easily hit five hundred dollars for a party of four before the bar tab was figured in. Dolce faced Quiet Cove Community Park and served humbler fare. But it wa
sn’t a soup-and-sandwich place. If you wanted a sandwich in the Cove, you went to the Cove Café, on the boardwalk, got a burger at Sassy Sal’s, or a grinder or hot wiener from a truck. At Dolce, you got rustic Italian meals: pizza and pasta, salumi and cheese plates, fresh-baked crusty breads.

  Its vibe was a bit ‘Hollywood Goes to Tuscany’ for Trey’s taste, but the food was good, and her and Andrea were friendly—as in, she was the girl he’d popped cherries with. So he knew the place well.

  His father was already sitting at a table on the sidewalk when Trey arrived. He stood, and they hugged. There had been a couple of years where his father would offer no more than a handshake, so the freely given hug suggested that there was truly some warming between them.

  “Thanks for coming out,” his dad said as they sat.

  “Sure. You working from home today?” Unless he was in creative mode, his father worked long hours in Providence.

  “Yeah, this week. I’m drafting a new project.”

  “A new contract, or a proposal?”

  “Pro bono. For a community library in Bellwether.”

  Bellwether was a little town at the southern tip of the Rhode Island coast. “Oh, cool.”

  Trey knew what he wanted, unless he decided he liked a special, so he pushed his menu aside and poured a glass of ice water from a carafe on the table.

  His father opened his menu. “It won’t be anything that’ll make Journal of Architecture, but it’s fun, working out how to make such a modest space both aesthetic and highly usable for an array of user populations, and do it on a shoestring budget.”

  There had been a time when Trey had thought he wanted to be an architect, just like his dad. He was still fascinated by the work his father did, and felt some envy to watch Ben be the one who followed in his footsteps. He couldn’t even say, or fully understand, what had changed in him to turn him from that career. It might have been as simple, as petty, as the fact that his father had wanted it so badly. It had stopped feeling like his own choice, and then it had become the last thing he would ever choose.

  Andrea came out with a bottle of expensive white wine, courtesy of a call from Nick, and, after some friendly small talk while she poured, she took their order herself.

  When they were alone again, Trey picked up his glass of wine and held it up a bit. “Salute.”

  “Salute.”

  “Did you want to talk about anything in particular?” he asked, ready to throw up a guard if his father was here to deliver a lecture.

  “Not really.” His father took a sip of wine. “I wouldn’t mind hearing more about Lara, though.”

  And up went his guard. “Are we here so you can grill me about her?”

  “Come on, pal. Don’t do that.”

  Pal. The word kicked Trey in the chest. His father had called him that throughout his childhood. He hadn’t used it in years.

  Trey backed off. “Sorry. Yeah, we can talk about her. I love talking about her. But I don’t want to hear all the reasons you think she’s wrong for me.”

  His father chuckled and gave him a warm smile full of genuine humor. “I’ve learned two things about that over the years: one, nobody cares what I think about the people they love, and two, I’m probably wrong anyway. I tried hard to talk Luca out of being with Manny. He kicked my ass several times over it, and he was right to do it. I was an asshole in every respect. So even if I did have reservations, I’d keep them to myself, but I don’t. I like Lara. I know she was uncomfortable at your birthday dinner, but she tried hard. You obviously care about her, and I saw that she cares about you. She’s the first woman you’ve felt like this about, as far as I know, so I don’t worry that you’re jumping in without thinking. You’ve had ample opportunities to fall in love and haven’t, so I believe this is real. My only concern is the age difference.”

  The age differences between Theo and Carmen, and Nick and Bev, were much wider than the difference between him and Lara—like thirteen and fourteen years to his eight. The real difference his father was concerned about was that it was Trey who was younger. “It’s not a thing, Dad. It’s irrelevant. ”

  “Okay. Then let’s say I didn’t even bring it up. I didn’t invite you to lunch with an agenda. I just … I’m trying to find our way back, Trey. The way we used to be.”

  Trey wanted that, too. But they’d lost their way a full decade ago now, and a lot of weeds had grown up over the path in those years. He spun his wine glass on the table, concentrating, trying to think of a way to say what he wanted, and what he feared, what he regretted, and what he still resented.

  There was still blood on his hands, from his ‘meeting’ at Cyclone. The cuticles of his right thumb and forefinger were lined with dark red.

  That was what would always block them from reclaiming what they’d had—Trey was no longer on the same path as his father. It was Nick he followed now.

  “I don’t think we can have that back, Dad. You’re not my best friend anymore.”

  He hadn’t said the words to hurt, but they clearly had. His father winced and set his wine glass down. He was quiet for a while, staring at the glass. When he spoke, his voice was soft, and he didn’t look up. “You know, I was a disappointment to my father. He took it personally that I didn’t want to take over the family business, and I think, even as we made our peace, he never completely forgave me for that.” He lifted his eyes to Trey’s. “I did the same thing to you, didn’t I?”

  “I don’t know.” That was a truth. Trey honestly didn’t know if that was source of their break. He didn’t understand it well enough himself. “I just …” He stopped, because there was no way to say it. “I don’t know, Dad. I really don’t. I just remember being mad all the time back then, and restless, like my skin was too small. I felt … I don’t know … forced, I guess. And I hated it.”

  “And you feel better in the path you’ve chosen?”

  Trey wondered how many times over the past few years his father had asked some variation of this same question. He seemed incapable of understanding, and thus of accepting, Trey’s decision to stand with Nick.

  But now Trey understood it himself a bit better. Since he’d talked with Lara about it. He thought he could offer that insight to his father.

  “I talked to Lara about this once. She …”—he caught himself before he said aloud who Lara was to Nick—“Her father works with Nick, and I said that, with her history, with what her mom did to her, and the way she needs things to be so orderly and predictable, I was surprised she was so comfortable with … what her father does, and what I do. And she said the Pagano Brothers’ world is the orderly one. That’s the world that makes sense to her. Not the world where a mother would poison her own child, but the one where violence has real meaning, a clear cause and effect. It made me think about what Jenny did.” Jenny, his biological mother, who’d abducted him at gunpoint, out of Misby’s arms, and shot Joey while he stood in front of Misby and him, trying to protect them. “It was Uncle Ben and Uncle Lorrie and Uncle Nick who made that right.”

  “By killing her.”

  “Are you sorry they did? Are you sorry for what they did to the man who hurt Misby? Her first husband?”

  His father’s jaws twitched. “No, I’m not.”

  “Neither am I. Would Misby or I have been safe if the Uncles hadn’t done what they’d done?”

  “No.”

  Their lunch came. Trey used the break in the intensity between them to refill their wine and water glasses. After the server—not Andrea this time—left and they’d begun to eat, Trey fortified himself with another drink of wine and picked up this talk that seemed significant, possibly transformative.

  “Do you see, Dad? That’s what I want. A life where I understand what happens and why. Where I have recourse. Where I can do what I need to do to keep the people I love safe.”

  “And put them in danger, too. I need both hands to count the times people in our family have been caught in Nick’s crossfire.”

  �
�Jenny wasn’t Nick’s crossfire. Lara’s mom wasn’t part of that world. What happened to Misby wasn’t about the Pagano Brothers. People are terrible to each other, Dad. At least on this side of the pews, they need a reason to be, and if they’re wrong, they’re going to pay. I think that’s why this world feels like it fits. It makes sense. I need it. Maybe I’ve needed it since I was four years old.”

  His father chewed, then took another bite of his veal parm. Trey pushed his gnocchi around on his plate, waiting for some kind of response, some kind of acknowledgement. Affirmation was too much to hope for, vindication was a fantasy, but just acknowledgement would be something.

  “Okay,” his father finally said.

  “Okay?” Trey didn’t know what it meant.

  “Okay. I understand.”

  Which was all Trey had ever wanted. If it was true, it was everything.

  ~oOo~

  Trey came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist and went quietly into the bedroom to dress. He still spent four or five nights a week at Lara’s. She was just more comfortable in her own little place, and since she didn’t drive, she was more mobile in her familiar College Hill world. But he got her to the Cove a night or two a week. She loved his house on the beach.

  He’d never told her about that weird thing the morning after his birthday. What would he tell her? And why would he tell her? She didn’t remember it, and knowing about it might freak her out. It had certainly freaked him out. So what good would it do?

  He’d just added it to the list of other weird things she’d done when she took those pills, and left it at that. No harm, really, so no foul.

  Dressing out of a garment bag and a duffel most of his life was becoming a real drag, though. Soon, they’d have to have a talk about their next step, and he was going to make a strong case that she could make a cozy little world for herself in Quiet Cove.