On the other hand, the women she was hosting lived lives teetering on fragile pillars of lies and delusion.
Giada laughed. “You figured out my nefarious scheme. Here, Jules”—she leaned over and lifted a frangipane tart—“have another before you start thinking again.”
Now that was the funniest thing these women had heard. Giada sat back and smiled while they slapped their knees and held their guts.
When Fallon and the other wives had a chance to be free of their cages for a while, they always let completely loose. That was the whole point of this ridiculous book club—to give the Sacco women a truly safe place to relax, if only once a month. That she sometimes also got useful insights into her brother and the men he trusted had emerged as a happy side effect.
Tommy was as bad a husband as he was anything else, and as vicious. Giada had tried to warn Fallon off Tommy when they were engaged, though Fallon had, by then, enough evidence of her own to know she was jumping into a deep well of boiling water.
Men like her brother chose women like Fallon, who perceived lavish gifts as expressions of love or sincere apologies for terrible behavior, who blamed themselves for ‘setting him off,’ and shaped their selves desperately into the mold demanded of them. Women like Fallon—like almost all these women in her living room tonight—took all the ills of their life and family into themselves and existed in a near constant state of siege.
With one possible exception, none of these women, the wives of the top-tier men of the Sacco Family, had an easy road. The men Tommy held close were much like him. Frankly, Giada’s father hadn’t been dramatically better. He’d been savvier and more circumspect, but they’d all known the back of his hand, and the cut of his tongue. Her mother had known betrayals as well. To be constrained, betrayed, and taken for granted, if not outright abused, was the lot of a Sacco wife.
It was Sacco tradition, as in so many families of their world, that wives did not work. Whether they were Saccos in blood or in law, once they were married, they could not work anywhere but the home—they were to be wholeheartedly devoted to their husband and children, even after those children grew and moved on to their own lives.
It applied to Giada as well. If she had ever married, within the family or outside it, her father would have pushed her out of Sacco Development. So she had remained single all her life, never giving even a hint that she had serious romantic inclinations in any direction.
That was not to say she was celibate. Far from it. But all her life, even in college, she’d satisfied her needs with one-night stands or, more often, professionals. She preferred escorts, because they took direction well.
Her father had known, and her brother knew. They both hated it, Tommy had called her a dirty slut more times than she could count, but neither had moved to stop her beyond registering their disapprobation. She ignored them.
A life lived alone was not her natural inclination. She would have liked the chance to know that kind of love. But she would never give up her power to have it. So she’d made a choice.
Watching her guests, she was reminded again that she’d made the right one.
~oOo~
That night, her ringing phone woke Giada into deep darkness. She pushed an arm from under the snug warmth of her comforters and flailed at the nightstand until she got hold of the noisy thing and pulled it from the charger. Blinking at the screen, she saw the name of the single member of the Sacco Family she trusted: her Uncle Vincenzo.
It was five minutes before three in the morning. Except when there was a baby coming, no call at this hour brought good news.
“Zio,” she answered. “What’s wrong?”
“Mi dispiace, piccolina.” She was forty-five years old, and her uncle still called her ‘little one,’ as he had all her life. “There’s trouble with your brother.”
Giada sat up and switched on a lamp. “What can you tell me?” On this phone, it wouldn’t be much. Boston was well known for the cozy relationships among its law and its outlaws, but the Feds were a different story, and no organization lasted long recklessly. It was always better to assume someone was paying attention and behave accordingly.
Which was the whole problem with her brother, who had, over the few years of his reign, begun to be called, in whispers through their world, Il Pagliaccio Arrabbiato. The Angry Clown.
“We need you at Emily’s.”
Emily was Tommy’s comare.
“What kind of mess did he make?”
“A whole mess.”
Holy mother, he’d killed her.
“Zio, Fallon’s here. Last night was book night.” Since her nieces had gone off to college, Giada had made a habit of letting her sister-in-law spend the night after their ‘book club.’ Tommy had endorsed that arrangement, because it gave him the sense that Giada was being a good sister—and it freed him to be with Emily and not bother with pretense.
“Cazzo!” Enzo swore. “I forgot. Can you not come?”
For a long list of reasons, she had to go. “I’ll come. I just have to figure out how to explain my absence to Fallon if I’m not here when she wakes up. I’ll figure it out. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Don’t let him do anything.”
“I won’t. He hasn’t tried to fix the problem yet.”
And he wouldn’t for quite a while. Tommy was used to other people making his messes go away, so it would take him a very long time to make a decision for himself in the midst of one.
~oOo~
Tommy had set Emily Elgin up in a lovely condo in Cambridge, a couple blocks away from the Charles River, in a tidy neighborhood where tenured professors and mid-level college administrators lived. Emily had been a cocktail waitress at one of Tommy’s pet clubs and was not the college type, but she appreciated her ‘classy’ neighbors. Tommy liked that she was at just enough distance from his family to be both conveniently hidden and conveniently accessible.
Of the many comares her brother had had—sometimes more than one at a time—over the years, Giada probably liked Emily best. She was quiet and sweet. She didn’t stick up for herself any better than any other woman Tommy had ever hooked up with, but then she wouldn’t; self-assertive was decidedly not Tommy’s type.
In fact, Giada thought Emily had been as well suited for her brother as it was possible for a woman to be. She had made no demands on him. She’d appreciated every gift he’d given her. She had no designs on him but what he wanted to give her. They’d met when he’d broken the arms of a man accosting her as she was leaving work for the night. She considered him her savior.
But now she was lying on the floor of the master bathroom of the condo he’d bought her. Her savior had become her executioner.
Feeling like a homicide cop, and the closest thing to one who would ever see this scene, Giada stood in the doorway and took it all in.
Giada’s older brother, the don of the Sacco Family, the storied Italian family of the Boston underworld, had beaten this sweet woman into a purple, misshapen blob. The beachy décor of the bathroom, all hues of sand, sky, and sea glass, was spattered and sprayed with blood and bits of bone and tissue. He’d also stabbed her repeatedly, in the gut, with a shard of the broken mirror, and her intestines had spilled in a reeking pile on a small rug patterned with seashells.
Sweet Emily, who’d only wanted to make Tommy happy.
Giada stepped carefully into the room, trying not to put her boots in standing puddles of congealing blood, and picked up from the floor a slender white stick with a pink cap. Two pink lines in a window at the side. She studied it for a moment. Not to understand what it was—that was readily obvious—but to absorb the horror. She’d thought she was past shock at what Tommy was capable of. She’d thought she was even past surprise. But this was a level beyond the most basic humanity.
He’d done this, all this, because he’d made her pregnant.
A shadow at the doorway drew her attention. She turned to see Enzo, looking grim. “Ah, Giada,” he muttered as he contemplated the r
oom. His voice was almost too low to be heard. “It’s time. It must happen. If you can.”
This was not the place to have the talk those words really meant, but they were vague enough to apply to the moment as well. She nodded and made her way back to the door.
In the bedroom, sitting on the chair at Emily’s pretty, fussy makeup vanity, her brother hunched over his knees. A sky-blue towel was wrapped around his dominant hand, soaking through with his blood. From holding the mirror shard he’d used to carve the seed of his own child away.
Family love was like a chronic illness, Giada thought. An addiction. No matter how awful the people of your blood were, it was impossible to eradicate the love from one’s heart entirely. Even if you loathed them, even if you’d learned to recognize the abuse for what it was, if you saw the cruelty and lack of conscience, even so, there was still love, coiled on the floor of the heart like the last clotty scum of curdled milk in a bottle left out in the heat.
Her brother had been the tormenter of her childhood. The complicator of her adulthood. The obstacle to her ambition. An embarrassment. An abomination. Now, he threatened to destroy what their father had built—what their father had given to him and not to her, on the single basis of the lump of flesh hanging between his legs.
And yet, she still loved him.
But she was disgusted and furious now.
Crouching before him, she set the test stick on the floor at his feet, where his attention was focused. He flinched to see it, and lifted his eyes to hers.
All active anger had left him; he was in the contrition stage of the domestic violence cycle. It wouldn’t last. Soon, he’d find a way to put the blame back on Emily and quench this tiny flicker of conscience.
“Giada, I ... she ...”
Oh, look, he was already looking for a way to stomp out the flame.
Giada stood. “Did I see Fabio downstairs?” she asked Enzo, while her eyes stayed locked with her brother’s. She wanted him to see her handling his shit yet again.
“Yes,” Enzo answered. “He’s waiting for orders.”
Orders. What she, Giada, would give him. And Fabio would tell himself they’d come from Tommy.
“Fabi needs to take Tommy to the ER and get his hand sewed up—not here in Cambridge, but back in the city. Better yet—they should go to the cottage, to that urgent care on the way. Say he cut it with a broken glass. That’s even true, right?”
His eyes still locked on hers, tired and empty now, Tommy nodded. “Right.”
“Alright. Go on. I’ll take care of the rest.”
Tommy stood and staggered to the door. He stopped and turned back. “What’ll you do with her?”
“Make her go away.”
Emily had no family; that was Tommy’s type. He’d isolated her from any friends; that was his way. There was no one to wonder where she’d gone but her neighbors, and neighbors hardly noticed each other anymore.
He swiveled his head and cast a quick, guilty glance at the bathroom. “I love her, you know. I do.”
Giada didn’t reply. She watched her uncle follow her brother from the room. Then she pulled a burner phone from her coat pocket and dialed a number not in her contacts, but one she knew by heart.
When the hoarse rasp of a lifelong smoker at waking said a grouchy hello, Giada said, “Hey Marv, it’s Giada. Sorry to call at this hour, but I need a full-service clean and pack, stat.”
~oOo~
With a gentle twist of his hand, Enzo got the waitress to set the coffee carafe on their table. She gave him a humoring, flirty little smile and headed to the counter with their order.
Giada was exhausted, and her elderly uncle could not have felt especially spry. It was seven in the morning, and she still had Tommy’s wife in her guest room at home, with nothing more than a note saying she’d had to get an early start, but Fallon should ease leisurely into her morning.
Also, she had a full agenda at work today.
Normally, she took her coffee with sugar, but this time, she swallowed it down hot and black, hoping the bitter scald would add an extra kick of energy.
“This cannot go on much longer, piccolina. He is ruining us, and everyone sees it. If not you, someone will come from below to challenge him. Not a Sacco.”
“But a man. Are you sure I have the backing of enough capos, Zio? I don’t have Bruno or Fabi. That’s all the strong men.” Bruno and Fabio were closest to Tommy; they’d been friends from boyhood. Bruno was smart and had become a lawyer. He was Tommy’s consigliere. Fabio had come up through the ranks as an enforcer and was the capo with the most pull and highest earnings. Fabio made most of the Saccos’ dark money, and Bruno protected it.
Actually, Giada protected it as much as anyone. Her investments cleaned it and made it worthwhile. And she made all their straight money.
“If their men follow them.”
“You think they won’t?”
“I think if Nick Pagano throws to you, you might have almost every man in our family on your side. Especially if he handles his Ukrainian trouble. Men are saying he rose from the dead, you know.”
She drank more bitter coffee. “I’ve heard that. But he’s ... perdonami, Zio—he’s old. The men have shown no respect for experience and wisdom. They didn’t bat an eye when Tommy pushed you out.” Enzo had been her father’s consigliere from the very start. It was normal for a new don to establish his own inner circle, but Tommy had stripped Enzo of his title and set him entirely aside, forcing him to retire. He’d called him old and used up.
But Tommy still always called their uncle when he had trouble. Because he didn’t have the balls to call Giada himself—or to handle his own shit.
Enzo swirled creamer through his coffee, letting the spoon sing against the side of the mug. “It’s more than wisdom Nick offers. It’s power. If he takes this bratva down, they will say he is invincible. After that, I would be surprised to see any New England family resist his will. You have his word?”
“I do. The Paganos stand with me when I claim a seat at the table, and my Saccos stand with them when he’s ready to make his half-blood nephew.” At her meet with Nick, they’d planned to use Vio Marconi’s daughter’s wedding next month to study the players and set the board for Giada’s move.
Enzo chuckled. “We’re about to stir the pot, piccolina.”
To her uncle, Giada could admit a few doubts. “If this all blows up in our faces ...”
Enzo chuckled. “Oh, it will. Change never comes without pain. With the right push, New England will fall in line. Probably New York, too. But Sicily? They will not like what you and Pagano intend. They will see it as the children rebelling against the grandfather—and that is what it is. They will try to force their will. But you are strong, Giada. Stronger than Tommy by a long shot. Stronger than Gabi was, even. You’ll be standing when the fight is won. You’re smart, and you look ahead, not behind. You see the limits of tradition. You understand the troubles when things are done a way because they’ve always been done that way, without thought to what may come. Tradition is for Christmas. Change is life.”
~oOo~
Not counting her quick run-in after the diner, where she’d showered and dressed for work and found a note from Fallon thanking her for a wonderful time and a lovely rest, and asking her to call, Giada didn’t get back to her apartment until nearly ten o’clock that night.
She opened a bottle of Sangiovese and poured herself a full glass, then kicked off her pumps and stood at the front windows, looking out over downtown Boston, and the river snaking around its border.
Exhausted as she was, she knew sleep would elude her for hours. The disgust of that morning, surrounded by her brother’s latest, worst, abomination, stuck like old gum on her soul. There was absolutely no way Emily would have meant to get pregnant without Tommy’s permission. It was an accident, Giada was sure.
She was also sure Emily would have ended the pregnancy if Tommy had only asked. He would say abortion was wrong, and maybe that was
what had set him off, a sense of being trapped by a mistake he would have blamed on Emily alone—but look what he’d done. He’d ended the pregnancy and the mother, both.
Swallowing down the whole glass, Giada squeezed her eyes shut and tried to crush the image of that bathroom into oblivion.
What would she do with her brother, when she made her move? Could she kill him?
She would have to, wouldn’t she? Was there any possible way he’d step aside if she had the backing to push him in that direction?
Of course not. She was a woman. In his mind, there was no way at all she would deserve the seat.
She would have to kill her brother. And he certainly deserved to die.
Could she do it?
Giada had cleaned up after her brother’s violence all her adult life. Even while their father lived, Tommy had come to her most of the time. But she had never hurt anyone herself.
Her heart began to thump, and she went back to the kitchen, intending to refill her glass.
But she didn’t want a red wine hangover.
No, she had a better idea. More distraction, more expense of energy, better hope for good sleep, and a clear head in the morning.
She picked up her phone and scrolled through her texts. Finding the convo she wanted, she sent a new message.
Hey. Busy tonight?
An answer came back in seconds.
I’m not, actually. Had a cancellation.
I’ve been pouting about it with some Rocky Road.
You don’t usually play on school nights. You okay?
Yeah. Just have some energy to burn.
Just call me Cardio.
You want me over now?
Yep.
Giada let that word sit for a second without sending. Then she added to it and sent it.
Yep. Bring a friend. Full night.
Mercy! You do have energy to burn.
I need a couple extra minutes,
but I can work that out.
The Name of Honor Page 5
