He caught a hint of guilt and stood straight, wary. “What’s up, G?”
“I had to call my uncle. He was worried.”
“Enzo?” Gabriel Sacco’s younger brother, and his consigliere as long as he’d been don. Tommy had forced the old man to retire when he’d taken his father’s seat. He was Giada’s principal ally in the family. But hopefully not her only one.
“Yeah. I left that scene at the bar and just drove here. He knew what I meant to do, and I didn’t think to call him after. He was frantic.”
They needed to talk about what she’d done. Now that Angie had made a choice, his mind had settled, and he could think things out properly. He went to her.
There was still blood on her face. He wet his hand at the tap and cleaned it away. When she looked confused, even as she turned into his touch, he smiled and said, “Blood.”
“Fuck. Really?”
“Not much.” He dried her face with a fresh kitchen towel. “Can you tell me what happened tonight? Details?”
“Not details, no. Not yet. What we’re doing, you and me, I think it only works if we keep business apart from us as much as we can, unless we’re sitting together in an official meeting.”
They hadn’t expressly said they were ‘doing’ anything together, they hadn’t talked about this night as a decision they’d made, but Angie knew it as well as Giada clearly did: they’d decided to be involved. To be a couple. For the near future, at least.
She was right. If they could do it at all, they had to keep the business of their two different families separate, except where they were openly allied.
“You’re right. I have to tell Nick about us, first thing in the morning.” That was his shot at keeping the don’s crumbling trust: come clean at once, be as open as he possibly could, explain how he’d keep his loyalty where it belonged. Everything on the table.
But Giada took in a breath like a gasp and then held it a beat too long.
“What?” Angie asked, sensing trouble.
She took a few steps away from him, out of the range of his touch. “I’m not going to try to convince you. I don’t want you to feel like I’m trying to manipulate you, and I know what I’m asking, how hard it would be. But I have to ask it.”
“You want me to keep this a secret.” His stomach went hard and cold. “You want me to lie to Nick.”
“Not lie. Just not offer. And only for a few days, until I know how things fall out in my family. Just the rest of the week.”
“Giada, this is exactly the problem—you asking me to choose you over Nick.”
“No. It’s not. I’m not. Holding this back for a few days does not hurt Nick in any way.”
She was right. It didn’t make Nick vulnerable. It made Angie vulnerable. The thing at risk in keeping the secret was Angie’s place in Nick’s esteem, and that was already shaky.
“I will understand if you feel you have to tell him right away.” A bleak, harsh laugh left her throat. “Hell, I could be dead before the next day is over. Then it won’t matter anyway.” She came back to him and put her hand on his cheek. “But Angie, if I have any chance, I need to show strength. They need to know I’ve already got strong allies. If knowing about us pisses Nick off and he pulls from me before I’ve got my family in hand, this is all over. And then they will kill me for killing Tommy.”
That was true as well. She’d killed a don. The only way she survived that was to take his place.
His honor or her life. Those were the stakes.
So his choice was made.
He put his hand over hers. “Okay.”
~oOo~
When Nick had first brought him up to his side and made him Chief Operating Officer of Pagano Brothers Shipping, Angie had gone home that night—then it had been an apartment on the beach—and gotten thoroughly and emphatically drunk. He hadn’t said no, because you didn’t say no to Nick Pagano, but he’d been shocked and dismayed.
He’d graduated high school by the skin of his teeth and the shine in his smile. He wasn’t stupid, but he was very easily bored, and when he got bored he found trouble. He was not built for institutional education.
He’d certainly never been to college. While other young men his age were taking Intro to Navel Gazing and Advanced Keg Stands, he was learning the most efficient way to break a leg and where to cut on a man so he’d bleed out as slowly as possible without clotting, or as quickly as possible without making a mess. He was a thug. How the fuck was he supposed to run the operations of Nick’s businesses?
And that was what COO meant, here at Pagano Brothers Shipping: managing the operation of the legitimate work and the underworld work, both. What Donnie called ‘day work’ and ‘night work.’ Nick liked his Pagano men to do the same kind of work in the day as they did the night.
Angie had been in his mid-thirties, made years before, and a damn fine enforcer. One of the best, if not the best. He was good at that, and he wasn’t falsely humble about it. But how Nick had known way back then that Angie would be good as an executive, he still didn’t know. Back then, he’d been fucking terrified that he’d take a huge wet shit right on Nick Pagano’s entire business.
Nick had been right, of course. Angie managed the people and the jobs and knew where to put them and how to get the most out of them. He knew when personal tension or overwork was getting in the way and changed things to address it. He knew who did what best, who worked with whom best, whom to keep apart, how product moved best, how to keep vendors in line and customers satisfied. It turned out that managing a company, in the day or the night, was about understanding people, and Angie was good at that.
A few hours after Giada had left him, sneaking her Maserati out of his garage in the dark just before dawn—
Sneaking. Fuck. What the holy fuck was he doing?
—a few hours later, he sat in his office, flipping pages on his tablet, studying end-of-month reports for the previous month. It wasn’t yet nine. He should have been exhausted; he and Giada had slept a total of about three hours, short naps between bouts of fucking, but he wasn’t tired at all. A little sore, but not tired. His nerves were hopping too hard for that.
The door swung open, and Donnie leaned in. “Hey, you’re here.”
“Yeah. Going over February.”
Donnie stepped in and closed the door. “We got news about the Saccos.”
Angie’s heart skittered. “Yeah? Nick in already?” Since the shooting, the don had been coming in later in the morning than he had before—not until sometime between nine and ten, usually. Sometimes even later.
“No,” Donnie said. “But he called me. He wants us in his office when he gets in, and you and I should work some shit out beforehand.”
Donnie wasn’t showing any sign of suspicion or censure. He was harder to read than most, because half his face was so scarred and immobile, but Angie knew him very well. He’d bet his life Donnie didn’t know what he’d done last night.
In fact, that was exactly what he had already bet.
He closed the app on his tablet as Donnie sat down in an armchair in front of his desk. “What’s up?”
Donnie smiled. “Giada did it.”
“Please?” He needed to get his heart rate down before he started showing guilt.
“She killed Tommy last night. She called Nick first thing this morning.”
“Jesus. That was fast.”
“Nick meant to force her hand. She showed she was holding.”
“Now what? How’d it go down?” This was a legitimate question; Giada had told him virtually nothing. And now he was very, very glad she’d left him in the dark, so he could learn all this where he should. His curiosity was authentic.
“Nick’ll share the details when he gets here, but he told me this—she did it in front of all the capos, and left it to a vote.”
“What?” He tried to get his head around what Donnie meant. “Left what to a vote? The seat? You mean she iced the don and walked away to let his capos decide what to
do with her?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus.” He’d spent a wild six or seven hours with her and had no idea she’d done something so crazy right before. “That’s insane. But ... kinda brilliant. Wicked ballsy.”
Donnie’s left eye drew down in a scientific squint, and Angie felt that examining look as heat. “Yeah, it is. All those things. If they don’t kill her, they’ll make her don. She went all in. Nick’s impressed.”
So was Angie. Now he understood her turmoil last night. He’d thought it was fear, and grief, the shock of her first kill, and that first kill being her brother. Maybe that was all part of it. But he’d missed the exhilaration. She’d made her big move, and whatever else she felt, she’d felt the power of it.
She was one hell of a woman.
Donnie was moving on to the next topic, and Angie forced himself to focus on what he was saying. “With what we did on Saturday with Trey and what Giada did last night, if that vote goes her way, we’re going to get some heat from Sicily, and maybe our Council, too. Nick wants full protection again on family, and he wants a plan to look at when he gets here.”
“If this goes hot, it’ll be a civil war. Nick thinks women and children will be at risk?” That was one of their sacred vows, all across La Cosa Nostra: to keep innocents safe. Women and children were sacrosanct in their world.
“I think he isn’t going to take a chance with our loved ones,” Donnie answered. “Tommy wasn’t the only shithead don in the world, and Sicily’s history is even bloodier than ours.”
“Fair point.” In fact, the origin of La Cosa Nostra had been especially brutal, and the traditions they now cleaved to—or, in some cases, paid lip service to—had risen from blood. Innocents hadn’t always been sacrosanct.
And no war in the history of the world had successfully limited its victims to its combatants.
Nick was right to be extra cautious with their own innocents in the looming shadow of this civil war.
Since they’d lost so many men in the Bondaruk hit last summer, it would take some work to put together a protection plan that covered all Nick’s children, and his wife, and Donnie’s wife. And Angie’s sister and sister-in-law and their children.
Glad to have real work to orient his attention, Angie opened his tablet again. “Bev’s still got her team, and Elisa’s got a detail, too, since she’s been at Stanford”—he broke off and grinned at Donnie. “It still amazes me he let his girl go all the way across the country.”
“She wants to be a doctor, and you know Elisa—she gets anxious. Bev convinced him they needed to let her get some distance from our shit.”
“That’s the thing that amazes me. He hates it, but he gave in.”
Donnie shrugged, “When it’s right, he can see it, even if he doesn’t like it.”
Angie sure as hell hoped that applied to him as well. He got back to work. “With Lia at Brown, we can keep tabs on her easy. Alex was on her last time, and he did pretty good. He’s tough and smart. And Bluto to spell him. He’s been showin’ me something, too. Gotta be young guys on Lia. They don’t cause a stir on campus.”
“That works. We need experience on Carina. That little monster slips her coverage twice a week.”
That was an exaggeration, but she slipped her coverage far too often, it was true. Carina was a handful, and only getting more challenging as she grew—especially irritating since she’d almost been snatched the Christmas before last, and Donnie had taken a bullet to save her. And still, she tried to lose her security every chance she could find. “Jake. And Ricky.” He laughed. “And Tony if she causes trouble.”
Donnie grinned. “Tony will be pissed to be on protection detail again.”
“Exactly. He’ll scare her straight.”
“Okay. How about Ren?”
As he and Donnie planned protection details for their loved ones, Angie’s worries calmed. This was where he belonged, and he would find a way to keep what he had.
~oOo~
Angie stood on a snow-covered hill in the middle of a cemetery. A late-winter storm had chased the impostor spring away and dumped three inches of snow from a dead grey sky. Now, tender shoots of trees and shrubs tricked by the warm of the past few days were turning brown and soft in the returned cold.
Today was the first anniversary of his father’s death, and his brother and sister had wanted to commemorate it together. Angie had very much not wanted that, he couldn’t understand what good could come from wallowing in loss, but he’d been a massively shitty brother and son for most of his life, and he was trying to be better, so he was here with them. Their spouses and children were at Matt’s house, preparing a big family dinner.
God, he hoped they didn’t mean to tell stories about their parents all night over old family recipes and wine from Corti Market. In his current emotional state, lost in a thicket of unfamiliar sentiment, that might well kill him. But he was trying to be better, so he’d go to Matt’s house and endure.
When he was a teenager, hanging out with Joey Pagano, fucking beach bunnies, smoking dope, and drinking beer, Angie hadn’t wanted anything in his life but to be a Pagano man. To get free of Corti Market and his family’s deathly boring version of a legacy and be somebody with real respect. Real power. He hadn’t wanted to live his whole life in a bloody apron like his old man, and his old man’s old man.
He hadn’t known what it really meant, to be a Pagano man, beyond that impression of power and respect. They were dangerous men, and they controlled Quiet Cove. Ben Pagano had not been a physically imposing man, but he’d been remarkable nonetheless, and bigger men feared him. But Nick Pagano, nearly twenty years Angie’s senior, tall, dark, and brash, had been the man he’d modeled himself after.
His best buddy back then, Joey, had been nephew to Ben and was cousin to Nick, and Angie had had occasion to see Ben and Nick, and Lorrie, Nick’s father, up close and personal a few times. He’d had the chance to see them as men in a family as well as Pagano men. Ben had worn those two sides, the kindly uncle and the fearsome don, comfortably.
Back then, Nick had had only one side: the vicious enforcer. He’d lurked at the edges of family parties, his arms crossed, his brow drawn in a scowl. Not until years later, when he found love and made a family of his own, had he found the gentler man inside him.
And still, Nick had been the man Angie most admired.
When he’d started doing small jobs, one of the kids allowed to hang out with the made men to do their bidding, he’d known what he wanted his life to be. Even when he’d gained enough notice and respect not to be shooed from the room when they put hurt on somebody, he’d been sure. Seeing the violence hadn’t freaked him out at all. He’d felt the fear in the hurt man and the power in the Pagano making the hurt, and he’d been sure.
Not until the first time he’d killed a man had he really understood, however. But as he’d stood over that dead body and faced the man he’d become, he’d seen he had always been a man who could kill and go home and sleep easy.
The first time he’d ever felt doubt, he’d been hanging from a cellar rafter, watching his baby sister beaten to the brink of death by Pagano traitors, beaten so badly she’d lost half her hearing, so badly she’d had to learn to speak and write again. Beaten so badly the girl in their family photos hardly resembled the woman she now was.
Since then, he’d grappled with his share of doubts. After the death of his mother, and then, years later, his father, when the church and cemetery had filled to bursting with people they’d mattered to, and the walls of the family house shook with laughter as those people told stories at the wakes of Genie and Angelo Corti, Angie had seen how much respect his humble parents had had. How vibrant their legacy had been. They hadn’t had much power, no. But they’d had respect.
And they’d had love. Between them, and around them. Everybody they knew had loved them, and vice versa.
All his life, he’d rebelled against his parents’ small, insignificant life. He hadn’t seen, unt
il it was too late, how big and important it truly had been.
He’d broken their hearts, becoming a Pagano man. His father had never let him forget that disappointment, and had briefly disowned him after Tina had been hurt. But his mother had never pushed him away, even as she’d mourned what he’d become.
Now he stood back and watched Tina and Matt brush snow from their parents’ gravestone, clearing off the oval wedding photo in the center, and their names and dates on each side. The name CORTI was etched in a large arc across the top. Under it was one sentence, their shared epitaph, chosen by their father after their mother’s death: L’amore non può morire. Love cannot die.
Tina set the little whisk broom aside and put fresh flowers in the brass vase. “There,” she said and stepped back with Matt. They were hand in hand, a few steps ahead of Angie.
She’d picked an arrangement like the flowers their mother had grown in the back yard. The flowers they’d made sure she could still see from her sick room, strapped into her wheelchair, locked into a body that had forgotten her.
The cold was going to kill those flowers. A few already showed stress at the tips of their petals.
“Those flowers are gonna die,” he said, and all at once his head was full of tears.
He never cried. All the things he’d seen and done in his life, all the hurt he’d made, he had no room for the weakness of tears. When his mother died, his father, he hadn’t cried.
But he was going to cry now anyway. He dropped his head, fighting them back.
Tina spun to face him and snapped, “Can you not be like that for one—Angie?”
His head down, his face tucked into his coat, fighting the weakness of tears, he shook his head.
“You okay, bro?” Matt asked.
And then they were both there, their hands on his arms, and he hated that. He was stronger than them both.
“Oh, Angie, it’s okay.” God. There was sympathy in his little sister’s voice. “We miss them, too. Every day.”
He yanked himself out of their hold, stepped out of their reach, and got control of himself. “This is fuckin’ morbid. I’m outta here.”
The Name of Honor Page 17
