“Neither are you, Padrino. But I am the head of this Council of Five Families, and I repeat that you have no vote. You are invited here out of respect, and you have the respect of all of us. But we will decide our business.”
“We? What we is there? What Five Families?” Cuccia flipped a contemptuous hand toward the two men vying for control of the Conti seat. “This family has no don.” Another dismissive wave to Gianni Abbatontuono, who had a smear of risotto on his tie and had been staring at the tablecloth for at least ten minutes. “This family has a don who deserves his rest.” Then he held out both hands toward Giada, “And this family bent over to a woman.” He sat back. “There are no Five Families in New England. There are two. For now.”
Vio Marconi sat forward. “I say this with all respect, Padrino, but you are wrong. It is true that the Conti Family has internal problems it”—he shifted his eyes to Willie Ganza and Joe Furlani, the key contenders for the seat—“needs to fuckin’ work out.” He turned back to Cuccia. “It’s true that the Don Abbatontuono grows weary. But these are long-standing, strong families, and they will sort their affairs. The Marconis and the Paganos are stronger than ever, and the Sacco Family will only get stronger under Donna Sacco’s open leadership. We all know she’s made every good move the Saccos have made for the past five years, and fixed every bad move of her brother’s—rest his soul—she could catch. I say it’s better to have a good donna at the table than a bad don. Not to speak ill of the dead.”
Vio sat back, and Giada let out a long, discreet breath. She’d hoped Vio was on her side, but until now had not been certain.
“You make a half-blood heir. You make and seat a woman. These are not things that can be done. You cannot change almost two hundred years of tradition simply by snapping your fingers and making it so,” Cuccia insisted. “This is not our way. Tradition is our strength and our bond.”
Giada knew then that Cuccia would back down, at least for now. His arguments had become those of someone who’d lost the ground.
It galled her, sitting here silently while these men decided her fate, but it was important that they speak for her and show their support. She didn’t need to plead her case. She had already shown her worth. They needed to be fully invested in her themselves.
“Tradition binds us in good ways and in bad, Padrino,” Nick replied. In his tone, Giada heard that he, too, knew Cuccia would retreat. “If the binding is too tight, it cuts off circulation, and we begin to die off in pieces,” He sipped his coffee and added, “I am a traditional man, but I understand the value of progress. My family is as strong as it is—the strongest of any here, including yours, Padrino—because we grow and change with the world we work in. Here is what I know: Giada has been doing the good work of a don for years. Her family voted to give her the vows and put her at their head. A family three generations old has chosen a woman to lead them, and they chose well. If the only objection to her is her gender, then that is an objection with no merit but tradition, and it would cut off circulation and lose us a limb. I stand with Donna Sacco.”
“And I,” added Vio.
Willie and Joe considered each other for a minute, and Giada wondered how deep their competition ran. The Conti Family got the same single vote as anyone. They had to vote together, or cancel out their voice.
Willie nodded, and Joe said, “The Conti Family stands with Donna Sacco.
What they were all voting on, officially, was the Sacco seat. If the vote was No, her family would lose the whole seat. She might still be don, but of a family without Council support. And of course, she’d be pushed out at once, and possibly killed, so the family could regain that seat.
It had to be unanimous. The last vote was Gianni Abbatontuono. His nephew, Leo, sat with him. He’d tended his uncle like a caregiver, helping him with his meal, wiping his chin. Now Leo opened his mouth to speak for the don.
But Gianni set his hand on his nephew’s arm and stared across the table at Giada. He spoke slowly, his voice rasping with age, but he was clear. “Be better than the don you follow, Donna Sacco.”
Maybe he wasn’t as far gone as everyone thought.
“I will be, Don Gianni,” she said, relieved to use her voice again. She turned to Cuccia. “So you see, Padrino”—she now used that name as the others had, to show she was one of them—“I have a seat at this table.”
Cuccia sat quietly for several seconds, glaring in turn at every man who’d spoken. Then he tossed his linen napkin on the table and stood. His associates stood as well. “Siete tutti stupidi!” he spat and strode out. The other Sicilians followed.
“I don’t think Sicily’s on board,” Vio mused, with an ironic twist of a smile at the closed door.
“Fuck ‘em,” Nick snarled. “We knew it would come to a fight.”
~oOo~
Long, dreadful hours since Giada had left that morning for a funeral, Shorty pulled up behind her building. She’d been sitting quietly in the back seat, leaning against the headrest with her eyes closed. Not sleeping—she wondered if she’d ever sleep well again—but thinking. Playing the day through.
On this day, she had buried the brother she’d killed, been shot at, watched her uncle die in her arms, had a long negotiation with a BPD detective, been summoned by Ettore Cuccia, and faced down the Council. She’d also learned more horrible facts than she could yet process.
Before Fabio had come to the church to be a pallbearer for Giada’s brother, he’d killed his wife and children. In their beds, a single shot to each innocent head. He’d killed his own family. Among all the seismic shifts and sea changes this single day had held, that one intimate atrocity shook her hardest.
Fabio had been a bad husband, and an only slightly better father. But this? Why?
Even as she puzzled over that horror, she couldn’t seem to feel it. Or anything else. Not even Enzo. Her heart had shut down, and she’d operated all day, from the moment she’d said goodbye to her uncle, on pure intellect. Everything she’d accomplished today, everything she’d faced, none of it had made her feel more than the cold rage that thumped dully at the base of her spine.
The SUV stopped, and she heard gears shift. “Donna?” Shorty said.
“Yes?” She didn’t open her eyes; she’d wait until he opened her door.
“We may have a problem. There’s—were you expecting company?”
She opened her eyes and leaned forward. Shorty had stopped well away from the garage, and he’d put the truck in Reverse. The headlights washed over the lot and the entrance to the garage. A blacked-out Hellcat was parked there, and Angie had clearly just climbed out. He closed the door and leaned back on it.
A warm calm settled over her numb turmoil at once.
Shorty frowned at her in the rearview mirror. “That’s Angie Corti, right? The Paganos are friends, right?”
She smiled and put her hand on the door handle. “Yes, they are. I’m getting out here, Shorty. You’re excused for the night.”
“I need to stay on you, ma’am.”
“No, you don’t. I’m covered.”
“By a Pagano?” He turned and looked at her. “Ma’am. Please.”
“All right. Do your job. But give me some room. And I am getting out here.”
She did just that and went to Angie. He met her halfway. She’d been ready to say hello with a kiss, but his expression held her back. Exhausted and bleak.
He hadn’t been at the Council meeting.
“What happened? You weren’t there tonight.”
His grin was a pale imitation of his usual amused smirk. “No, I wasn’t. I was told to go home.”
“Oh, God. Angie, are you out? Are you safe?”
“I don’t know. I think, whatever happens, the outlook is not so good, as my old Magic Eight Ball used to say. Maybe he’ll just kick me down, out of the circle, and give me a chance to redeem myself. Or maybe I’m a dead man walking. I’ll find out soon enough. Tomorrow morning.”
“Because of me.”
<
br /> “Because of me. I didn’t do anything that wasn’t my choice. He hasn’t said anything yet. He just sent me home without another word. But there’s nothing else it could be. And I put on a show, I guess, when Fabio shot at you. So yeah, it’s because I kept a secret from him—and that’s on me.”
“You kept it because I asked you to.” And Nick had supported her anyway, even as he’d turned his back on one of his closest friends. She’d put Angie in this position needlessly.
“You asked, but it was my choice.” He reached out and brushed her arm. “I’m sorry about Enzo.”
Her uncle’s death had felt strangely far away since this morning. “Thank you. I’m so sorry about this, Angie. I’m so sorry.”
“I know. Me too. Was it worth it? Or did I fuck everything up for you, too, this morning?”
“Nick stood with me. They all did.”
Something like a real smile lightened his expression for a moment. “That’s great, G. That’s excellent. And Il Padrino?”
“He left in a rage. Nick thinks it means war.”
“Yeah, sounds like it. Well, I don’t think that would have gone any other way. Cuccia’s a stubborn old bastard.”
All his answers had a blunt edge at the end, like he was trying to be okay and not quite managing it. Angie had risked everything for her, and he might have lost it all even as she’d won.
Giada closed the scant distance between them and set her hand on his cheek, rough with dark stubble. “Nick sent you home?”
Angie mirrored her touch, and brushed his thumb lightly under the scrape on her cheek. He nodded.
“But you didn’t go home.”
He shook his head. His eyes were dark with torment and said more than words could have.
She didn’t want to be alone, either. She wanted to be with him.
She took his hand. “Let’s go up.”
~oOo~
Giada unlocked the door of her apartment and was finally home. Angie followed her in, locking the locks behind him. She took off her coat and dropped it in the usual chair, then kicked off her shoes and flexed her aching feet.
“What’s your code?” Angie asked, standing at the control panel for her alarm system.
Giada didn’t answer. Instead, she took her phone from her bag and reset the alarm with the app. Then she went to the kitchen and took a bottle of Barbera from a reds shelf of her wine cooler. “You want a glass?”
“Sure.” He shed his topcoat and laid it over hers on the chair. His suitcoat followed, and then his tie. A leather shoulder harness crossed the crisp cotton of his dress shirt; he took that off as well and laid it on the pile he was making. The butt of a Beretta 9mm showed in the holster.
After he unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt, he rocked his head back and forth, stretching his neck. The heavy chain he wore glinted against his olive skin.
Giada opened the bottle and poured two glasses full. When Angie came close, she handed one to him. Slumping back against the counter, she drank her wine down like water. Angie turned and contemplated the space before him.
The main living space of her penthouse apartment had an open floor plan, with her large kitchen transitioning to a wide space that was dining room and living room, ending at a wall of windows and a balcony beyond. In the corner of the window wall was a double-sided ethanol fireplace that presented to the living room and the balcony both.
The rest of the apartment was arranged in a more traditional fashion, with a large master suite, and two smaller bedrooms and bathrooms. Sacco Development had bought and rehabbed this building several years ago, and she’d had this apartment designed to her own preferences. And then she’d had it professionally decorated to her preferences as well. It was perfect.
“Your place isn’t what I expected,” he said after a long drink from his glass.
“No?” She poured herself another. “Why not?”
He turned and came into the kitchen. “I don’t know. It’s ... pinker. You wear so much red, it’s like your signature color. I figured it’d be all over your house, but everything I see is pink or white or grey.”
Red was indeed her ‘signature color.’ At least, she did wear it every day. But she liked her private space to be calm and quiet, and red was not a calm, quiet color. Red was assertion. Aggression. Passion. She wore red for its power. In her home, she wanted to set that aside and be calm. She needed a place she could feel weak and still be safe.
Angie’s house had surprised her, too. Since he was always dressed in designer clothes, often custom-made, and he drove that ridiculous penis of a car, she’d imagined a wealthy, overgrown adolescent’s playground. Instead, his house was as ‘normal’ on the inside as on the outside, neither aggressively bachelor nor demonstrably wealthy. Just a nice home, with comfortable furniture, and a cozy decorating sense that suggested he liked comfort and didn’t care much about style.
A home where that old upright piano had fit naturally, though its style was like nothing else.
Angelo Corti. Brutal enforcer. Brashly masculine. And able to dance and play the piano.
“Does the pink bother you?” she asked.
“No, it’s beautiful. Just not what I expected.”
It dawned on Giada that the turn of their conversation didn’t at all suit the weight of the day. “Are we going to talk home décor tonight? Is that our topic?”
He finished his wine and set the empty glass down. “Do you really want to talk about all the shit around us right now?”
She did, actually. There were things she needed to say. “I’m so sorry,” she said again, to start. “The words can’t do it justice. When I made the plan to be seen together, I didn’t see it going like this, or this far. I just wanted to get on the radar as allied with the Paganos, in a way the others wouldn’t discount.”
Angie had been about to refill his glass. He froze just before the pour and frowned at her. “You made the plan? I thought it was Nick’s.”
“No. I brought it to him. He didn’t like it at first, but I got him to see how getting that kind of notice could help him, too. All I wanted was the notice, and the alliance, Angie. I didn’t mean for this to pull you into trouble.”
He set the bottle down, unpoured, and backed off. “But when you came to my room that night. That’s when we went off script, and that was your idea, too.”
Giada saw Angie’s understanding of these weeks’ events shift, and she saw his trust in her shake. He’d lost everything, and he’d thought—what? How was it different if Nick came up with the plan and not her? A recollection rose up, of the night of the wedding, when she’d first inferred that Angie believed the plan was Nick’s. At the time she’d wondered what Nick was up to.
Now, that didn’t matter. Now, Angie was obviously reeling, and she needed to understand why. Why did it matter to him whether it was her plan or Nick’s?
Because it shifted the direction in which he felt manipulated. While he’d thought the plan was Nick’s, he could see Giada and himself as both pawns in Nick’s plans.
If the plan was hers, she was no longer a pawn. But he still was—hers as well as Nick’s.
That night she’d gone to his house, he’d almost understood then; he’d worried he’d been her ‘stooge,’ but she’d convinced him otherwise. Because it wasn’t true—he’d never been her stooge or her pawn. Yes, early on, she’d wanted this relationship whether she cared about him or not, she’d wanted the strength of a ‘royal marriage,’ but she’d expected him to be in on the scheme. She’d never meant to manipulate him.
She’d never meant to fall in love with him, either.
“Fuck,” he gasped. “Fuck me.” He backed out of the kitchen and almost ran to the chair where his coats were, and his gun.
Giada ran after him “Angie! No! Wait!”
She grabbed his arm, and he spun around so fast he was a blur. Grabbing her arms in hands like steel clamps, he charged forward and slammed her against the nearest wall. A framed painting beside he
r went askew on its wire.
“You fucking BITCH! What did you do to me?”
He was hurting her, dominating her, but she didn’t care. She didn’t need control now. Now she was desperate. Now, she was not a woman fighting for a place in a man’s world. Now, she was a woman who’d fallen in love for the first time, and was about to lose it before she could embrace it.
“No! Angie, please! Please! I never meant to manipulate you.”
“But you meant to use me.”
“With your consent. Good for both of us. For all of us.”
“No, not all of us. Now you’re a don, and Nick made his fucking half-blood mini-me, and I’m all alone up to my neck in SHIT!” He shouted the last word and released one of her arms to punch the wall a few inches from her head. The painting dropped and crashed to the floor.
She didn’t flinch. Instead, she used the chance of her freed arm to clutch his shirt and hold on. “I’m so sorry. Angie, I love you. Sono innamorata di te!”
She’d never said those words before in her life.
An acidic laugh crackled in his mouth, but his eyes shone wetly. “Fuck you, Donna Sacco. Fuck you.” With a shove, he let her go, and she lost hold of him.
When the door slammed shut, Giada stood alone in her empty apartment. The one place in her world where she didn’t have to be strong, but now it felt hollow and dead.
The alarm was chiming its warming. She staggered to the keypad and silenced it.
Then the numb freeze of her emotions shattered, and her knees buckled. She dropped to the floor and wept.
~ 17 ~
Back in Quiet Cove, in his house, Angie put Van Halen on loud enough to make the glasses shake on the shelves behind his little living room bar and broke the seal on a bottle of thirty-year scotch he’d been saving for an occasion special enough to merit killing an eight-hundred-dollar bottle of booze.
He’d very likely run out of time to wait, so why the hell not.
At first, he poured into a glass and added ice, the way he preferred it. Then, he wondered why he was bothering and just drank from the bottle, wandering around his house in his suit trousers and sock feet, his eardrums thumping to music so loud it was hardly more than static, wondering how to get his affairs in order, or if it mattered if he did.
The Name of Honor Page 21
