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Shane glared at his uncle. “You’re the one who sent me away twenty-five years ago to military school. This is the path you put me on. Why are you asking me questions about it?”
“I sent you away to protect you,” Joey said.
“From who?”
Shane was surprised as his uncle seemed to grow smaller in the swivel seat “Shane, what’s going on now, it’s all part of stuff that was never taken care of twenty-five years ago. There’s been a truce all those years. But this Wilson guy, that ain’t where you should be. You don’t want to be like him.”
“A truce between who?” Shane asked.
Joey hesitated. “The Don and me.”
“And now the truce is over?”
“I don’t know. But it wasn’t no coincidence you was in Savannah when I needed you.”
Considering he’d been working overseas 90 percent of the time in the previous five years, Shane didn’t think it was a coincidence, either. “Why would Wilson want me in the area? I’m getting a little tired of you old men playing me. Why is the truce breaking down now? What’s at stake?”
“You’re at stake,” Joey said.
“First transmitter goes in here,” Carpenter announced as he slowed the boat to slide the prow of the boat onto the tip of an island. Shane didn’t move. “What do you mean, Joey?”
Joey sighed and ran a hand across his coarse beard. “Your father ...” He stopped and shook his head. “This ain’t good. You don’t need this now.”
“My father.” Shane stood over his uncle, looking down at him. “You never told me a damn thing about my father. You’ve always acted like he never existed. That he was some fly-by-night guy who got my mother pregnant. Big family secret.”
“Nah,” Joey said. “Your father was a stand-up guy. He treated my sister right. I promised them both when you were born, if anything ever happened, I’d take care of you.”
“And then you sent me away,” Shane said, anger pulsing in his veins.
“I sent you away to save you.” Joey stopped and shook his head.
Shane grabbed his uncle’s T-shirt, pulling him close. “Enough.” He could feel the blood pounding in his head, a rushing in his ears, Carpenter coming close to him, but his focus was on Joey. “Enough with the fucking games, Joey.”
“You’re a Fortunato,” Joey said, talking faster. “Your father was Roberto, the oldest brother, the one who was supposed to be the Don. You’re the Fortunato heir, Shane.”
“Oh, fuck,” Shane said, and let Joey go.
Agnes was rolling out grass green fondant and swearing at it, when Rhett growled at the hall doorway, and she looked up, ready to pulverize anybody with a gun.
Instead it was Taylor, equally pulverizable, looking like hell.
“Your murdering slut of a thieving wife is out on her boat,” Agnes said, jerking her head toward the dock. “Next time, don’t come through the house.”
“I’m sorry,” Taylor said, and his voice was low, not the coaxing, flirting tease she’d come to loathe. “I truly am sorry, Agnes. I’ve screwed up everything.”
“True. Get out.” Agnes rolled the resisting fondant over the pin and moved it to the first layer of Palmer’s groom’s cake, smoothing the top and then beginning on the sides, where things quickly went wrong. You can do this, she told herself Goddamn fondant.
“I mean it,” Taylor said, coming into the kitchen and making Rhett growl louder. “She just said all the right things, Agnes.”
“She’s good at that. Leave.” Agnes frowned as she smoothed the fondant. It looked so easy when they did it on TV?—
“She killed that old man, didn’t she?” Taylor said, and Agnes looked up. “I heard about it. They were talking about it in town, that she drove right into him. Almost into you. She was aiming for you, wasn’t she?”
“Yeah,” Agnes said, watching his face. He did look truly miserable. “And she stripped Lisa Livia of everything she had, and now she’s trying to destroy her granddaughter’s marriage. She’s a real fucking prize, your wife.”
“She stole from Lisa Livia?”
“Taylor, she was going to steal this house from me, why is it so hard to believe she’d rip off Lisa Livia?”
