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Don Romano is in his late fifties, but he still has a reputation for dealing with whoever displeases him with his bare hands. And he has very big hands.
Recently, when the Romano clan found that one of their lieutenants was skimming more than he should from the local protection schemes, and he wasn’t pushing the tastes up fast enough for the Don’s liking, the Don took the man’s eye out with the ring pull from a Coke can.
And then he used the same tool to kill the man. Horribly slowly.
If I sent a man to Don Romano to deliver the message that Alessio just gave me, I know for sure that man would never be seen alive again.
Don Pucci is said to be way more savage.
Those men didn’t get to be the heads of the top mob families in the state by accident, they didn’t win it in a lottery, and it wasn’t from a geniality contest, either.
He reaches across the table, but he can’t quite stretch to my hand. Not without leaning forward. It’s a gesture, a tiny dance that we’ve done a million times. He’s expecting me to slide my hand toward his.
I don’t.
When he sees that I don’t move, his palm slips slowly back across the white linen and his lips tighten.
I keep my face as still as the rest of me. I can’t believe that he’s doing this.
“The Romanos and the Puccis can wait,” he tells me. Brave words, Alessio. “It’s you I have to talk to first.”
I can feel it coming. I don’t want him to tell me. My cruel, dark, merciless heart cannot bear what he’s going to say. Sitting poised like a marble statue, inside I am splitting apart and breaking in two.
He starts. “Our arrangement…” he’s talking about us. Him and me. And Bruno and Carlo. He’s calling us an ‘arrangement,’ like it’s some under-the counter, dirty deal.
I can’t take it. Not from the man I love the most.
No. That’s not right. It’s wrong to say, The man I love the most because I love all three of them the most. More than I ever believed I was capable of loving anyone, especially a man.
From too much bitter experience, I know what men do. I know what I’ve had done to me. But now, when I least expected it, I found love grew and spread out from my heart. Unconditional, selfless love with no boundaries. For Carlo, and for Bruno.
And even for him, the least accessible, and the least outwardly lovable of the three Fortuna boys.
Even now, I feel that hurt from somewhere deep, somewhere far back in the past. It’s primitive. And it’s ugly.
Alessio is easy to want. To need. A look from under the dark hoods of those cool blue eyes can tear you open, cut through you like a blade of ice. The cruel, sardonic detachment of his laugh would make you shudder and tremble inside, and still at the same time it stirs a deep pool, a dark, swirling well of yearning need, way, way down in the dark depths.
At the first rumble from his powerful chest, you want to give in to him completely. You want to trust him. But he’s a hard man to love. You’re left in no doubt, if you trust this man, he can protect you from the fires of hell, but if it amused him he could be just as likely to drop you straight into them.
Seeing that, knowing that, I’ve loved him. I gave him my love. Freely. Fully.
And now, I can hardly bear to hear the words I know are coming. So small, so slight, but I know what’s coming before his lips begin to move, and I know what it means. It means complete and total betrayal.
Finally, Alessio tells me,
“Jerry wants to see you.”
I feel like the whole of me has been poured into an ancient terracotta vase, and he just shoved it off a balcony. With his foot..
As still as a statue on the outside, I’m in free-fall.
He makes it sound innocent. Like, Hey, my uncle wants to meet you. Wants a chance to get to know the amazing woman who captivated me, as well as Bruno and Carlo. He wants to embrace you, to hold you to him and welcome you to the other sides of the family.
But if it was anything remotely like that, he could have just called. If it was as friendly, as loving and as happy an occasion, he could have just showed up at the door with a bottles or two of Prosecco.
No, this is not that. This is a reckoning. This is a lesser member of the extended family, coming to claim back what he believes should never have been mine. At this point it could be soft, simply a demand. You’re not of our blood. Return the territory. Turn over control and we’ll say no more about it. But that’s only one of the ways he might present it.
One thing and one thing only has made Alessio’s uncle Jerry say he wants to see me. When he tells me that, My uncle wants to see you, I know that means they have discussed the situation together. That Alessia has talked about me. He’s told his uncle what I’ll say. Jerry asked what Alessio thinks I’ll do.
