Page 51 of Dirty Pool

NINE

“Don’t take offense,” Michel said as he came to stand in the entryway of the restaurant’s private dining room, “but this is starting to get tiring.”

Sal didn’t even glance up from the paperwork he had spread out on the table, but he did nod to say he’d heard Michel’s statement. That was it, though, nothing else came after. Michel shifted on his feet and shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks. Waiting. Because clearly Sal didn’t expect him to do anything else.

The man hadn’t invited him in, and he didn’t look like he was going to, either. The table Sal sat at to do his work—and pick at a plate of nachos to his left—had only one chair. The one he was sitting in, currently. He clearly knew Michel was standing in the entryway when he hadn’t been quiet about his arrival, and Sal had gone as far as at least nodding to him.

Michel tried not to get irritated about the man’s obvious disregard for his presence. Like it didn’t matter that he was standing right there, at a time too early for it to be acceptable, waiting on the asshole across the room to pretend like he gave a fuck someone was there for him. He wasn’t stupid—he knew how this went and being around men just like Sal for his entire life made this all the more clear to him.

Painfully so, even.

Sal was like any other man in the mafia who felt comfortable in his position and knew he had earned it. Anyone else who hadn’t—people like Michel, or those actively trying to get their in—were beneath him, and he didn’t mind making sure they knew it, too. Usually, Michel would brush this shit off because he didn’t care what anyone thought of him, but today it rubbed him in all the wrong ways.

Hell, it had been Sal who called him in that morning. He hadn’t even had the chance to crack open his goddamn eyes before Sal’s voice was the one barking at him to make a trip to the restaurant that morning. He wasn’t given any reason, or other orders, either. Just what Sal wanted, and that was that.

Like everything else lately.

It was what someone else wanted.

Michel didn’t get a say.

This was one of the entire reasons why Michel didn’t want to become a made man. He’d watched from the sidelines as his father’s and uncles’ lives had been dominated and controlled by the ways of Cosa Nostra. The mafia came first—always. La famiglia had to take precedence over anything else that someone on the outside looking in might consider more important.

And then as an older teenager, he watched as his cousins, Andino and John, decided to take their first steps into the family business, too. Suddenly, his best friends went from having the freedom to do whatever they wanted with him to having their days and nights controlled by men who would eventually determine if they were good enough to get their button—the in to the family.

Michel never faulted the men of his family for their dreams. He understood that the mafia was what they wanted—being made men was the only thing they had ever really considered for their future. On the other side of that coin, Michel chose not to pursue the business because he knew once he was in, there was no way out. There was no way in hell he would ever allow someone else to dictate what he could or would do with his time, life, and future.

It was as simple as that.

Still, despite how irritated it made Michel to sit there like a dog waiting to be called on to get his scraps for the day, he did it. Not because he had to take that shit, but because he grew up learning one thing first—respect.

His father would have been sorely disappointed in Michel for not at least attempting to be respectful first and foremost before anything else. It was only the thought of Dante in the back of Michel’s mind that kept him standing in that entryway until Sal decided he was finally ready to speak to the other man.

“We have a problem,” Sal said quietly.

Even then, the man didn’t look up from his paperwork or meal. Michel’s brow knotted, and his gaze narrowed as he took in the space with new eyes again. He was just now realizing how empty the private dining room was when usually a handful of men would be scattered about the room.

An enforcer or two, and a foot soldier who was lucky enough to follow around one of Sal’s men. Not to mention, the bookie—David—who almost always could be found at Sal’s side. Friends since they were kids, or that’s what Sal once told Michel. Nonetheless, there was never no one around whenever Michel was called in to see Sal for something.

The emptiness was concerning.

Michel wondered if he’d stepped into a trap.

“Did you hear me?” Sal asked.

He stayed still in the doorway, now refusing to take another step inside the dining room just in case. Safety first, and all that shit. It was becoming painfully obvious to Michel that there wasn’t a single thing about Detroit, or the people in it, that he could trust.

Gabbie, his mind whispered.

It wasn’t wrong.

She did try to help him—repeatedly.

“A problem, yeah,” Michel returned. “I heard you. What kind of problem are we talking about here?”

Sighing, Sal took his sweet time packing up the papers on the table, and shuffling them into a waiting folder. It was only once the table was cleared but for his plate of nachos and glass of water that the man finally looked up at Michel. The first time he’d looked at him in the face since Michel arrived.

One couldn’t miss the coldness in Sal’s eyes. He let out a thick sigh, one loaded with tension and it easily filled the room, too. His thin lips, set into a hard, grim line, twitched. Another sign of his frustration—with Michel, likely.