Hidden Worthiness Page 13

  That weighed.

  He liked her. Images of their night together flashed through his head, distracting him from his work. Her keen wit, her sunny smile, her directness, her openness. She was nothing like him at all. Bright and beautiful and graceful. Sweet and open. Her fantastic body had molded itself to his hands. Giving to him. He’d been so charmed he’d almost let his guards down. He had let his guards down for that night. Maybe because Sonia’s parting words had cut him deeper than he’d realized, he’d let himself really feel Arianna. Let himself pretend.

  Had he been too harsh the next morning? Or was she simply more fragile than he’d realized? He’d made the offer he always made, laid out the same rules. He’d told her he liked her. And yet, she’d run. Crying.

  In any case, it was for the best, for both of them. If his offer hurt her so badly, then she wasn’t as strong as he’d thought. And it would have been too risky to make her his comare—he’d given too much of himself up that night, had allowed himself too much.

  Still, it weighed. He couldn’t get his thoughts of her worked through and set aside. Those memories—of her smile, of her sinewy body arched in ecstasy, of her tears—flashed, vivid as when they’d been made.

  He’d given too much of himself, let her in too deep. He wanted the chance to really be with her, the chance to feel more than attraction and companionship. That was the weight, the pressure, the thing that chafed and ached: with Arianna, he wanted to know what it would be like to feel her love.

  And that was just fucking impossible.

  He hit the kill switch and stopped running.

  ~oOo~

  At his desk later that morning, Donnie struggled to keep his mind on the figures before him. Usually he was good at keeping the shifting codes of their off-the-books work straight, but today, it took a force of will, and he’d had to check his key a few times. He rarely needed a key once a code was in use. He made a point to memorize them before they went wide through the organization.

  The knock at his door offered a welcome break. “Yeah, in!” he called.

  Trey opened the door. “Hey, boss. Got a minute?”

  “Yeah, sure. Have a seat.” Donnie closed his tablet and laptop.

  Trey was a young man, only twenty-seven years old, and he had not yet been made, but he held power in the Pagano Brothers that Donnie wasn’t sure the kid realized. As the only other man in the organization with Pagano blood, Nick meant Trey to take his place on his retirement.

  Donnie had suspected as much since Trey had joined the organization, though Nick had only recently told him, and still had not made his intention widely known. He’d also understood how cataclysmically dangerous that plan was. Trey was only half Italian. In the ways of La Cosa Nostra, ways established many generations ago in Sicily and held sacred throughout all Italian Families, only fully Italian men could lead.

  Even to make Trey would cause a schism through the globe, and possibly an international civil war. When Nick said he didn’t want to call in favors over the Bondaruks, Donnie knew he meant to save those favors for the day he made his young cousin, who called him Uncle, and thereby made clear whom he meant to take his place.

  As second in command, Donnie had a right to think of himself as next in line to take the lead, and he would take it, if, God forbid, something should happen to Nick before Trey was ready, and if he didn’t lose a challenge for the seat. But he had no strong ambition himself to be don. He was too suspicious and cynical to be a good leader. Nick often had to talk him back from the most pessimistic possible perspective on an issue. Angie was better at seeing things pragmatically, but he was also a hothead.

  In the limited evidence thus far, Donnie saw that Trey would someday make a good don. He was levelheaded and loyal. He was smart. He had compassion, but he knew its limits. His stomach was strong, and his will stronger.

  But he had a lot of growing yet to do. Nick had demoted him a few months back, after he’d choked badly in a firefight.

  Still, when the time came, Donnie would stand with Nick and fight any fight to get Trey made. And if necessary, he’d fight to put him in Nick’s place, too, when the time came.

  He hoped he’d be dead before then, frankly. He didn’t want to live past Nick’s era. His whole life had been framed by his relationship to the don.

  “What’s up?” he asked now. “Day or night?” That was how he thought of their work—legitimate shipping business in the day, their other work in the night. Which was true more often than not. His characterization had caught on with the men over time.

  “Both,” Trey said as he sat.

  “Did you talk to Marty first?” Marty Bianchi was the capo Trey now reported to, since Nick had decided he needed more experience at the bottom. Trey had taken that hard, as Nick had expected, but he’d complied and put his full effort in his new place—also as Nick had expected.

  “I did. He sent me to you.”

  “Then let’s start with that.”

  “I got a call from Shelly Irwin at Cove Realty. Someone put a contract in on the Cyclone space. He wants to know what to do.”

  Cyclone had been Quiet Cove’s first real nightclub, but its tenure had been short-lived. The brothers who’d owned it had not gotten with the program in town, a program in which businesses paid the Pagano Brothers a monthly insurance premium, for which their businesses were protected and allowed to operate. When threats and minor-to-moderate consequences—including one of the brothers having half his leg shot off—had not brought them to heel, Nick had ordered the business destroyed.

  What was left was a structurally intact shell and not much else. And the Swinton brothers were long gone and far away.

  The shell had sat empty for months now.

  Still, for night work, this was pretty light. “You got the specs?”

  “Yeah. Shelly sent them over.” Trey swiped the screen of his tablet a few times and handed it to Donnie.

  He glanced through them, taking note of the offer price and the attached business proposal. In the Cove, a historic New England seaside town, new businesses had to be approved in deep detail by the town council. And the town council made no move without Nick Pagano’s okay.

  This was a proposal for another nightclub. The space was right for something like that, and the proposal seemed sound, but after Cyclone, Nick would be reluctant to go there again.

  The offer was signed by someone named Billy Jones, whose limited liability company had a stupid fucking name.

  “Who is NyteLyfe LLC? Billy Jones is not a name that narrows anything down.”

  “I did a quick search before I went to Marty. It’s a new company—formed for this purchase, I think. Billy Jones is almost local. She’s from Boston, but she summered here with her folks when she was a kid.” Trey laughed. “She’s twenty-eight, and her Instagram is full of surfing shots. I probably shared a wave with her at some point.”

  Donnie was still stuck on his assumption shifting to a different fact. “She?”

  “Yeah. Wilhelmina Jones. Billy.”

  A twenty-eight-year-old woman wanting to run a nightclub seemed a stretch in several directions. “Where’s she getting the money?”

  “I’m still looking into that, but she’s descended from old Boston money. Her grandfather owned a bunch of newspapers. He died last winter. It looks like her uncle got most of the inheritance, but my guess is however the rest of the spoils fell out, she got enough to put this offer in.”

  “I’m not impressed, but I’ll take it to Nick. What’s in the daylight?” In effect, Trey had the same job for the shipping company that he had for the Family. He was an account manager in the day and the night.

  “Empire Toys. They want to start shipping to Europe, and they need to know Nick’s mind on it. What kind of RFP should they put together?”

  Companies that worked with Pagano Brothers Shipping gave Nick right of first refusal for their transportation needs. PBS did some international work, but only a few runs a year. Most of their tra
ffic was continental. “That should go to Angie first. He’s got his hands on the routes.”

  “Okay. It’s the first time I’ve worked with something international. I wasn’t sure whether to start with the money or the process.”

  “It’s the same as anything else. Always start with process. We have to know what we’re doing before we can know what it costs or what to charge.”

  “Right. Of course. Sorry.”

  Donnie waved off the apology and handed Trey’s tablet back. “Send this proposal to me, and I’ll talk to Nick. That it?”

  “Yeah. Thanks, boss.” Trey stood.

  Before he turned, Donnie asked, “How’s Lara? And that baby boy?”

  Nick’s chosen successor grinned. His face shone as bright as a lighthouse lamp. “They’re fantastic. I think Frank grew in the few days we were away.” Trey’s eyes shifted to the window and took on a dreamy aspect. “All this is pretty cool. Being a dad, having a wife. I feel like I had no idea who I was until I had them.”

  Things Donnie couldn’t have. When he was younger than Trey, his life had been doomed to solitude. He hadn’t even gotten the chance to be a father to the son he had.

  When he didn’t respond, Trey blushed and refocused. “Sorry. That was ... sorry. Anyway, they’re great. Thanks for asking.”

  ~oOo~

  Nick leaned back in his chair, the reading glasses he hated perched on his nose, and studied the nightclub proposal. “What do we know about this girl?”

  Donnie settled back in his usual chair before Nick’s desk. “Not much yet. Trey did some preliminary research. She’s twenty-eight, from Boston, from Mayflower money. Her folks were summer people here. He thinks she inherited the funds to buy the nightclub.”

  “No loan, then?”

  “First blush, it looks like no. She didn’t list a lender on the proposal, and it’s not a contingent offer.”

  “NyteLyfe. What a stupid fucking name.”

  Donnie chuckled. “My thoughts exactly. It’s probably some kid slang thing”

  Joining him in laughter, Nick lowered the tablet. “You, my friend, aren’t old enough to be talking about ‘kids’ like an old fart. Elisa was an only child still in diapers when I was your age.” Elisabetta was the oldest of Nick’s four children, now a senior in high school applying to colleges.

  He flipped through the proposal a few minutes longer, then sat forward and put the tablet aside. “I don’t think we need a nightclub. We never needed one before. I don’t want another outsider with big ideas stomping in our town and thinking she can change the way things work.”

  Donnie had expected just that response, but he wasn’t sure he agreed. Nick had always been uncompromising in his principles and demanding in his practices, but he’d also always been flexible enough to recognize and exploit progress. As he aged, he was beginning to get a bit set in his ways, but he was still willing to listen to his trusted advisors. “I have some thoughts. If I may?”

  Nick nodded and crossed his arms on his desk. “Tell me.”

  “You’re right that we did fine without a nightclub before, but Cyclone was a hit while it was open, and now, people miss it. They got a taste for it.”

  “By people, you mean kids.”

  “Young people, yeah. Right now, that space is empty, and we’re paying the town’s upkeep on it. It’s an empty socket, right off the boardwalk. That’s money everybody’s losing. If it’s not this proposal, I think we should consider finding somebody else to buy it, with a proposal we like. We work somebody who stays in their lane. The Cove wins, we win.”

  Nick picked up his tablet again. “It’s not a terrible proposal. The offer’s in a negotiable range. It looks like she wants to do a Gatsby theme? Jazz and red velvet? How’s that going to go over with the demographic?”

  “I don’t think the music will be jazz. I think it’s more like the Baz Luhrmann version of Gatsby.”

  The don’s expression was patient, waiting for an explanation. Though Nick and Bev went to all the high-ticket cultural events, he wasn’t much of a moviegoer. He did, however, have a wife, three teenage daughters, and a screening room in his home.

  “The Leo DiCaprio version.”

  “Ah. Right.” Nick made a face, and Donnie chuckled.

  “Anyway,” Donnie continued, “I like her proposal, and the season just ended. She’d have the fall and winter to get up and running. That’s plenty of time to get her on board with the way the Cove works.” After all these years, he knew exactly how far to push an alternative view, so he stopped there and let his don think.

  “Okay. Get Calvin to dig deep into this ... Billy Jones. Billy?”

  “Yeah. Wilhelmina, apparently.”

  “I want Calvin to dig deep. If she doesn’t stink after what he turns over, we’ll talk to her.”

  “Okay. I’ll put him on it now.”

  Nick nodded. “What’s the word on Di Pietro?”

  The stupid runner who’d swung out on his own and made contact with the Bondaruks. “Nothing so far. We had Marty plant something, but it hasn’t sprouted yet. We’re on him like skin, but he hasn’t met with them again. Maybe they tried to reel him in and he didn’t bite.”

  “If that was the case, why didn’t he tell his capo?”

  Donnie suggested the most obvious answer, the one Nick himself knew just as well. “Fear. Even bringing it up turns suspicion his way, and he’s a kid who doesn’t know which way is up.”

  “If he’s not moving, bring him in. Have Angie lean on him. If he’s still standing after that, maybe he’ll be okay.”

  Nick’s phone rang before Donnie could respond. After a glance at the screen, he picked it up. “It’s Beverly.” He answered, and shifted smoothly from the don who’d just ordered one of his men to be tortured to the husband who adored his wife. “Hi, bella.”

  When Donnie gestured an offer to leave, Nick shook his head, so he sat where he was, turned his deaf ear to Nick, and tried not to listen to a husband’s conversation with his wife.

  It was something about one of the girls, something disappointing. Nick mostly listened, and sighed a lot.

  Then Donnie heard his name and turned back to Nick. “Donnie and I are just wrapping something up. I can be home for lunch.” He listened, and then looked at Donnie. “Beverly is inviting you to dinner tonight. Are you free?”

  While Angie’s evening had just been planned, Donnie’s plans consisted of being home alone, with no company but his recently energized dark thoughts. Nick’s family was the one home besides his own where he felt truly comfortable. “Sure, I can be free.”

  “He’ll be there. And I’ll see you in about an hour. We’ll talk to her, and I’ll talk to the school. Ti amo, bella.” He ended the call and became the don again. “I’ll talk to Angie about Di Pietro. You get with Calvin and have him work this nightclub proposal. I want to know who this Billy Jones is.”

  Father, husband, businessman, don. Nick Pagano was indeed a chimera.

  ~oOo~

  After a typically delicious, typically chaotic dinner, while Nick helped Ren with his homework, Lia left for a friend’s house, and Bev and Elisa cleaned up, Donnie went looking for Carina, who’d left the table in an angry huff.

  She was outside, sitting at the far end of the pool, curled into a chair, looking over the back fence to the ocean beyond. Carina in stillness was a rare sight.

  The night had a brisk chill of new autumn, and he zipped his black hoodie up all the way and slid his hands into its pockets as he walked along the side of the pool that had been closed for the season a week or so ago. When he pulled up a chair and sat beside her, he got no reaction, so he looked out at the ocean and stayed quiet with her.

  Donnie hadn’t been surprised to arrive at Nick and Bev’s that evening and discover he’d been conscripted more than invited to dinner. It wasn’t the first time he’d been brought in as a buffer in times of parent-child conflict. Particularly where Carina was concerned. Sometimes, he could talk to her in a way
her parents couldn’t, because he wasn’t an authority over her. He was just Uncle Donnie.

  He thus also hadn’t been surprised to learn that the ‘she’ Bev had called Nick about earlier was Carina, who was in trouble, again, at school.

  From the time Carina was old enough to get around on her own little feet, she’d been stirring up trouble at every opportunity. The older she got, the more inventive she got. She’d been into so much mischief for so long, when her trouble had a root of good, it took the people around her some time to see it.

  Also from the time she was toddling, she’d had a special affection for her Uncle Donnie.

  Donnie couldn’t really say why. Back then, he was still having surgeries fairly regularly—failing grafts replaced, new attempts to reconstruct his nose, poor healing repaired—and at times, he’d looked more monstrous than when his skull and teeth were exposed. But Carina had seen only Uncle Donnie, no matter how horrifying he’d looked. Sometimes her sisters would shrink back a little until they got used to his swollen, shredded face, but Carina never did. She’d climb right up on his lap and want to know what was going on on that side of his head.

  There was virtually nothing she could do to lose his devotion. He loved all Nick’s kids like he’d had a hand in making them, but Carina was his girl.

  “I’m not stupid, Uncle Donnie,” she finally said. “I know you’re out here because I make Mamma cry and Papa mad, and they gave up and made you talk to me.”

  “Nobody made me, sweetheart. I’m just here if you want to talk.”

  She was quiet a few moments more, staring blades at the Atlantic. “It’s not fair. If I’m suspended, I can’t go on the New York trip. And I didn’t do anything wrong this time. Even Papa says I was right!”

  She’d beaten up a sixth-grade boy. That boy had been running around the cafeteria snapping girls’ bra straps. He hadn’t snapped Carina’s, but she’d seen him coming, and she’d slammed a tray into his face and then proceeded to tear up her knuckles on that face. He was in the hospital tonight.