Hidden Worthiness Read online

  And still self-conscious about it, still seeing nothing else about her face. Baxter knew it, he’d seen the sheen of her insecurity the second he’d noticed her at all, and he went right for it whenever he felt she needed to be put in place.

  He also knew that it worked. It hurt too much for her to do anything but drop her eyes meekly.

  “If you can’t dance, there are a half a dozen girls in this room who could take your place right now. Is that what you want, Ari?”

  Half a dozen girls watching this scene, thanking their lucky stars they weren’t in her place exactly right now. At least half of them would console her later, if she wanted it. The other half would climb over her bloody, moaning body for a chance at the lead.

  “No.” She hated how powerless she sounded. How powerless she was.

  “I didn’t think so.” He turned to the costume designer. “Tape her down, or whatever you have to do. I want a clean line.”

  When Baxter’s snit had carried him far enough off, Bastien leaned conspiratorially close. “Don’t you worry, kitten. You are beautiful, and I’ll make sure you can breathe.”

  ~oOo~

  Julian spread a towel over his lap and held out his hands. Ari lifted her feet from the soaking tub and gave them to him, stretching out on the futon as he wrapped her feet in the towel and massaged as he dried them. She crossed her arms over her eyes and gave over to the sore calm.

  Today had been an easy day, just a few brief performances of the Raoul and Christine pas de deux for kids in summer programs and residents of an assisted living center, but Ari couldn’t remember a day in her life when her feet didn’t hurt in some way. In fact, she was afraid to contemplate the prospect—if her feet were ever pain-free, it would only be because she’d stopped dancing.

  “You need to toughen up, Ari. If you let him get too deep in your head, he’ll break your confidence, and then it’ll be New York all over again.”

  “New York wasn’t a break in my confidence. It was a reality check. I wasn’t good enough for New York.”

  “You were good enough to make the corps. That’s more than I ever achieved, and I graduated from fucking Julliard.”

  His thumb pressed more firmly into her arch, and she flinched. With a little hiss of apology, he backed off.

  “I wasn’t good enough to stay, though.”

  “You could have been. You let the pressure get to you.”

  He was rubbing too hard again. Ari sat up and covered her hands with his. “I don’t want to talk about New York. And anyway, this is different. Baxter is a jerk, and I hate the things he says, but he doesn’t intimidate me. He’s not Balanchine or Wheeldon or anybody of note. He’s just a bully, and like you said, bullies try to knock you down because they feel so small. He’s not in my head, Jule. I promise.”

  She meant the promise sincerely—to her friend and to herself. A few nights from now, she would dance her first starring role. Almost thirty years since she’d first stood at a barre, she was finally starring in a ballet. It didn’t matter where the stage was. She was dancing, and she was starring. She had what she wanted. Baxter Berrault would not ruin it for her. No one would ruin it for her. No one was in her head but Christine Daaé, the target of the Phantom’s obsession.

  She took her feet off Julian’s lap and stood up. “Your turn. I’ll heat up some more water.”

  ~ 3 ~

  As don, Nick Pagano was an amalgam—or maybe the word ‘chimera’ was better. Like that mythical beast, he was made of distinct parts into a powerful whole. Just as the Mafia itself was both whole and separate.

  In the common consciousness, the Mafia in its entirety was New York and New Jersey—The Godfather and The Sopranos—and, in fact, those cultural touchstones marked important changes in the American organizations and in their reputations. When omertà broke in the Eighties, taking down key players from dons to capos, John Gotti most famous among them, that crisis had caused a quake in all of La Cosa Nostra that changed the business materially. Not only had the Families been broken, but that break left a chasm into which swarmed other organizations—Russians, Ukrainians, Albanians, Colombians, Salvadorans, Dominicans, and more, in a seemingly endless rush. They all had their own ways, their own cultures, and they changed everything.

  When Gotti went inside, it was said, when the code of silence was broken, the old ways died. The new ways of the Mafia that rose up again had an entirely different attitude.

  In the public eye, that shift looked like the great Don Vito Corleone giving way to classless thug Tony Soprano.

  The New England Council of Five Families was not part of New York or New Jersey. They were barely affiliated with each other, beyond the strong but mainly metaphorical connection that was La Costra Nostra. Their businesses were, as a rule, entirely separate. They were friendly neighbors, but not associates.

  New England had not been caught up in the federal snare of the 1980s. They had observed their neighbors’ trouble and had taken good counsel from it, and they had survived. Omertà held. And yet, as the cultural image of the Mafia changed overall, many of the trappings of that change made it to New England. Three-piece suits and silk ties gave way to track suits and gold chains. And even among the dons who kept the old ways in dress, most had allowed the new ways of business into their work.

  Not Nick. Nick was a traditionalist. In the Pagano Brothers, a made man wore a suit and comported himself like a professional businessman. Period. From soldiers up the chain, Paganos dressed for success. He didn’t care about associates, those dwellers on the bottom rung who might or might not have what it took to make their bones. Their more casual dress was a sign to everyone that they were not yet worthy of his notice.

  He was traditional, too, in his steadfast adherence to the old codes. Not only the code of silence, but of conduct. Families were sacrosanct, even the families of his enemies. So were innocent bystanders. If there was a foreseeable chance for ‘collateral damage’ in a strategy, he wanted a better plan.

  Like his uncle before him, he understood that the best cover for his organization was the public itself—and that they provided that cover not because they feared him but because they respected him. They even admired him. He gave with both hands in his community. His wife was a beloved leader of community fundraising. When someone in Quiet Cove had a problem, they knew they could go to the don or his wife and get help.

  Everyone in New England was perfectly aware that Nick Pagano could erase them from existence with one nod of his head. But few outside their world saw him as a threat or the Pagano Brothers as a stain on their community. They knew what he did to make his money. They also knew that he respected them and protected them. He made their community better.

  That was a lesson he’d learned at the side of Beniamino Pagano, and he never wavered from that old-world understanding.

  But he was a modern man, too. He keenly understood the ways of this world and didn’t pretend that his business existed anywhere else. Under his leadership, the Pagano Brothers had developed a surveillance and intelligence division that was practically military-grade. Their financial people worked sophisticated digital programs that buried the organization’s assets, and their deeds, under miles of complicated code. A growing percentage of their income came from enterprises which required no handoffs or pickup, no physical exchange of goods at all. It all happened online, all over the world, in parts of the internet deep below the place where Nonnie saw pictures of the grandkids.

  So yes, Nick was a chimera, made up of old ways and new. He understood tradition and progress equally well. He was both honorable and ruthless. He was not averse to change.

  But no one in a track suit crossed the threshold into his office.

  Angie locked Nick’s office door and came to the desk, standing before the leather chair that was a mate to Donnie’s own. He unbuttoned the coat to his custom suit and sat down.

  “Tell me,” Nick said as soon as Angie was seated.

  More than a day had passed
since Bobbo, Lenny, and Mike had been killed. Nick had spent most of the day before with grieving wives. Donnie had spread the word through the organization and worked with the capos to beef up their defenses. Angie had been managing the intel.

  Angie leaned forward as he answered. “There’s no Bondaruk son stateside yet, as far as we can see. We got movement in Jersey again, but there’s no material business happening. Just setup. Everything we see says there’s an advance team but nothing else.”

  “Their advance team hit us?” Donnie tried to make sense of that. Normally, an advance team kept their heads down. You didn’t want to make your presence known until you had strong ground to stand on. A year ago, the Paganos had disemboweled the last Bondaruk crew on American soil, killing Yuri’s two oldest sons and his favorite nephew. He would have expected their second attempt to be more careful than their first.

  Nick sat back in his chair and stared at a point over his desk. Donnie and Angie waited to hear what he’d say.

  “How many?” he finally asked, turning his attention back to Angie.

  “We’ve marked four. They’re in different motel rooms in and around Asbury. The watch shop is pretty quiet. One guy went in yesterday and came back out in about twenty minutes.”

  The Bondaruks used a watch and clock repair shop as their front, with their headquarters in the back. After the crew had been wiped out last year, the shop had gone on working legit, by all signs, and Nick had let it stand. They’d kept an eye on it since.

  “They’re acting like an advance crew, staying lo-pro,” Donnie mused aloud. “Then why the fuck did they make that big piece of performance art with Bobbo and the others?”

  “Bondaruk wanted me to know. He’s telling me he’s undeterred. He means to come for me, but it doesn’t change his plans. He’s telling me what we did last year had no impact on him.”

  It was obvious bluster—Bondaruk had been out of the American game for a year because of what the Paganos had done in their own retaliation. But the message wasn’t about the business. Yuri’s message was that his sons were replaceable.

  Angie’s face twisted with disgust. “We got four men in sight and nobody else moving. Four is the full team. You say the word, and all four of those roaches will be in our roach motel in two hours, ready for you.”

  Nick’s bloody brutality when he sought revenge was the stuff of legend. But now, he shook his head. “No. Keep an eye on them, but nothing more..”

  “Don?” Shock sharpened Angie’s voice, but Donnie thought he understood.

  “You want to wait.”

  Nick smiled. Little more than a twitch at the corner of his mouth, the expression had no humor, but a bitter kind of resolve. “I do. I told you the other night, Donnie. The Bondaruks are vermin. I won’t play their game. They think they declared war, but this is nothing but a slap fight. When we strike back, that won’t be war, either. It will be extermination.”

  “Nick, they killed Bobbo,” Angie said. “They desecrated his body. We’re just gonna brush that off as a slap?”

  The only men in the Pagano Brothers who could argue with Nick were sitting in this room with him. And probably the only men who were brave enough to do it.

  The don sat forward, setting his elbows on his desk. “Bobbo was made before I was. I loved that old man. He was past seventy and still doing anything asked of him, still keeping watch and breaking balls. Losing Bobbo is not a slap. What they did to him, and the others, is not a slap. But I will not weaken what they died for by slogging through the sewer with men so far beneath me. We will not trade blows. We will not strike until I am holding a Bondaruk son’s eyes and ears and tongue in my hand. And then I burn down everything Bondaruk.

  “You want to take them down in Ukraine?” Angie asked. Donnie was surprised himself. The other night, Nick had suggested that he wouldn’t strike Bondaruk at home, that he didn’t want to call in the favors he’d need. But what he’d just said seemed to indicate a willingness to go that far after all.

  The Pagano Brothers had never made an international move against another organization. It would take monumental effort and planning—and alliances Donnie wasn’t sure they had.

  “I want decisive action, and I will wait to strike until I have what I want,” Nick answered, leaving the core question unanswered. “For now, leave the vermin to rebuild their little nest, and when a son steps into it, then we’ll make a move.”

  ~oOo~

  That evening, Donnie stood on his deck with a glass of Macallan and watched the ocean. His house perched on a rise near the southern reach of Quiet Cove, on the corner of a tiny inlet. From here, he had a view of the vast Atlantic, past tall grasses and a rocky beach, and of the cozy solitude of the inlet. If he walked to the side of his deck, he could look up at the houses on and around Greenback Hill, the lights in their many windows making them glow like golden castles. He knew which of those houses was Nick’s, and knew his friend was home with his family, setting aside his business concerns to be the husband and father they loved.

  Here down below, Donnie was alone.

  He rubbed at his ruined cheek. Even twenty years after he was burned, the grafted skin still hurt, but by now the sensation had become normal. It wasn’t pain, exactly, because that side of his face, all the way to the mass that had once been his right ear, was almost wholly numb. The numbness itself was a kind of ache. And the stretch. The scars and grafts were more fragile than normal skin—pulled more tightly, dried out more quickly, broke more easily. No number of years seemed sufficient to make that discomfort and inconvenience something he could disregard. It was normal, but he still felt it. Maybe because truly normal skin, and his past self, adjoined it. A constant comparison between what had once been and what would ever be.

  On that day twenty years ago, however, Donnie had experienced pain beyond expression, beyond comprehension, and every pain since, even the agony of endless surgeries and procedures, of debridements and grafts and rejections and more debridements and grafts, had paled in comparison to that night. He remembered every millisecond of the horror—his head held down, the grill heated up beneath him, growing warm, then hot, then hotter, until his skin sizzled and burned and melted away. He remembered the pain, like ravenous fangs clawing through his sanity. He remembered the smell of meat and hair. He remembered the sound of his screams, and of Bev’s. Nick’s wife had been there, forced to watch his torment before she endured her own.

  Twenty years ago, he’d been a newly made Pagano man, still young and stupid, still learning the ropes, still scared most of the time. Twenty-six years old, disowned by his family, trying to be a weekend father to a preschool son, trying to figure out what kind of man he would be. He’d looked to Nick as a mentor, but barely made his notice. Until that day.

  On that day, when Donnie had failed to protect Nick’s woman but had given up half his face in the attempt, Nick had seen Donnie completely. He hadn’t pulled him up from the ranks with undue quickness, but from that day, Donnie had known the boss, and then the don, was keeping an eye on him. When he was strong enough again to work, it was Nick’s attention, and not the goggling stares of the rest of the world, that gave him the strength to forge his life as he wanted.

  Women couldn’t look at him long enough to love him. His own son saw him as a monster. As a soldier, he’d endured years of being called ‘The Face.’ But he’d had Nick, and Bev, and their family had become his family. Their children saw only their Uncle Donnie. He had put all his energy, all his will, into the Pagano Brothers. He had become a man to be respected, or feared, not for his looks but for his deeds. And he had risen to become Nick’s right hand.

  Now, no one called him ‘Face’ where he could hear it. Now, when he walked into a room, men dropped their heads not because they couldn’t bear to look on him but because they didn’t feel worthy to meet his eyes. He was a wealthy man who wielded great power. He had friendship and family. He had the physical pleasure of a woman whenever he wanted, with comares like Sonia—st
eady companions who enjoyed his company, and his wealth, enough to overcome their disgust with his appearance—or with girls like the one he’d called for tonight.

  In truth, all those women were the same. Some took payment in cash, and others in gifts, but Donnie had no delusions that any woman was with him, for a night or for a year, because they wanted to be with him.

  The doorbell rang, and Donnie finished his scotch and went in through the wide French doors. He set his glass beside the bottle and headed to the front. Mrs. Alfonsi, his housekeeper, worked only through dinner, so he was alone to answer his own door. There was a guard—in fact, tonight it was Chubs—on the house, but he knew to keep a distance.

  The woman on his porch was just as he’d requested: small and flat-chested, her hips slim and her legs long. She was blonde, and she wore skyscraper red heels with a microscopic white dress that clung to every nonexistent curve. She tried not to react to his face—he paid extra for that, and no doubt she knew exactly who he was, so she’d been ready—but he saw her brown eyes trace the lines of his scars, and saw the tension in her face as she resisted a reaction.

  Quickly, she focused on his eyes, and she smiled. “Hi, baby. You called for me?” she said, in a voice too high-pitched for those words to sound sultry.

  He stepped back and let her in. She took in the sight of his house, what she could see from the foyer, and seemed impressed. When he reached for her bag, she turned slightly away.

  “It’s one thousand, up front.”

  Donnie took the prepared fold of bills from his pocket and handed it to her. She flipped quickly through the fold before she tucked it into her bag, and then she handed the bag to him.

  As he set it on the table near the door, he asked, “Would you like a drink?”

  “Sure. Gin?”

  With a sweep of his arm, he indicated the direction of the kitchen.

  He poured her a glass of gin but didn’t bother to pour another scotch for himself. Taking note of that, the girl—he never bothered with their names; they were fake anyway—set her glass down after a single sip and reached out as if she intended to cup his face. He grabbed her wrist before she could, and spun her around on her red heels so she faced the island.