Chapter 26 – Gino
Chapter Twenty-Six
Gino
A Few Weeks Later
“You want me to whack a chick?” I can’t believe Peter’s asking me this considering I barely made it out of the trial with my freedom, and I have to admit that it might be a test. If it’s a test…
pretty fucked up. And why would he bother asking me and not Renzo?
I’m not exactly the type who makes chills run down women’s spines…
“Can you shut the fuck up?”
“You never had to see a day in court thanks to Aricia Plant. You owe her something.”
I take the first shot to break apart the balls and none of the balls sink. Peter calls solids since I put the purple one close to the edge of the table. Fuck.
“I thought we paid her a couple hundred grand,” I remind my cousin. “And I already got in trouble doing this sort of shit for dad. I need to lay low for a while.”
Peter sinks a couple balls and sends one stripe into the hole and most of my balls ricocheting across the table. Only a couple shots in and I’m already cooked.
“You do. I understand that,” Peter says.
He hits orange and green solids into the bucket.
There’s only one more left and the eight ball.
Fuck. I shouldn’t even care about this game at all considering Peter’s asking me to whack somebody and this time, I’ll have to actually worry about getting caught because it won’t just be taking the fall for someone else.
Peter’s not done. “I know it’s hard to get respect in this family if you don’t give a fuck about all the politics.”
Everybody misunderstands my concerns. I care about politics, I just realize that the best way to survive in this damn family is by keeping your head down and staying out of trouble.
The more you show my father or before he died, my uncle, what you’re willing to handle, the more it comes back to bite you in the ass.
The second I stuck my neck out for my father, I ended up having to sit in one lawyer’s meeting after another. How the hell am I supposed to date when my family is constantly up my ass about one thing or another? It’s… frustrating to say the least.
At the end of the day, I’m still a Taviani. And it’s in my best interests to keep my personal motivations to myself. You let other people in, they can use whatever you tell them against you. Do so at your own risk.
“I’ll help if it makes sense.”
“You mean if I pay you enough?”
What does he think? I’m not running a damn charity, especially not risking life in a federal prison for anything less than a hundred thousand dollars.
“It depends.”
Peter sinks his eight ball, going out of his way to be petty as he knocks my last couple of balls around the pool table.
“You owe me twenty,” he says, sticking out his hand with a level of audacity you only find amongst the crazy ass Italians in my family. I find a twenty in my pocket and Peter takes it.
“Here’s the deal,” Peter says. “If you help me with this and it goes well… Michael wants to get you a place in Pittsburgh.”
A place. In a family like mine, that can mean anything.
“I have a house.”
“You don’t have a house like this one. Or any power.”
“You think I care about power?” I ask Peter. He puts his hand on my shoulder.
“No,” he says. “We’ve always felt the same about this family, Gino. But we’re going to get older. And life has a way of throwing curveballs at you.”
“Like what?”
“Like what if something happened to any or all of us? We need assurances and the only way I got Leandro to approve this was if we could convince you to take Pittsburgh.”
“Take Pittsburgh?”
“Lead the war,” Peter says. His face is grim and serious. Peter has always been different from the rest of his family because his eyes are a sharp shade of green, distinct from the blue and brown colors common in the rest of the family.
The two of us otherwise share more similarities than differences and I believe that he has a genuine interest in my future. Certainly, I find his proposition… interesting.
“I didn’t realize we were at war.”
“Not officially,” Peter replies. “But how long did you really expect your father to sit up here and let them screw with us?”
I should have known that dad’s calm about Angela’s kidnapping – along with Cosima and Nicki’s kidnapping – was just a facade. He places a high premium on both respect and his honor in general. I shouldn’t have expected him to take this lying down.
“Does dad think I’m qualified to lead anything, or is he just trying to get rid of me?”
That’s a fair enough question.
“You are ten times tougher than any of the boys down in Pittsburgh. Plus, you’re really Italian. Went to school for the business side of things… Your father believes in you. And he trusts you.”
“But I don’t get the benefit of getting sent to my death unless I help you… whack someone.”
Peter glares again. “Someone threatens this family, we send them for a swim. Simple as that.”
It sounds simple until you have a hundred meetings with lawyers and law enforcement to clear your name. Still… there might be something to getting the job done and then earning a house with barely any work put into it.
“How big is the house?”
“Fucking huge. It’s your dad’s old winter house.”
“We have a winter house?”
“Your mom had a cousin from Italy living there for the past few years, but she went back to Tuscany and the place has been empty for months.”
I don’t have a clear recollection of the place he’s talking about.
My family owns a lot of property and it’s hard keeping track of which stuff belongs to the Corsini part of our family, the Italians over in northern Italy, or dad’s crap over here.
Just like our loyalties and family ties, everything gets criss-crossed and confused after a while.
He can tell that he at least has my attention. I nod, prompting Peter to continue, “I vetted everything and… the only reason I’m asking you this is because I know there will be great rewards on the other side.”
And those rewards would be better if I got something that I wanted. What the fuck that might be, I have no idea of yet… But I’ll give Peter what he wants now and wait.
Half of the game here is patience…