Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I n the back of the limo, I punch the number Alessio gave me into my phone. It rings eight times and then goes to voicemail, the automated voicemail greeting is a default, female voice. I don’t leave a message.
How many rings does it take, I wonder, on average, before the sound of a ringing phone flips from being a flat, repetitive chime into a maddening middle-finger cackle. I’m guessing it’s somewhere between four and six.
Slumped deep into the seat, I glower out of the window at nothing while I chew my lip, fuming. Mikey watches me in the mirror from the driver’s seat.
“Princess,” his voice is like a blanket. “I’m calling Gianni.”
“Mikey, no. Please. I have to set up a–”
“Princess,” Mikey’s eyes in the rearview stare back at me. “I know you better than you know yourself,”
I know it’s true. It’s Mikey. He’s known me since I was a baby. I can’t argue with him.
He says, “One thing I always know for sure is when you need cake.”
Gianni is a Seattle secret. From behind a tiny, plain wood storefront, short, round Gianni’s cheeks are always red from his wide, constant smile. He makes divine coffee, and the best Sicilian pastries in Washington State.
The warm squeeze of Gianni’s big, open hug always takes me back to my childhood, and today, it’s even more tight than usual. He looks in my face and strokes my hair and tells me how wonderful I’m looking, but that I’m not eating enough. I know he’s going to do all that he can to fix that.
He sets me up at a table in a corner of the store with a homey cotton pink gingham tablecloth. While he fetches me a jug and a glass for water, a schooner of grappa and a plate of little cakes, with his divine cannoli at the center, Gianni asks me how I want my coffee. He always asks, even though he knows I always take espresso, unless it’s the first thing in the morning.
Gianni’s espresso is to die for. The rich, dark aroma alone as he brings me the tiny cup transports me straight back to summer afternoons in my childhood.
At the little table in Gianni’s bakery, I feel as much at home as I ever felt it, anywhere. I think it’s because Mikey has been bringing me here since I was tiny. Any cause for a celebration, whenever I needed a consolation, any time he wanted to give me something to lift my spirits, a little cake or two at Gianni’s table was the treat for all occasions, the cure for all ills.
Mikey takes an espresso for himself. As always, he stands back courteously to ask, would I like him to join me at the table.
“Gianni and me,” he says, “we got lots to catch up on. Or I can always wait in the car for you.”
“Mikey, please. Sit with me. There are some things I want to talk to you about. And anyway, we never get enough time to visit.”
“Always too much to do,” Mikey says, putting his coffee on the table as he slides into the seat opposite me. “And especially you, Princess. You’re always doing way too much. You should give yourself a break now and then.”
I offer him the dish to take a pastry for himself, but he shakes his head gravely as he rubs his stomach. He’s hardly overweight, but I never saw him take anything sweet. I guess there could be a connection there.
“Mikey,” I pause and eye the tempting cakes, choosing and enjoying the aromas and the anticipation. I say, “You talk to the men. The generals as well as the soldiers.”
He looks up at me with apprehension.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you to tell tales out of school or rat anybody out. Come on, Mikey.” I reach across to squeeze his hand. “It’s me. Remember?”
He looks warily at me over the rim of his little coffee cup.
I try to reassure him. He should know that I wouldn’t ambush him. Especially not when he’s brought me here.
“I’m not going to put you on the spot or ask you to say anything you don’t want to say. Not about anyone, Mikey. I just need to know the feelings on the ground. What’s going on. There could be changes in the wind and I need to know who I can count on.”
His eyes close and open again as he cocks his head. “You can count on every man in the organization. The men will follow you, Princess. Anywhere, any time. Say the word.”
“But most of our men now are from the old Fortuna firm, right? So I’m assuming they will follow Alessio too. Everybody stays loyal to him, first, surely. And Carlo and Bruno?”
“Everybody will follow you, Princess, because they know that can believe in you. You say what you mean. You tell it like it is. You know what you’re doing, and you won’t ask any of them to do anything you wouldn’t do yourself.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“I don’t know if you understand just how rare all of that is. Specially nowadays. And, you don’t mind me saying, for a woman,” his head shakes, “Madonna. It’s incredible.” His eyebrows lift.
After a breath, he goes on, “Time was, back in the day, men were loyal because the families were solid. Now, everybody’s an entrepreneur, you know what I’m saying? Every way that you look now, it’s every man for himself.” His lips purse. “No sense of honor any more.”
“You think it’s because I’m a woman? The men feel more protective of me?”
He sits up. “Not a bit of it.” His brow arches. “When you first took over, there were a lot of men ready to jump ship.” He looks at me seriously. “No names. No tales out of school. but nobody likes change.”
“So what happened?”
“I knew them from way back, most of them. They knew me and I could talk to them. We all had history, one way and another. So I went around. I told them, hold on. Just sit tight. You jump now, you may regret it.” His eye gleams. “And I know you, Princess. If a bunch of men took to their heels, you might not be vindictive,” there’s a beat. I can hear in the fraction of a silence, Mikey not telling me about my temper. Which is the one thing he’s even on my caser about. Has been for as long as I could talk.
He says, “But I knew, anyone who turned their back, that you wouldn’t ever let them back in.”
I nod. He’s right about me. Naturally. He always is.
“I leaned it from Daddy.” I take a cannoli. “Never get bitten by the same snake twice.”
“Most people say dog. ‘Don’t get bitten by the same dog twice,’ is what you hear.”
“Daddy was never one to underestimate a threat.”
“No.” Mikey agreed. “Not a forgiving kind of a man, your father.”
I want to bring him back to my question. “But, if it came to it, all the old Fortuna men. they would follow Alessio. Right?”
Now Mikey is very still.
“Are you asking me, where would the men jump?” His voice lowers. “If it came to it, you mean, Princess? If it was between you and Alessio,?”
I give him one small silent nod.
His eyes darken. “If it ever came to it, they’re with you.”
I take a second before I ask him, “How sure are you?”
He thinks about it for a moment. “They’re your men now. Through and through. They would be with you, whatever happened. I’m sure, Princess.”
“They’ve all known Alessio much longer.”
I’m not even sure why the conversation has taken this turn, why I’m asking this, but with everything that’s going on right now, I feel like I really need to know. And I’m so lucky that I have Mikey. I know that I can trust him, come what may.
The cannoli is delicious. I take a few moments to savor it with the rest of the espresso. And at the end, I take a sip of the grappa.
I press Mikey once more. “And the others?”
“Carlo and Bruno?” his eyes flicker as he thinks it over. “Would they go with them over you? No. It might be a closer thing, but I would still say no. The numbers might change. There could be one or two, but not many. I’m sure they’d still rather be with you.”
I nod. He goes on, “Otherwise, if it came to it, probably Carlo. People trust him. Everybody knows that he’s a mastermind. He’s a genius, but he’s totally unpredictable. that makes people… uneasy. Then Bruno. He’s strong and he’s fearless.” He doesn’t say, but not the sharpest tool in the box.
He doesn’t say it, so loud I can almost hear it. That feels like the closest I’ve come to a laugh for a while.
I drain the grappa. “But not Alessio?”
Mikey spreads his hands, stretching his long fingers out across the gingham.
“All I’m saying, if it came to it, if people had to make a choice, Princess, which let’s hope that they never would, but if they did, almost all the men would be solid with you.”
Mikey’s nose and his insights are the best. I never knew him be wrong about anything when it comes to reading people or situations.
This whole conversation is making me nervous and I’m feeling jumpy. I would never want to have to move against Alessio. It’s the last thing I would ever want. He’s known officially as my chief lieutenant, but we’re a lot closer than that. And I love him so much I get an ache in my chest just thinking about him.
Now, feeling this distance deepen between us, I’m feeling a pining ache, deep in my core, too.
If I ever doubted the truth of my feelings for him, I can check the way I felt just an hour ago when he jumped in front of those gunmen. I was so angry I could have flattened him, but I loved him so much I could just have cried.
And I was torn apart at the thought of him being injured. Even more than if I were hurt myself.