Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
S EX ADDS TO ROMANTIC TENSION and COMPLICATION
Next morning early, I tie up my hair, put on running shoes, running pants and a top, and I take a small gym towel. With a light jacket — here you’ve always got to be ready for rain — and I jog down the hill to take myself to a local independent cafe for breakfast.
It’s a pretty little place. The kind of a local enterprise that always makes me want to see them do well. Big, bright windows with homely stuffed chairs, ‘scruffed’ chairs, they call them.
Orla, the owner manager, is on site most of the time and bright with a sunny disposition. She and Kieron, the barista remember all the customers’ names and the way the like their coffee and they greet everyone with a friendly welcome.
I get cappucino and an almond croissant, and take them to a table in the shade. I text Mikey and tell him where I am, and to be ready to pick me up in about half an hour.
I play a mix of Billy Eilish, Beyonce, Janelle, and some Taylor Swift in my headphones.
Thinking about calling Bruno, I’m expecting he won’t be up for another hour or two. The music is supposed to be pumping enough to keep Alessio out of my head for a while at least, and even more his fucking uncle. It’s clearly not working though.
I try some Hozier. It’s more of a purge, but in the end, I go with dark Vivaldi.
Bruno gets a little anxious and even jealous of any time that I spend with just one of them, and I think it’s a little worse when the one is Carlo. Bruno is confident with Alessio and he loves him, but I think he’s still a little in awe of Carlo — everybody is — and I don’t think Bruno’s always sure how to handle it.
More than anything I don’t want to make Bruno feel bad. He’s my rock. While he’s obviously the strongest of my kings physically, and the most stable in his personality, he feels things very deeply.
He has the tenderest emotions of the three and he’s the most easily hurt. I know he’s also the least likely to let on, so I always make a point to try to stay close with him.
Turns out, he is up.
When he picks up, I feel like a weight slipped off my shoulders. He sounds great. He was up late on a roll at the craps table, but now he’s down in the breakfast bar.
He tells me about things with the casino management. “We were all getting on fine. The people at the Sky Table resort could not have been nicer. Nobody was talking details about the deal, obviously, but we were, you know, all getting along.”
I catch Kieron’s eye to order another coffee. Bruno says, “Waya, the director of operations, showed us around personally. He’s about eight feet tall. Broad and proud. He’s got that godlike chieftain thing going, in a gorgeous tailored suit.”
“Sounds like you’ve got the hots for him yourself.”
“Gotta say, if I was going to flip…” he chuckles. “But there’s not a chance of that, I don’t think.”
“I don’t know. You’re pretty well in touch with your feminine side.”
“It’s my secret weapon.”
“Not much of a secret now.”
“Oh, it still has some tricks to that can surprise you.”
“Damn. I can’t wait.”
“But I’m not flipping for anyone. I’m so totally in love with you, Lucia, I wouldn’t have room for anyone else.”
I’m glowing inside. even Kieron seems to have caught a sign of it somehow. Ss he sets my coffee down with a biscotti, his eyebrows stretch to the ceiling.
Bruno gets back to the story. “Everything looked good and we were all having a fine time. Or that was how it seemed. Then, in one minute we looked around and everyone’s faces were like flat-irons.”
I can imagine how chilling that might have been.
“It took us a while to find out what happened at Sun-a-do.” he pauses for a sip of his own coffee. “It was like the shutters came down. It was night and day, I’m telling you.” In the pause, I can imagine his head shaking. “Carlo got hold of Tai. He said they found the rubber thumbs and identified the prints from them. Apparently, they’re all from a team that were hired in for vacation cover. Looks like the workers might have been undocumented and trafficked.”
I shake my head. “So not much chance of tracing them.”
“Unlikely, But we got a hold of the agency. We’re on it, as much as we can be.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask,” I take a sip of my coffee, “but, can we see yet whether that sloppy hire is on the tribes, or is it on us?”
“That’s not clear at all. They’re in charge of the day to day running, and operating the security, so it’s on them that they didn’t update and take those prints out of the system.”
“In the big picture it’s just a gap that needs plugging. It shouldn’t matter who’s to blame. But right now…”
“Right now, I don’t think it matters much either way. I was talking to Tai’s security guy and he kept on muttering about there being a leaky pipe.”
“The rat.”
Bruno’s voice lowers. “A rat. Do we even know if it’s just one?”
“Good point. This does seem like it’s different from the other issues.”
Bruno says, “More preparation and planning. More targeted. Everything else has been smash and grab. One-off hauls.”
I’m impressed. “You did well, getting the security guy to talk to you at least.”
Bruno laughs. “It was Carlo’s idea, naturally. I just beat him to it.”
“Did you get any more from him?”
“He said it looked more like a demonstration.”
“How do you mean?”
“Like someone is showing the fact that they knew enough to breach the club. The security guy said, if a hacker breaks into a system and he does it for a payoff, he’ll show something he took or something he can do to the owners of the system, to prove he’s got their secrets. He’s got the keys to all of their vaults. Then he gives them a way to pay in a digital currency or whatever — or sometimes even a truck full of cash, and nobody ever hears about it.”
“Okay…” I think I’m following.
“If you hear about a breach or you see a news item about one, that usually means the negotiations went to shit and now the hacker’s just wrecking everything out of spite.”
He pauses. “Either that, or the aim all along was purely to do damage. To break things in a way that hurts and humiliates the owner.”
“Like it was targeted. And the loot was just a bonus. You think that’s what this was?”
“It’s definitely going to make things tough between us and the twelve tribes.”
I nod. “True.”
Bruno says, “Like I told you, when the news hit, Carlo and me were blindsided. We felt the change of air like a freezing blast.”
“You think this could be someone aiming to fuck up the Cascades Resort deal.”
“Everybody is jealous about it. Some people are definitely sore.”
“I agree.” I tell him.
“And, why the Sun-a-do? It’s a tough nut to crack. It took planning and preparation. Taking out one of our trucks is way easier. Probably a better return, too.”
I remind myself to pay a quiet visit to Sun-a-do. There’s a case of Tai’s favorite rare maple syrup that I’ve been saving.
“I heard about you and Alessio mixing it up with the hoodlums in there. Are you okay?”
“We’re both fine.” “At least, we’re fine physically.”
I’m not sure how to talk about what’s going on between Alessio and me. The dynamics of our four-cornered relationship are always complicated. Usually in good, or at least exciting ways. But whenever there’s real drama, Alessio is always near the center of it.
Outwardly he’s man enough to know that he’s not the best person to be in charge, and that I am. Deep down, he knows that if he had total control, he would totally fuck everything up. but he never lost the sense that all the power got snatched away from under his nose.
We’ve talked about it. He knew from way back that it should never really have been his anyway but he grew up expecting to get it so, even though I think he knows how hopeless he would be if he were in charge, he wanted it. That is a complicated mess of feelings he has to juggle. I understand that much. And I certainly know what it is to feel thwarted. Cheated by an unfair system.
The look that comes on his face when he’s conflicted and trying to hold all that together makes me love him even more. He’s not the brightest of our quople, but I do adore him.
Bruno says, “We can get by without the cascades deal, right?”
“We can. But if the Twelve Tribes decide not to go ahead with us, then they’ll be likely to partner with Don Romano or Don Pucci.”
He says, “They’ll get bigger and be more powerful. Is that a catastrophe?”
“If the Twelve Tribes take the Sun-a-do away from us as well it might be.”
He grunts. “Ouch. Can they do that?”
“Anyone can do anything.”
“Okay. Will they?”
I think about it. “My reading is they either trust us or they don’t. If they do, we’re good to go. If they don’t, we’re out.”
Bruno says, “Sooner we flush out that rat the better off we’ll all be.”
I change the subject. “How well do you know this Jerry guy?”
“Uncle Jerry? That’s what the Don always wanted us to call him. When the Don first moved in, I was younger and to be honest with you, his brother Jerry creeped the hell out of me. Truth be told, he still does. Kind of.”
“So what’s your take? What’s your thinking about the families franchising?”
“Us? Getting sanctioned and welcomed into the fold by the Chicago mob? A big come to Jesus moment for all the families?” He chuckles.
“Yes. That.”
Bruno says, “I feel like somebody’s throwing mud in our eyes. All the years they gave us the cold shoulder. Now, suddenly, they want to fling open their arms and hug us to the bosom of the Five Families? The Commission suddenly realizes it’s all been a big mistake? Forgive me, but it smells like four weeks old fish.”
I shake my head, “That’s how it seems to me. But Alessio is crazy for the deal.”
“The deal where he’s being promised that he’ll be made head of the family and, not to mention, the head of all the families in the all new Washington Oregon franchises? Yeah, I wonder what is so appealing to him.”
I say, “Seriously. Don Romano and Don Pucci are just going to step aside, slap Alessio on the back and throw a party for him? The two top families get sidelined, and for what? Just for the sake of this ‘franchising’ scam?”
“Yup,” Bruno says, “That’s the fairy tale. That’s the carrot ‘uncle’ Jerry is dangling in front of Alessio’s nose.”
“And Alessio believes it?”
“Maybe it’s true. How would I know?”
I murmur, “Maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.”
After Bruno hangs up, I call Alessio.
Jerry is pressing me for an answer and I know the answer that I have to give him, but I can’t quite bring myself to do it. I’m not ready. Not yet.
The disrespect that Jerry showed to me the way he treated me, can’t possibly be what Alessio was expecting. He said, ‘You’re going to love him.’ Love him.
Alessio is not the most sensitive of people, I know. Even for a man. But he could be made of stone and that would still make no sense.
Before I do anything else, I have to see him. I have to look in his face and see if I can’t figure out what this all really means for him.
The thing I know that I’m avoiding thinking about is what I have to do if he really has taken it all in. If this really is what he wants. What it would all mean. Not only for me, for all three of the men. And for all everyone working and associated with the extended family and the businesses.
He answers after three rings. I tell him, “I need us to meet. Face to face.”
“I would love that too, Lucy. Right now, I just can’t.”
“Can’t, or won’t?” The pause is thick and heavy.
“Alessio, I need half an hour, that’s all. I just want you to look me in the eye and tell me this thing that your uncle is proposing is really what you want.”
“I’m thinking of what’s best for the family and the organization. That’s all I want, Lucy. It’s what I want and this is the way it has to be done.”
He won’t even meet me and tell me to my face. I cannot believe it.
I settle up and I’m just out on the sidewalk texting Mikey to say come get me, when the limo pulls right up beside me.
The door pops open and I’m still looking at my phone as I absently get in.
I should have known. Mikey never stays in his seat to pop the door. He always gets out to open it for me.
Immediately the car jerks forward. My phone almost slips out of my hand as I’m thrown back into the seat.
Mikey’s not driving me. I know before I even look.
This is not my car.