5. — unsafe people. #3
“Don’t be sorry. You’re okay,” he told her, smiling again, “and that’s all I wanted.”
“Sir!” came a shout from down the hallway somewhere outside the room. “Visiting hours are over! Sir, you can’t go back—”
“I will do whatever I damn well like considering the donation I make to this fucking hospital on a yearly basis,” a voice responded harshly. “Take note, or I’ll take your fuckin’ job.”
The second voice had Frankie’s father grabbing her arm. “Get down,” he uttered.
“What?” she asked.
“Ma’am, you’re going to want to let him go,” another man said, closer to the room now.
She knew that man.
Rob.
He worked for her dad. Alongside Larkin.
“Time to hide, Sunshine,” Salvatore hissed.
This time, he shoved her. She dropped to her knees beside his hospital bed.
“Look, he’s sleeping anyway,” snarled the first man.
Frankie did her best to slide as much of her lower half under the hospital bed as she could and keep the rest against the floor.
“This will take five minutes.”
The nurse said something in the hallway that Frankie couldn’t make out.
Rob spoke up once more, as close as the man had been earlier. “I’ll be at the door, Mr. Russo.”
Mr. Russo.
Her father’s boss? Nico’s father? Why would he be there?
“Wouldn’t expect anything less,” muttered Giorgio.
Frankie shivered against the cold tile, the beeping from machines fading into background noise as her heart began beating faster. The very presence of Giorgio Russo changed the shape of the room, making it smaller.
A rustling sound filled the space. Something got tossed to the floor. The noise only stopped when a jingle, like keys, echoed.
“These goddamn rings,” Giorgio growled.
“What are you doing?” Rob spoke up.
“Trying to hide his sins,” answered Frankie’s father, still sounding as if he needed a glass of water. The room silenced at his words, meaning everyone heard him loud and clear. “That’s what it is, right, Giorgio?”
A throat cleared roughly.
“Close the door, Rob,” Salvatore murmured.
“Boss man...”
“Close the door.”
A click followed.
“Hurry up,” Salvatore said the moment he could. “Take the tracker.”
“How do you know I’m looking for a tracker?”
“First, you should know the same things I do. I gave Nico back all his vehicles today, including the Mustang he’d paid storage for since being gone.
The keychain you’re holding, it blinks New York with the solar charge on the side, was the only one attached to the Mustang’s keys.
I was there when you gave him the car, and when his brother gave him the keys with the keychain.
His gift for Nico. That’s what Marco said. Nico’s eighteenth. You remember.”
“Sal—”
“I’ve had the last several hours to think about why your oldest son would run me off the road today,” her father interrupted. “What felt like all the time in the world to just run it through my head over and over, man.”
“I didn’t know about...this until today,” Giorgio replied.
“The tracker? Does it even matter?”
“It took him three fucking hours to answer a call after I found out. You think I knew or approved this?”
“I think it doesn’t matter. How long did it take for him to know the mistake he made? What’s Nico’s Mercedes look like, Giorgio? I bet it’s black, two-door, tinted windows. A lot like mine. Oh, wait.”
A laugh fell from her father, sad and angry.
“I know what it looks like. It’s been sitting in my garage for two days.
We just got the Mustang today. He bought the Mercedes in Miami, and Marco probably never got a good look at it because Nico didn’t bring it home, but he could easily find out I was having it shipped.
Let me guess, the tracker started moving today, and Marco couldn’t fucking help himself, could he? ”
“You’ve made your point, Salvatore. Give it a rest.”
“I would, but there you are, trying to hide what he did. Where’s the line for Marco?
How many times are you going to excuse the shit he does?
Meanwhile, your other son, the one worth something at the end of the day, is nothing more than the problem you’ve always made him out to be.
I’m starting to think you made it that way because you see more of yourself in one of them than the other. Is that it?”
Only beeps, gentle and steady, answered.
Salvatore sighed shakily. “We both know I don’t mean Nico.”
“What do you want?” Giorgio asked angrily.
Frankie held her breath, scared the man might hear it.
“I want you to know something, boss.” Her father let those words hang for a minute.
She stopped counting the seconds before he spoke again.
“I want you to know that what happened today, will never happen again. I won’t give your biggest mistake the opportunity to risk my greatest joy ever again, Giorgio.
I’m sure you don’t wonder why Marco hasn’t been nominated for the button.
Every man in the family knows what he is; they’re not going to vouch for him.
You’re going to have to do it, and let me say, if you haven’t done it when he makes another move like he did today, the man you did make, is going to leave his head on your doorstep. ”
“Straight to threats, I see.”
“Don’t mistake me. This is an understanding between us. Your participation isn’t required but it is highly recommended. And just like when you moved quickly to do what the Secret Service needed you to do about Nico, you should move similarly to handle the position Marco put you in today with me.”
“I would slaughter you.”
“You already did once,” Salvatore whispered, “but I guess only one of us forgot, huh?”
“I think that daughter of yours would make it even worse this time around, don’t you? You still have a lot to lose, Sal.”
Her father drew a heavy breath. “And see, I heard that for exactly what it was. You should take my earlier advice and do the same.”
Another beat in time passed as three silent people mulled the conversation over.
“You will not see Marco,” Giorgio finally said. “He will be dealt with.”
“And when I do? Because I will, eventually.”
“He will behave appropriately.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Sal.”
“It doesn’t matter; I don’t need your permission.”
“You do,” Giorgio snapped.
“The other made men in the family would not agree, and if you lose me, you lose access to a lot of things that make your life comfortable, easy, and entirely possible. Don’t forget why you made me in the first place.”
“This is—”
“Nico asked me for something, and I want you to know so you can prepare. He wants to be a made man, and if any of us is going to make it from the ground up and earn his button, it’ll be that fucking kid, Giorgio.
He doesn’t have chips on his shoulders; you’ve taken whole chunks.
He’s got something to prove every day that he chooses to keep living.
If you think the mess today with Marco is bad, imagine what he’ll do when Nico starts making real waves. Because he will.”
“I didn’t give you my son to start a fucking war.”
Salvatore laughed, but it sounded like it hurt.
“Are you joking? You started that war the day you brought Nico home, killed the woman he should have called mother, and made Marco hate him for it. You did that, Giorgio. I was there. And every time he hurt that boy, humiliated him and abused him, you looked away, excused it, and now he feels like it’s his right.
That’ll be a hard lesson to unlearn him, and I don’t mind being the one who does it. ”
“Is that another threat?”
“I’ll let you take it however you want.”
Giorgio answered with a grunt, and then the loud jangle of keys hitting the floor followed the squeak of footsteps moving away. A quiet exchange happened at the door, and the nurse asked her father a couple of questions which resulted in her pulling the door closed when they ended the conversation.
She still didn’t move. A minute passed. Two. She counted the seconds.
At three, Salvatore muttered a low fuck, and she felt his hand swiping for her. “Come here, Sunshine. Come here right now.”
Frankie never saw her father cry, but the wetness on his cheek met hers when she clamoured into his waiting arms. There wasn’t nearly enough room on the bed for the two of them, but somehow, he made it work. He squeezed harder as kisses found her hairline.
“These people are not safe,” he told her.
“You’re one of these people, too.”
One didn’t exist without the other.
She understood that now; she knew too much.
He didn’t give her a chance to reply before pulling her in for another bar-like hug to hide her from the world. She recognized the gilded cage made of her life finally. Even if the prison wasn’t his intention, and she didn’t know what to do with the big, wide world outside of it. It didn’t matter.
That prison felt a hell of a lot safer than anything else currently.
Crazy how that worked.