16. — the thing about Chicago.
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Staten Island, New York
Salvatore, Gallo Estate
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The drum of his fingers against the desk did little to distract Salvatore’s racing thoughts. He couldn’t drag his stare away from the clock on the wall across the room.
The second hand taunted him, the minute hand continually reminded him, but the hour hand sealed the deal. It had already moved five digits since he first entered the study and began taking phone call after phone call until he couldn’t take it anymore.
Other than the people whose calls he couldn’t ignore, he pretended that the buzz in his pocket didn’t exist until it stopped altogether, likely because of the time.
He silenced the phone on the desk, as well, although it continued lighting up every so often.
Less, now. He would only pick that phone up if one of the estate numbers called, as it meant Larkin had something on Frankie and Nico.
Salvatore continued drumming his fingers as he massaged his temple with his other hand, willing the tension headache to lessen. That shit started right about the time when Nico landed his first punch against Marco and had yet to let up.
He didn’t hear the person come to stand in the study door until she cleared her throat.
“Hey,” he murmured.
Carina leaned against the doorframe. “Any news?”
“No.”
“I figured. So, they checked everywhere?”
“That they can. Nothing at the penthouse. Nothing in Vauxhall.”
Carina surveyed her nails before asking, “Bank accounts, cards?”
“Nothing new on Frankie’s. It took Larkin a bit for Nico’s. Turns out he, uh, drained it a month or more ago. I don’t even know where he’s stashed the cash or if he did something with it.”
“Are you coming to bed?”
“Not yet.”
“Sal...”
He checked the clock again. “It’s not three yet.”
“Didn’t you kill the curfew?”
He had, yes. And yet, he waited.
“I just think...”
Carina sighed, and shifted from one foot to another, hugging her silk robe tighter. “You think what?”
“That three will be my sign.”
“That they’re not coming back, you mean,” she said.
He shrugged, leaning back in the chair and finally letting the beat of his fingers against the wood come to a stop.
“You’d think the car being found at the airport would have been your first clue that they wouldn’t be back tonight,” his wife said, only sounding a little judgmental.
“You know, one of those is your children, too, my love.”
She smiled in that way of hers; it meant he’d just stepped in a huge pile of shit without even realizing it.
“Both of them are my children, if you think about it. But let’s not, so it doesn’t get weird.”
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“And both of them are adults,” she added.
“Eighteen does not make her an adult!”
“The law says it does.”
He glared at her. “Carina, get real. The law—”
“The army says it does.”
“Carina.”
“That trust fund you handed over the moment she turned eighteen also probably sounded a hell of a lot like do whatever you want.”
“Are you trying to make this worse for me?”
Her grin faded fast. “Sal, best case, they’re dipping out for a couple of days to figure out what the hell just happened and what they want to do about it.”
He blinked at her. “I don’t know what’s to figure out. Nico went ballistic. Now they’re gone.”
She pointed at him, nodding. “Mmhmm, right there. See, there’s a reason he did that, and maybe he’s not shared the reason with her, so now he has to. From what I saw, you didn’t really give him a chance to explain it to you before you sent him off, either.”
“Yeah, to calm down. We still had guests everywhere.”
“Okay, maybe that’s why they left. He needs to calm down. Away from here. Away from us.”
“With my daughter?”
“You’re assuming she didn’t go willingly? Frankie, really?”
Salvatore avoided his wife’s pointed stare.
“This has happened with him before,” Carina added after a beat of silence between them. “Where he’s taken off for a few days to get himself back in order. It’s happened more than once. You know it, and I know it. Even his father knows it.”
Salvatore cringed. “Not right now, his father doesn’t.”
“Probably for the best,” Carina replied. “Anyway, the only person who doesn’t know it, is Frankie.”
“Worst case here?” he asked his wife.
Carina smiled again and laughed under her breath.
“Why is that funny?”
“What’s your worst case here?” she asked him instead.
Salvatore rolled his eyes. “I don’t know, an accident, or—”
“Yeah, see, not even close to mine.”
“What’s yours?”
“They could elope. That’s a real possibility.”
Instantly, he straightened in the desk chair. “Carina, I need you to be serious,” he told her.
Her smirk said she was.
“Listen, if at eighteen, some beautiful, broken boy punched someone in the face because of something they said to or about me, and that boy was torn up about it...I’m just saying, if he told me he loved me, and I thought it would be the only way to be free, to be with him, I would’ve done it.”
“No, you wouldn’t have. Also, we don’t know that any of that happened. You just came up with that story right now.”
“Wasn’t that what you and Delilah practically did?”
“We were slightly older, thank you.”
“Not by much, Sal, come on. And you did elope, baby. The tighter people closed around you two, the more they tried to keep you apart, it just drove you both back together. You’ve told me, so don’t rewrite history now. You eloped. They could, too.”
“She’s not you, or me, or her mother, for that matter.”
Carina snorted. “Who are you trying to convince? Salvatore, if I had been that eighteen-year-old girl in the kitchen hearing my father tell me I couldn’t have sex under his roof unless I was married, guess the first thing I would have done.
Guess, please. You know how much I love it when you entertain me. ”
“I really need you to stop.”
“No, what you need is to stop looking at the clock. Stop trying to make sense of teenage choices and hormones. Stop before you give yourself a fucking stroke.”
“Her phone goes right to voicemail,” he muttered then.
Carina arched an eyebrow. “How many times have you tried calling?”
“Too many.”
“And his?”
“Same.”
“You called the same—”
“No, I called him once.”
That was all he ever needed to do to get a hold of Nico who knew to answer the phone if Salvatore’s number came up. If he couldn’t, then he called back the very moment he had the chance.
“And it went to voicemail, too?” she asked of Nico’s phone.
He nodded.
“So, the phones are off.”
“Likely,” he admitted. “None of the messages are being read. I just...”
He rocked back in the chair, slumping there and rubbing at his face as he groaned. A part of him wanted to murder something. Another part wanted to cry, as sad as that fucking was. The rest of him simply wished he had handled the driveway incident better.
Shit, he should have told Giorgio to keep his oldest son far away from the party. Marco really had no reason to attend in the first place, and things had always been a little too raw between the Russo brothers.
“Ew,” Carina murmured, still leaning in the doorway watching him, “I can practically feel your guilt from over here.”
“I could have...made better choices,” he replied.
“What, like stopped Marco from poking at Nico, as he’s always done? Or maybe you mean you could have locked all the bathrooms in the upstairs?”
Salvatore straightened in the chair once more, eyeing her curiously. “How do you know about a bathroom?”
She chewed on her bottom lip and avoided his stare. “Well, didn’t you say Marco said—”
“First—I said nothing about a bathroom to you. Secondly, you weren’t close enough to hear what Marco said in the driveway that started it all, Carina.”
“I...”
“Carina.”
She wiggled her bare toes against the floor, suddenly finding them very interesting.
“Babe,” he murmured lower. Still, he got nothing. Salvatore dragged in a deep breath, trying one last time. “Wife.”
“Sissy found me earlier.”
“What does she have to do with anything?”
“Me? Nothing.” Carina shrugged, but her expression told a different story. “The laundry she takes care of, however...”
Salvatore’s gaze narrowed. “What aren’t you telling me here?”
“Do you know why Sissy confidently told you that the two of them weren’t having sex?”
“No.”
“And you didn’t ask, obviously.”
Salvatore frowned. “Why would I ask? Frankie has a different kind of relationship with Sissy than the rest of us. Sure, they talk.”
“She’s not telling her whether she’s having sex with her boyfriend. Please. And trust me, Sissy isn’t asking unless Frankie brings up the conversation between them first.”
“Will you just spit it out?”
“Sal,” Carina said slowly, as if he needed small words to understand, “what do my...undergarments...look like after you’ve had a good go at me, baby?”
His jaws snapped closed with a pop.
Carina nodded once. “Mmhmm.”
“That’s why she knew?” he hissed.
Her laughter felt like a balm on a raw wound.
“Jesus Christ,” he mumbled into his hands. “And so, what are you saying? What do you mean? Why did she find you?”
Every question came out increasingly desperate. He just couldn’t wrap his mind around it.
“Because she didn’t want to find you, Sal.”
His brow lifted higher as he observed her through his fingers. “I don’t get it.”
“Yeah, I know.” Carina rubbed at her neck, avoiding his stare as she said, “You’re aware she’s spending more time with Larkin.”
“None of my business.”
“That’s nice, but...” Her words trailed off as her fingertips danced together like she had to consider how to pose her next statement.
“He tells her things sometimes. Like tonight, he had the details of the driveway incident. And maybe when she had to do the laundry later, she found something in one of the baskets from a bathroom chute. And maybe—”
“Carina!”
“I’m not going to tell you what she found, just know, technically, your rules probably weren’t broken given how you laid them out.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”