20. — the job.
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Staten Island, New York
Frankie, Gallo Estate
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“You might as well get a start on breakfast,” Sissy said as she placed a platter of choices in front of Frankie. “Your father and Carina are...” She trailed off, refusing to meet Frankie’s questioning stare. “Busy,” she settled on saying.
Frankie made a face. “Oh, yeah.”
“Better than screaming at one another, I suppose,” Sissy added, shrugging. “It would be nice if they’d close a damn door once in a while, but it’s not my house, so.”
“Did you just swear?”
Frankie couldn’t believe it. The same woman who had once threatened to wash her ward’s mouth out with soap after she learned how to appropriately use the word fuck just swore like it was nothing. Crazy.
“Somewhere, pigs are flying,” Frankie teased.
Sissy cleared her throat. “Some people are bad influences.”
“Mmhmm, Larkin. That’s who you mean.”
It wasn’t a question. Frankie heard the rumors there.
“Never mind me,” Sissy told her with a tone that brokered no room for argument, “and it is definitely not Larkin. Get to eating.”
“Eating, eating,” Frankie replied, picking up the utensils on the table.
The gnawing sensation that her father would walk into the kitchen any moment edged her anxiety higher. Two weeks after her return from Chicago found them still not speaking, which didn’t help her mood as she waited for him and his wife to join her for a breakfast that he demanded she attend.
Frankie finished the two boiled eggs, a piece of buttered toast, and another that she slathered jam on just to have something different.
She’d just started demolishing the bacon, forgoing the waffles with various toppings because it just looked like too much sugar when she’d already downed an iced coffee earlier.
She had a piece of bacon in her mouth as her father and Carina made their appearance in the kitchen.
“Morning,” Salvatore greeted.
Thanks to the food, she didn’t have to say it back.
Carina, however, rolled her eyes at someone on the other end of a call that she clearly didn’t want to take.
“No, Jessa, I’m not going to Milan for the holidays...
yeah, I know we do it every year, and it’s my house, not yours.
Find another spot, I guess. You and whatever group you plan on bringing are not using my place as a free hotel. ”
Salvatore smiled and thanked Sissy as she came out with their breakfast platters. “Looks great, thank you.”
“Because I want to be here with my husband,” Carina said, “and if you don’t get that, I don’t care. Goodbye.”
“That went well,” Salvatore muttered, keeping his gaze on the food in front of him, “by the sounds of it.”
Carina threw him an annoyed look as Sissy placed a platter at her seat as well. “Honestly, I considered selling it and then calling her to say that’s why I wouldn’t be going.”
He chuckled. “To what, avoid saying anything about me?”
“I just did, didn’t I?”
Frankie’s father didn’t reply.
“It’s an opening for her. By the time I’m done with breakfast, she’ll have sent me thirty voice notes demanding I explain things that are none of her fucking business anyway.”
“Are you going to tell her you’re pregnant?”
“Why, so she can sell it to somewhere the first chance she gets because she’s pissed at me?” Carina asked back sharply. “Right, let me jump right on that, Sal.”
Frankie chewed on her bacon strip and stared back and forth between the two who weren’t quite arguing but bordered it. “When are you going to tell others outside the family?”
At that question, Carina passed Salvatore a glance that he dropped quickly.
To her stepdaughter, she only said, “When it’s the right time.”
“When is that?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“How do you plan on hiding it in the meantime?” Frankie questioned after finishing her last bite of bacon.
“The same way I always did,” Carina muttered, plucking the cloth napkin from the table to snap it open. She laid it across her lap before adding, “Strategically chosen clothes and well-placed bags, darling.”
Salvatore laughed under his breath, but when the two looked his way, he’d shoved a jam covered piece of toast in his mouth like he hadn’t done it in the first place.
“Because it won’t be strange at all for you to wear something that doesn’t conform to every crevice of your body?” Frankie asked, pointing out the flaw she could see in Carina’s plan.
“Good point,” Sal mumbled around his food.
“Don’t eat with your mouth full,” she told her dad.
He arched an eyebrow, and then promptly swallowed the bite. “Oh, you’re speaking to me now? And being the adult in the room at the same time? I am stunned. Totally bewildered.”
“Oh, here we go,” Carina said under her breath.
“Didn’t think you had it in you, Frankie, truly,” her father added.
“Are you trying to pick a fight with me?” Frankie asked, cocking her head to the side. “Because I could have spent the morning with my boyfriend like I wanted to before I don’t get to see him for an entire fucking month, Daddy, but here I am instead. And you want to do this?”
“I don’t need to pick anything. I felt that mood of yours the moment I walked into the room, Sunshine. Look at it like I’m just giving you what you want so we can finally move the hell on here.”
“You—”
“No yelling allowed,” Salvatore told her the second her voice raised, “it’s not good for the baby.”
She blinked. “Says the man who spent my entire childhood screaming at his wife while she did the same thing right back. That’s real rich of you, Daddy.”
“Okay,” Carina said airily, standing from the table with the napkin in her hand. She plucked the platter from the table, telling the other two as she headed for the connected dining room, “I’m going to go eat my breakfast with Sissy.”
“What about the thing you wanted to give her?” Salvatore asked.
She stopped at his chair on the way by, dropping a kiss to his mouth. “I’ll leave that to you today. You might need it, you know?”
“But it’s your thing.”
“It was my idea, it’s our gift. It doesn’t have to be me that gives it, baby. And like I said, it’s sounding like you’re gonna need that.”
“All right, go.”
Frankie watched Carina leave, asking, “What gift?”
Salvatore speared a cut of waffle, dipping it into syrup. “Where’s Nico going for a month?”
Her gaze narrowed.
He just smiled back.
“What, like you don’t already know?” she asked, forgetting about the mention of a gift altogether. An entire month without Nico took hold of her thoughts all over again and wouldn’t let go. The idea killed her.
“I don’t know, actually,” Salvatore informed, but he didn’t look bothered about the fact.
“If his...boss...determines he’s to go and do what he needs to do, and I don’t need to be informed, that’s their prerogative.
Besides, it’s probably work-related, knowing what I do, which I can’t complain about.
He’s making himself money and doing something productive with his time. ”
His lips curved into a sarcastic smile. “You, on the other hand, still haven’t found something for yourself to do besides spend your days looking out the windows of your penthouse. One of those things is not like the other, Frankie.”
She blinked, and straightened in her chair instantly, ready to fight all over again.
“Excuse you?”
He pointed his fork at her, swallowing another bite of food. “Prove me differently.”
“Even if I wasn’t doing something, which I have been,” she informed venomously, “I have eight hundred million dollars that make sure I’m well-kept, Daddy. Don’t forget.”
“How boring. And a waste of talent and time which you won’t get back. But that’s your business, given you’re a whole adult who doesn’t feel like she has to—”
“What, get permission or clear things with you? Is that what you’re going to say?”
Calm as cat enjoying milk, he didn’t react a bit. “Actually, I would have said since you think you’re an adult who doesn’t have to consider how her choices impact others or their lives, but go ahead, speak for me. We both know how much I love it when people do.”
Frankie seriously considered leaving. Just up and going.
The way Salvatore waited for her to share anything with him at all stopped her. His words were sharp and biting like hers, sure, but he wanted to know. She could tell. Two weeks without a conversation between them had taken a toll on both.
“So, what are you doing?” he asked after a quiet moment.
Frankie sighed, eyeing her fingernails instead of him. “Well, for starters, I spent the last two weeks furnishing the penthouse and decorating it. All of which, I did by myself, thank you very much. Nico worked out some logistics for me, but I did the rest.”
“What logistics?”
“The hard stuff.”
He chuckled. “So, moving heavy things, putting stuff together.”
“I’m not good with the driver things. Okay? I tried.”
Salvatore’s eyebrow arched again. “A screwdriver?”
“Whatever.”
He outright laughed at that.
“You should come see it,” she said, “it’s really mine now.”
“Any day, any time. Just say the word.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
“What else have you been up to?”
“I have an appointment to begin managing my trust. Next Friday. I thought it would be a good idea to put a third into income creating sources, another third into upkeep of the property assets and interest earning on what’s there, and the last third I’m gonna keep open.”
“To do what?”
“Whatever I want,” Frankie replied honestly. “It’s my money. Unless you have another suggestion.”
“Suggestion being the key word there, huh?”
She shrugged. He said it, not her.
Salvatore shook his head while wiping his mouth with a napkin. “I think that’s a fine plan, Frankie. As you know, any school of your choice is paid for, and any housing or whatever while you’re there. That’s not on your side of things to handle, either.”
“Oh, but I have.”
His look of surprise tickled her pink.
“I’m sorry?” he asked.