Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty: Savannah
Leone gives me the keys on a Monday.
No ceremony. No speech. He walks into the bar at two in the afternoon while I'm restocking the top shelf, sets a keyring on the counter, and says, "Aurelio wanted you to have it, do whatever you want to the place, just leave the counter intact."
Then he leaves.
That's it. That's his version of a welcome-to-the-family moment. A few words and a keyring and the man is gone before I can say thank you, which is probably deliberate because Leone doesn't want my thank you. He wants me to take the keys and do my job and keep his people sane.
So that’s exactly what I’m gonna do.
I stand behind the counter and hold the keys in my hand.
I've never owned anything of my own. My apartment in Baltimore was a rental.
I had no vehicle. Even Gigi's house went to the bank when she died because the medical bills ate through her savings and then ate through the house and then ate through everything else until there was nothing left but a bottle cap and a granddaughter with no forwarding address.
But this bar is mine. Not borrowed, not temporary, not conditional on good behavior or useful intelligence or the continued interest of a man with charm.
Leone gave me the keys because Aurelio said to, and Aurelio said to because I walked into his room and told him the truth, and the truth was worth a bar and a set of keys and a place in a family I didn't know I was joining.
I put the keys in my pocket next to the bottle cap. Two things in my pocket now instead of one. The bottle cap that Gigi gave me and the keys that Aurelio gave me.
Both of them are heavy for different reasons, but both of them mean home.
I get back to work because the shelves don't stock themselves and I've got a delivery of whiskey coming in that I ordered through a supply chain I had to build from scratch because this compound didn't have a liquor supplier before I showed up.
I found one through a contact of Alexandra's, a distributor out of Philadelphia who doesn't ask questions about delivering to a gated compound full of armed men.
The markup is fucking criminal, but the Macallan is back in stock, which is the only thing that matters.
The compound has found its rhythm. It took three weeks, but Leone got everything running again. Different from before, tighter, more aware of what's above it and around it, but running.
Dahlia and Bam are leaving tomorrow. Not permanently.
Dahlia told me last night at the bar, as she at on her stool, with her glass, our little evening routine.
They're going back to their network of Westpoint survivors to keep digging, keep building the intelligence picture, keep doing the work that she’s been doing since they burned the academy and hasn't stopped.
"I'll be back," she said.
"You better. You're my best tipping customer."
"I'm the only customer who tips."
"That's because you're the only one with manners. The soldiers think tipping is leaving their empty glasses on the counter instead of throwing them at my head."
"Take care of them," she said. "The idiots in this building. They need someone who doesn't bullshit them."
"I'm not going anywhere."
"I know." She finished her drink and stood and looked at me with those Bonaccorso eyes that are Aurelio's eyes that are apparently also her long-lost brothers eyes. "Sav, can I be frank?"
"Yeah, of course."
"You're good for Emilio. You make him less stupid."
"Nobody makes Emilio less stupid. I just redirect the stupid into less dangerous channels."
"Same thing." She put money on the counter. Actual money. A tip that was more than the drink cost. "See you soon."
"See you soon, girl."
She walked out with Bam two steps behind her, his hand on her back, and I watched them go and thought about how Gigi would have loved Dahlia.
Two women who don't cry in public, don't take shit from men and carry their grief in their posture instead of their words.
Gigi would have poured her the good whiskey without being asked and called her baby girl and Dahlia would have hated it and loved it and come back every night.
Evening rolls around and the bar fills.
Tuesday night. The compound's unofficial social hour, which started organically about two weeks ago when soldiers realized the bar was open every night and the bartender made a mean pour and didn't judge them for drinking on a weekday.
Now it's a thing… Tuesdays in the bar. Charlotte started calling the place Savannah's, which I told her to stop because naming a bar after yourself is tacky.
She said the soldiers already call it that when I'm not around, and I said the soldiers can call it whatever they want as long as they don't break my glasses.
Charlotte and Claudio are in their corner. She's got her laptop, he's got a vodka, and they're doing the thing where they exist in the same space without needing to talk. Claudio's hand is on her knee and slowly edging upwards, to which he earns a swat and a giggle.
Alexandra is at the end of the bar with a glass of wine and her phone, texting Leone, who is upstairs in his office doing whatever Dons do at eight on a Tuesday night. She's smiling at whatever he says back, which makes me smile.
Carmelo is at the counter. He's been coming to the bar more often since Aurelio's funeral, not to drink heavily, but to sit.
He orders one whiskey, nurses it for an hour, and watches the room while his new knife sits on the counter beside his glass.
He doesn't talk to anyone. Nobody talks to him.
But he's here, in the room, among people, and for Carmelo that's a significant change from the man who used to eat alone in the kitchen.
I've been watching him more closely since Emilio told me about the conversation about Ferrara's daughter, Graziella, and the connection Carmelo made between a missing child and a trafficking pipeline.
Emilio said Carmelo brought it up on his own, which means it's sitting in his head, turning over and over.
He catches me watching him and holds the look for two seconds, which is two seconds longer than Carmelo usually holds eye contact with anyone who isn't a target.
I raise an eyebrow. He goes back to his whiskey.
That's our whole relationship. Eyebrows and whiskey and the mutual understanding that we both care about the same people and express it in completely different ways.
The door opens and Emilio walks in.
He's in jeans and a t-shirt, the sling gone because he took it off three days ago. His arm is still bandaged under the sleeve, but he's got full range of motion back and the stitches come out next week. The man walks into the bar and bee lines straight for me.
"Evening, beautiful," he says, sliding onto the stool directly across from me. The same stool he sat on the first time he came to this bar, the night he found me and Alexandra drinking whiskey at two in the afternoon and decided this was his favorite room in the building.
"Evening, asshole. The usual?"
"The usual, little vixen."
I pour from the new Macallan. He picks it up, drinks half, sets it down, and looks at me with those dark eyes that still make my stomach flip even though I've been sleeping next to them for weeks and I should be immune by now.
I'm not immune. I don't think I ever will be.
The bar gets busier. Soldiers come in from shift change, pulling up stools, ordering drinks, filling the room with the low hum of conversation that I love.
This sound. This specific combination of voices and glasses and the occasional laugh that breaks through the background noise.
This is my sound. The sound of my bar on a Tuesday night, full of people I've learned to care about and who, against all logic and probability, care about me.
Emilio helps. He comes behind the bar the way he's started doing, inserting himself into my space, learning the bottles, the pours.
He's still terrible at it. He over-pours everything, confuses the vodka brands, and once handed a soldier gin when the man asked for whiskey, which almost started a fistfight that Carmelo ended with a look.
"Two fingers," I tell him as he reaches for the Macallan. "Not four."
"My fingers are bigger than yours."
"Your fingers are exactly the same size as mine."
"That's factually incorrect and I have evidence."
"What evidence?"
"Last night. When I had my fingers inside you and you said right there, that's perfect, don't move, and I'm pretty sure you weren't talking about the size of your own fingers."
"Emilio, Goddamn, shut up." I glance at the soldiers at the bar, three of whom are close enough to hear this conversation. "We have customers."
"The customers don't care. Right, guys?"
The nearest soldier, a man named Torres who's been drinking at my bar since the second week, raises his glass without looking up. "We hear nothing, sir."
"See? They hear nothing."
"They hear everything and they're going to repeat it in the barracks and by tomorrow morning the entire compound will know what you do with your fingers."
"Good. Let them know. I want the world to know that Emilio DiAngelo has talented fingers and the most beautiful woman in this building at his disposal." He basically shouts the last part.
"At your disposal? I'm going to dispose of YOU if you don't pour that drink correctly. Two fucking fingers. Two."
He pours. Three fingers, because he has never once in his life done exactly what he's been told, and the extra finger is his way of reminding me that his rebellion is permanent and nonnegotiable.
He does have pretty fingers though.