Chapter 15
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Rett
I followed Haz to the kitchen, my eyes instantly locking on an impressive spread of food across the island. French toast, juice, eggs, bacon, fruit, coffee… it was basically a private buffet.
“Rich people sure eat good,” I said, stopping a few feet away. I guess it was unfair to assume Kieran was rich, but this was probably the nicest condo I’d ever been in. So to me, he was definitely rolling in the green.
Haz went on into the kitchen to grab a bottle of creamer and some ketchup from the fridge. “I know. Before Kieran, I never even ate breakfast.”
“Same.” I agreed.
“Not today. Today, we have all this,” he said, coming around to one of the barstools at the counter. “Come on.”
After a brief hesitation, I started forward.
“Hey, are you okay?” Haz asked, shooting me a concerned look.
“I should be asking about you,” I said, feet stalling. “You’re the one who has a burst eardrum from a gun going off so close to your head.”
“I’m not the one limping.”
Oh. He’d noticed. I’d been trying to hide it, but I guess I was just too tired and sore to do a good job. “Ah, yeah. I’m fine. Just sore from last night.”
Haz pursed his lips. “I’ve seen you limping before last night. You do it a lot actually.”
Startled, I froze in place. I wasn’t used to people being aware of me, of giving anything more than a cursory glance. And honestly, I tried to conceal the limp when I was out, but sometimes I relaxed when I thought no one was looking.
“Pretty sure I twisted my ankle going up the stairs.” The lie made me feel guilty. I mean, he let me stay here last night, lent me a shirt, and was even bringing me to a private buffet! “Downside of living on the fifth floor. So many stairs.”
Haz nodded. “Those things aren’t even stairs. They’re deathtraps. Last month, my foot went through one, and I almost died.”
He almost died a lot. I wondered if he was cursed.
“That was you?” I asked, coming forward again. “I see that hole all the time and wondered what happened.”
“Splinters happened,” Haz concluded and gestured to the stool beside him. “Sit here. The other stool is in the living room. Kieran doesn’t have any plant stands, but he has two plants. I named them Cliff and Atlas. I put them on a stool so they don’t get fried in the window.”
“I have a pothos from the old lady who died on the first floor,” I explained. “The landlord was just throwing all her stuff in a dumpster one day, and I begged him to let me take the plant.”
“He was going to throw it in the dumpster?” Haz asked.
“Actually, he did. Told me I couldn’t have it unless I gave him fifty dollars for it.”
“That’s robbery and murder!”
“I know. So I waited until he wasn’t looking and climbed into the dumpster to get it out.
Luckily, it wasn’t destroyed. While I was in there, I found two cacti that must have been hers.
I took them too. Now they all live in my apartment with me.
” I’d been covered in bruises and a rash after that dumpster dive, but it was worth it.
“Do they have names?” Haz asked.
“Of course. All living things need a name.”
His fork clattered against his plate when he spun toward me. “That’s what I said to Kieran! He looked at me like I was crazy. This is why you’re my best friend.”
My stomach flipped a little because he’d called me his friend. I’d never actually had a friend before. I didn’t want to do anything to mess it up.
“The pothos is Harold Jr. It was actually written on his pot. So of course I kept it. Not sure what happened to Harold Sr. Hopefully nothing terrible,” I said as Haz shoveled in more French toast.
“I named the cactus with two arms Hercules because he was strong even in the face of murder. And I named the smaller one Spike because he poked me a few times when I was climbing out of the dumpster.”
“We should introduce Cliff and Atlas to Hercules, Spike, and Harold Jr. sometime.”
“Okay.”
“Here, have some of this syrup. It’s the best I’ve ever tried.” Haz handed me a jug with a brown lid.
I poured a little on my French toast and took a bite, moaning the minute the buttery, rich sweetness burst across my tongue. “This is the best buffet I’ve ever been to.”
Haz poured some more on my plate, and I descended on the food, forgetting all my manners.
Not that I had many, but I tried. While I was chomping, I grabbed the jug of syrup and tried to read the ingredients.
It had to be something fancy. You ever notice how the writing on bottles and stuff is like minuscule?
Like, why do they put all those words there if they don’t want you to read them?
It could be poison, and I’d never even know.
After a few minutes, I gave up. It didn’t matter what this was anyway. I liked it.
For a while, the only sounds were lips smacking, juice slurping, and forks clinking against the plates. Kieran had real glass ones!
“You’d better drink your juice,” Haz warned a little while later. “Kieran will come out here and lecture us about vitamins if you don’t.”
I grabbed my glass and finished it off. Kieran had said we were family now, but he was still a little scary.
Slumping back in my seat, I heaved a breath. I was stuffed. I wasn’t accustomed to eating this much. “Who were all those people yesterday? And why were they trying to kill everyone?” I asked, trying not to burp like a dinosaur.
“About that, I’m really sorry you almost got hurt. I mean, I knew people were trying to kill me, but I didn’t think they’d come shoot up the Neon Reef. Who shoots at poor, innocent fish?” Haz shook his head. “I shouldn’t have asked you to come.”
“Don’t be sorry.” I interrupted him. “I’m glad you asked. Sometimes it gets a little lonely,” I admitted.
Haz didn’t laugh like I thought he might. Instead, he nodded as if he got lonely too. “All those months of us living right next door, and I could have just come over and knocked.”
I nodded. “I was afraid you wouldn’t want to hang out with me.”
“Sometimes it’s easier to be lonely than risk getting rejected.” Haz agreed.
Like Ghost rejected me.
The thought punctured my happiness at being here with Haz and left me feeling like a tire with a slow leak. Soon I’d be flat.
“So it turns out Matteo Salvatore is my dad.”
I forgot all about my leak and gasped. “The head of the biggest crime family in New York is your father?”
“I pretty much reacted the same when I found out.”
“But didn’t he die?” I asked, remembering the news headlines about him.
Haz nodded. “Yeah, a few weeks ago. But I didn’t know he was my father until like yesterday.”
I snatched a strawberry off a platter and started munching as Haz explained.
“My mom, who I never knew, sent him a letter to tell him he had a son, and he came looking. He found me and ran this secret DNA test.”
I gasped, and Haz nodded.
“Once he was sure I was his son, he changed his will and left everything to me.”
Forget the leak. My eyes were going to fall right out of my head. They’d probably roll closer to Haz so they could hear the rest of the story. “You’re the heir of the Salvatore family?”
“Apparently. But Matteo’s second-in-command, Grimaldi, found out and killed him before he could tell anyone about me. Grimaldi wanted to take over everything, so he put a hit out on me.”
“And that’s why those guys were trying to kill us all yesterday,” I surmised.
Haz nodded. “They tried a few times before and failed. So this time, Grimaldi himself came.”
I couldn’t imagine people trying to kill me over and over again. “And Kieran killed him.”
“Yeah.”
“What about those guys that showed up when we were trying to get Ghost to a doctor?”
Haz brightened. “Those are my uncles.”
My eyes tried to jump out of my skull again. “Those were Salvatores too?”
“They didn’t believe I was their nephew at first. I don’t look like much, but I’m scrappy.”
I nodded.
“But my eyes convinced them. Matteo had different-colored eyes too.”
“Whoa.”
“So now I have three uncles and a big inheritance coming my way.”
“Are you the head of the mafia now?” I asked, grabbing another strawberry.
“They offered, but I told them no way. Kieran just bought the Neon Reef for me. I’m going to be too busy fixing up the store and running it to do anything else.”
“Kieran bought the Neon Reef?” My head was spinning. This was a lot of information.
I mean, just a few days ago, Haz was just my neighbor who worked four jobs and kept to himself. Now he was a mob heir, a boyfriend, and the owner of his own business.
He was like the boy version of Cinderella!
“Did Kieran give you shoes?” I wondered.
“No, but he said the ones I wear are ugly and I need new ones.”
I glanced across the apartment to the door where Haz’s sneakers lay and shrugged. They looked nicer than mine.
“He’s buying me a phone, though.” Haz’s two-colored eyes widened. “With unlimited minutes.”
“This is like peak adulthood,” I professed. “I don’t even have a cell phone.”
“But I called you the other day.” Haz remembered.
“I have a landline. A phone that plugs into the wall in my apartment. I guess that’s what people used before cell phones. I get the line for free because of my upgraded internet for my job. And I take calls through my computer too, with a headset. But that’s only for work.”
“Does your landline have a long cord like the phones in old movies?”
I nodded. “Were your uncles mad you said no to the job? Are people allowed to say no to the mafia?”
“Uncle Enzo said it was fine and that I was part of the family now. He also said not to call him uncle, but I probably will anyway.”
“Who’s going to be in charge, then, one of your uncles?” I wondered.
Matteo Salvatore had been a force to be reckoned with. He ran Buffalo with an iron fist that not many would rise against. He was involved in some way with every illegal activity in this city. No one did anything without him knowing about it. Especially in the part of town where I lived.
Haz shrugged. “They offered the job to Kieran, but he told them to eat shit and die.”