Chapter Six
Venezio
Lorenzo had been slightly disappointed that I didn’t think Stephanie would be willing to look the other way to allow in our contraband. But he’d been equally as excited that I’d landed myself a job unloading the trucks.
I went ahead and left out the bit about getting that job because the director clearly thought I wasn’t cut out for anything else around the warehouse.
Though I felt like I’d gained everyone’s favor when I showed up on my third day of volunteering with several large propane space heaters to try to fend off some of the chill in the warehouse.
Jackets, hats, and gloves started to get peeled off. Everyone’s moods seemed to shift.
And when Stephanie came back from her bell-ringing, she shot a shocked but delighted look at the heaters.
“Don’t worry,” I said when I saw her jaw tighten. I could practically hear her mentally tallying how much it would cost to run them. “They’re propane-powered. I’ll keep ‘em filled.”
She was momentarily conflicted about that but ultimately decided to be okay with it as she peeled out of a few layers, sat down at the phone bank, and started making some calls.
I spent that whole shift pretending to be focused on sorting the gifts I’d already unloaded from the truck while mostly spending my time casting glances at Stephanie.
In my world, you learned young to mask your feelings because if anyone knew they got to you, they used that shit against you. I’d led a pretty insulated life, full of people just like me. So to see someone like Stephanie, who wore every feeling she had on her face, was fucking interesting.
She started each call with bright eyes and a customer-service smile even though no one could see her.
Sometimes, the smile stretched even wider as she (it seemed) got someone to open up their wallets.
More often than not, though, I watched that plastic smile dim or fall completely, often within just seconds of greeting someone.
She cared so fucking much.
I don’t think I ever gave a damn about anything in my life like she did about this charity.
I’d been a kid once with no presents at Christmas. It never occurred to me as an adult with some grown-up money to actually do anything about other kids who were dealing with the same shit.
I guess that was the difference between good people and those with hearts as black as mine.
I did call in early before I showed up one day, though, to add another five grand to their coffers. That was another two hundred kids with a gift.
I made a shit-ton of money. I lived in a crappy apartment in a crummy area. I wouldn’t feel the loss of it.
I could practically hear the other capos in the city and their never-ending ribbing of me and my apartment and how I lived like I still didn’t have anything.
There was a good reason for that.
I was scared of someday being in that same place, not having shit, not knowing where my next meal might come from, having no fucking idea how to drag myself up out of the circumstances of my birth.
So I hoarded everything I made.
I set it aside for a rainy day.
Even if, logically, I knew that when I was working for the mafia, there would be no more rainy days. This was an organization where the most successful capos were pulling in well over a million a year—more if they also diversified by starting legit businesses, and they all did eventually.
Sure, I was just a soldier. But I was a big earner. My kick-up was better than almost anyone in the Family. Once I proved myself with this job, I would become a capo. Once I was a capo, I would quickly get five or eight soldiers underneath me. They would kick up to me, increasing my income.
This was a job with limitless potential.
No, the mob wasn’t what it was in the seventies and eighties. But it was coming back strong. There was a good chance it could get that kind of footing again. Then everyone would be living high on the hog. Me included.
I could afford to give the charity a few grand. And buy propane to keep the volunteers warm while they worked to make those Christmas gift dreams come true for the kids.
I’d been having a quick meeting with a fellow soldier, so I missed it when Stephanie showed up for work. But I swear to fuck I could smell that sugary scent of her as I walked to the door to go inside.
The heat inside wasn’t the kind that slapped you in the face. The old warehouse was too drafty and poorly insulated to hold onto it enough to actually warm the whole space up. But there was a marked difference from the chill of the day as I moved inside.
Most of the employees had shifted around their workstations to be nearer to the heaters. The phone bank and the wrapping station were cozy enough for everyone sitting there to be stripped of their jackets, hats, scarves, and gloves.
And I dunno. That shit felt good, I guess.
Doing good.
Even in a small way.
“Venezio,” one of the volunteers said, slapping me hard on the back of the shoulder.
Craig was a schmuck.
He thought everyone loved him and pretended to be the center of attention. I knew a former jock who peaked in high school when I met one.
That wasn’t what pissed me off about him, though, if I were being completely honest.
Nope.
That was the way he was always staring at Stephanie. How he was constantly finding reasons to get close to her, to touch her, to get her attention.
For fuck’s sake, I’d once seen him smell her hair.
And, worse yet, graze his hand over the side of her tit and then try to pretend it was a mistake and he was so embarrassed.
Stephanie didn’t entertain it. She didn’t shut him down either. I figured that was only because she was afraid of losing what little help she already had. And Craig, while an asshole, did do a decent amount of work around the place.
“Craig.” His name was practically a curse on my lips.
“Did you see? Our girl brought cookies.”
“Our girl?” I asked, my gaze cutting to his.
“Stephanie. She baked cookies for us.” I had nothing to say to that. “They’re good too. I love a woman who can bake.”
“Good for you.”
“Oh, come on. You can’t tell me you don’t like a woman who can cook.”
“I don’t give a fuck either way.”
“Bullshit.”
Did this asshole think we were friends?
I gave him a shrug, figuring that was universal for ‘I don’t want to have this conversation, so fuck off.’
Not to Craig.
“Every man wants a woman to cook and clean for him.”
“Who’s every man?” I shot back.
“Oh, come on. No man wants to wash their own clothes.”
“Been doing my own laundry since I was tall enough to reach. It ain’t hard.”
“It’s not man’s work.”
“And being your servant ain’t a woman’s work,” I said, finally walking away from him because my palms were itching to curl up, and it had been way too long since my fist had that satisfying crack of bones on bones.
“Fucking dick,” I was mumbling under my breath, not realizing Stephanie was coming in from the back room.
“Who is?” she asked, tone light, pleasant.
“Craig.”
A surprised snorting laugh escaped her at that.
“What’d he do?” she asked, voice conspiratorial.
“Set modern relationships back seventy years.”
“Huh,” she said, glancing past me. “Yeah, actually, I can see that. Did you have a cookie? I made them.”
“Heard that. No.”
Her brows pinched at that. “Do you… want one?”
I didn’t.
But from her?
A cookie, a subpoena, a crowbar to the ribs? Whatever she was offering, I was taking it.
“Sure.”
“I made them,” she told me, grabbing a tiny napkin with a pine tree pattern on it, then placing a cookie on it before handing it to me. “My mom’s recipe,” she added as I looked down at the gooey-looking cookie. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Is it cooked?”
“Of course it’s cooked.”
“It looks soft.”
“Yeah, they’re soft-baked.”
“I’ve had soft-baked. These ain’t them.”
“I mean, store-bought is a different kind of soft-baked, if that’s what you mean.”
“It’s what I mean,” I said, pulling the cookie up for a sniff. Sugar, chocolate, but still different than any cookies I’d ever had before.
“Have you, have you never had a home-baked cookie before?” she asked, eyes going doe-round.
“Can’t say I have.”
Her hand went to her heart, and I swear those dark eyes of hers looked a little watery. She wasn’t going to fucking… cry about it, was she? About cookies?
“Now I wish it was warm,” she said as I finally lifted the damn cookie and took a bite.
The chocolate went molten, the butter sweet and soft, and for a second, I swear I forgot every bad fucking thing I’d been through in my life. If comfort had a taste, it was this.
“Christ,” I mumbled, shoving the rest of the cookie in my mouth.
“Have another,” she said, grabbing three more and placing them on the napkin. “Now I wish I’d made my oatmeal too. And Snickerdoodles. And sugar!”
“You use raisins?”
“Not usually. Though they can be good sometimes.”
“No, they can’t,” I said, getting a twinkling little laugh out of her.
“Hey, Venezio,” she started, reaching up to run a hand through her hair. My damn fingers itched to do the same thing. “Can I ask you a big—”
“Stephy,” Craig called, making a rumble move through me as Stephanie stiffened.
“Yes, Craig?”
“Can I speak to you for a minute?”
“Uh, yeah, sure,” she said, sounding conflicted. Then, to me, “Have as many cookies as you want. I have so much dough in my freezer just waiting to get baked off.”
I guess I’d figure out some other time what she was going to ask me.
I watched her walk away as I ate the cookies and looked at the damn colored strands of lights twinkling in the windows.
And for just a fleeting moment, I didn’t feel quite so much like the little kid with his face pressed up against the glass, looking at things I could never have, never experience.
I was right there in it, feeling it, tasting it.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, though, dragging me out of that world and back into my real one.
Tonight.
I didn’t need more clarification than that.
There was a truck coming into the charity that night.
And, apparently, I had my first shipment of goods to unload and distribute to the Family.
It wasn’t the first time I had to lie to Stephanie.
This time, though, there was a weird tightening in my gut at the idea of doing it.
My gaze sought her out, and when I found her, her head whipped away.
It meant nothing that she’d been looking at me.
And I couldn’t afford to let myself believe otherwise.