“I think I know what I want,” I snap at him, channeling Alice the Sarge. “And I know you’re used to getting everything you want. But not this time. Sorry.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry too,” he says and drinks some of this beer. “But you’re wrong?—”
“I know my own mind.”
He chuckles at my hotheaded interruption. “I know you do. I was gonna say you’re wrong about me getting everything I want. That’s not been the case for me.”
“Oh, come on, a rich, connected mafia guy like you? I find that really hard to believe.”
He leans back in his chair and drinks some more beer, the look in his eyes at once mischievous and haunted. “Believe it. Before following my cousin Matteo Rovina to LA to help him rebuild his family’s empire, I was a total nobody. Despite being born into one of the more powerful New York Mob families. I had to betray them all, almost got some of them killed to be here now. And that doesn’t sit well with me, despite everything they’ve put me through.”
This is the source of that haunting look in his eyes. Both these things.
“I’m sure they deserved the betrayal, if they treated you badly,” I say, since despite how annoyed I am with him right now, I don’t want to make him feel bad.
He shrugs. “My father went so far as to suggest I wasn’t his son at one point, accused my mother of playing away. It was a whole big thing. She denied it, of course, but honestly, I wouldn’t blame her if it were true.”
“Was your father a difficult man?” I ask.
He laughs harshly. “Yeah, that’s one way of describing him. A nice way. He was much worse than just difficult. Downright monstrous sometimes. I blame him for needing to be high or drunk all the time.”
“But you’re not anymore,” I say, wondering if I have the right of that. I haven’t seen him do any coke although his cousin Bella warned me he had a problem with it before I came here. “High all the time, I mean.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “Would that bother you?”
“Honestly, I have no say in how you live your life.”
He laughs again. “But you’d like to. Have a say in it, I mean.”
I think the look on my face betrayed my true answer even as I shook my head, because he laughs again.
“I went to rehab while you were recovering in the hospital,” he says. “I’ve been OK since.”
OK doesn’t suggest he’s cured. But then again, addiction rarely gets cured, it’s more like a chronic condition.
“I developed a love for sleeping pills and pain killers while Gael was doing what he was doing to me,” I say. “I still find it hard to sleep without them, but I’m managing.”
“You shouldn’t call that piece of shit by his name,” he says hotly. “Justthe priestwill do. A monster like that doesn’t deserve a name.”
There’s nothing fake about his anger. It’s all on my behalf. Not at me. I wish I could feel that same kind of anger toward Gael, but for some reason, I can’t. I still mostly just feel fear. And I don’t think that’s ever going to change, because I’ve tried to change it for many years.
“You’re right,” I mutter and drink some more of my beer. The bottle’s already empty, but I pretend it’s not. I do a lot of that… pretending. That I’m fine. That I’m strong. That I have my shit together. I don’t.
“So what happened to your family?” I ask needing to change the subject before I lose the little composure I still have.
The waitress comes over before he can answer, and I take the opportunity to order another round of beers for us and assure her that my chicken sandwich is amazing, even though I still haven’t touched it.
“My family fled to Italy when Angelo Ferro took over the running of the New York Mob,” he explains once the waitress is gone. “I bet my father and brothers hate it there. They were used to running things and now they’re guests in someone else’s house. But they could’ve sided with Ferro in the war. And they could’ve come back once he won it. I gave them the option. But they’d never take anything from me.”
The haunted look in his eyes grows more pronounced.
“And you sided with Ferro to get some power for yourself, I get it.”
We’re not that different, Nico and I. Both powerless in our own ways, both doing what we can to change that. Not that I’d call him powerless.
“Something like that,” he says. “I guess. Maybe I just wanted to prove myself. And make a difference. I didn’t agree with a lot of what the old guys running things in New York were doing. But I had no say in anything. Plus, Ferro was gonna do what he was gonna do, and I figured it would be better to be on his side. Couldn’t be worse, anyway. I was still only a little better than a nobody to him. But out here, maybe I can build something for myself.”
He laughs again, in a way that suggests he thinks he’s still just a nobody and his dreams of making something of himself just a delusion.
