What does he think? I’m not running a damn charity, especially not risking life in a federal prison for anything less than a hundred thousand dollars.
“It depends.”
Peter sinks his eight ball, going out of his way to be petty as he knocks my last couple of balls around the pool table.
“You owe me twenty,” he says, sticking out his hand with a level of audacity you only find amongst the crazy ass Italians in my family. I find a twenty in my pocket and Peter takes it.
“Here’s the deal,” Peter says. “If you help me with this and it goes well… Michael wants to get you a place in Pittsburgh.”
A place. In a family like mine, that can mean anything.
“I have a house.”
“You don’t have a house like this one. Or any power.”
“You think I care about power?” I ask Peter. He puts his hand on my shoulder.
“No,” he says. “We’ve always felt the same about this family, Gino. But we’re going to get older. And life has a way of throwing curveballs at you.”
“Like what?”
“Like what if something happened to any or all of us? We need assurances and the only way I got Leandro to approve this was if we could convince you to take Pittsburgh.”
“Take Pittsburgh?”
“Lead the war,” Peter says. His face is grim and serious. Peter has always been different from the rest of his family because his eyes are a sharp shade of green, distinct from the blue and brown colors common in the rest of the family.
The two of us otherwise share more similarities than differences and I believe that he has a genuine interest in my future. Certainly, I find his proposition… interesting.
“I didn’t realize we were at war.”
“Not officially,” Peter replies. “But how long did you really expect your father to sit up here and let them screw with us?”
I should have known that dad’s calm about Angela’s kidnapping – along with Cosima and Nicki’s kidnapping – was just a façade. He places a high premium on both respect and his honor in general. I shouldn’t have expected him to take this lying down.
“Does dad think I’m qualified to lead anything, or is he just trying to get rid of me?”
That’s a fair enough question.
“You are ten times tougher than any of the boys down in Pittsburgh. Plus, you’re really Italian. Went to school for the business side of things… Your father believes in you. And he trusts you.”
“But I don’t get the benefit of getting sent to my death unless I help you… whack someone.”
Peter glares again. “Someone threatens this family, we send them for a swim. Simple as that.”
It sounds simple until you have a hundred meetings with lawyers and law enforcement to clear your name. Still… there might be something to getting the job done and then earning a house with barely any work put into it.
“How big is the house?”
“Fucking huge. It’s your dad’s old winter house.”
“We have a winter house?”
“Your mom had a cousin from Italy living there for the past few years, but she went back to Tuscany and the place has been empty for months.”
I don’t have a clear recollection of the place he’s talking about. My family owns a lot of property and it’s hard keeping track of which stuff belongs to the Corsini part of our family, the Italians over in northern Italy, or dad’s crap over here. Just like our loyalties and family ties, everything gets criss-crossed and confused after a while.
He can tell that he at least has my attention. I nod, prompting Peter to continue, “I vetted everything and… the only reason I’m asking you this is because I know there will be great rewards on the other side.”
