Suddenly, that shit felt more important than talking to my family, resolving the issue, and getting back to our lives.
“Is your boss going to be mad at you?”
“Probably not. Lorenzo doesn’t get mad often. Been a boss for too long. Seen and done it all. He’s gonna have questions, but that’s about it.”
“Is he going to be… mad about me?”
“About you?”
“That I’m, you know, involved now?”
“Hate to break it to you, babe, but you’ve been involved from the jump. You just didn’t know it.”
“Yeah, but now I know who you are. And what you were doing…”
“So did the old director.”
“But he was… on the take. Is that the right wording?”
“Yeah, babe, that’s the right wording,” I said, smiling at her. “Look, if you’re worried something is gonna happen to you, the Costas don’t hurt women. Even if they did, I wouldn’t let them.”
“You can’t choose anyone else over Family,” she said.
“I can do whatever the fuck I want. I’m not a capo. I didn’t make the same vows Made men like that make.”
“Do you like being in this line of work?”
“I’m good at it. It gives me the kind of money I could only dream about as a kid. That shit is important to me.”
“I get that. Once you’ve gone without, you never want to again.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
We had different upbringings, different parents, but we both had similar trauma, similar scars.
“Does it bother you?” I asked, not sure why I was doing so.
“I mean, it bothers me that you lied to me. I don’t really know what I think about everything else.”
That was fair.
It was all new to her.
And since knowing, she’d been terrified, in pain, and recovering. It didn’t leave much time to think about shit.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you ever been to prison?”
“Prison? No. Jail… a few times when I was younger. Before I got smart. The Costa guys, they’re smart too. Multi-generational gangsters. There are layers upon layers of protection. No one goes to prison anymore.”
“I knew someone who said that the mob doesn’t really exist anymore. Since RICO.”
“Yeah, well, we’re okay with everyone thinking that. Keeps eyes off of us.”
“That makes sense.”
