Luca just shook his head with a smile and went back to his coffee.
And now some motherfucking priest is dissing me?
Me, Finch D’Amato, Bank of the House of Morelli, Queen of New York City?
I don’t think so.
“You need to stop with thisHow do you do, fellow kids-vibe,” I tell him as we turn left and make for a doorway. “You’re never gonna be cool, man. Sorry. It’s an automatic fail for priests.”
Aidan just chuckles yet again and leads me through a door, down a short hallway, and into a small library. It’s stuffed with books and stinks like old paper. In the middle of the room is a long table that looks old enough to have been made of wood from the original cross. It’s also cold A.F. in here, and I start wishing I’d worn something a little snugger in the crotch to keep the boys warm.
“I’ll turn on the gas heater,” the priest says, shivering himself, and makes his way around the table to the heater in the corner. “Father Benedict asked me to fold up the weekly newsletter.” He gestures at the stack of papers on the table. “We hand them out at the door on Sundays. I keep suggesting we email them out instead, save a few trees, but…” He gives a shrug. “The Church isn’t exactly known for its ability to move with the times. Besides, we have a lot of aged parishioners who aren’t online.”
“How incredibly fascinating, please tell me more.” I’d rather sit down this end of the table, keep my distance, but the gas heater is glowing and my nuts are shriveling. I scurry over to take a seat next to it, right at the corner of the table, and Aidan sits at the head, his back to the heater.
“Okay,” he says easily, “how about we just fold for a while?”
“Suits me. Marco, how about you check on Cee?”
Marco looks at Aidan, sizing him up. “Okay, Mr. D,” he says. Apparently Aidan doesn’t look like a threat. “Back soon,” he adds with a meaningful look.
Aidan and I each take a stack of the papers and I copy him, folding it in half, once. It gets boring fast, and I glance through one to take my mind off things, but all it seems to be is a bunch of nauseating platitudes about the latest national tragedy, followed by news about Our Lady of Mercy and its parishioners. A Mrs. O’Leary’s apple cake took out last month’s baking competition, apparently.
“Relative of yours?” I ask Aidan, pointing out the name.
He gives an appreciative chortle. I want to strangle him.
“No. Well, not that I know of. Possibly a distant aunt. There are a lot of us O’Leary’s around.”
“That’s for sure. When I was a kid back in Boston, I had a bodyguard named O’Leary.” Poor old Jim O’Leary, who gave me up to the Fuscone crew all those months ago and, in a way, started my new life’s trajectory for me.
“I know,” Aidan says, still folding. “He was my uncle. The Donovan family killed him for telling tales, or so I hear.”
I get up so fast my seat goes flying, and Aidan looks up in surprise. “Whoa, you okay?”
“You know who I fucking am,” I say, and it’s not a question. “Jim O’Leary sold me out to Sam Fuscone.”
I fumble in my pocket for my alarm. It sends an immediate SOS alert with my last known position to Marco and Luca, but something makes me hold off on pressing it.
Aidan looks me up and down, expressionless, and goes back to folding. “The wayIheard it,” he says casually, “Uncle Jim sold you out to the Morelli Family. And that’s how you ended up married. But the Morellis let Uncle Jim go, and it was the Donovans who killed him in the end.”
I try to breathe slower, cursing myself for making Marco go check on Celia. Iknewit was dumb to trust a priest. “If you’re gonna pop me, you should know: my husband will take it kinda personal.”
Aidan stops his folding and stares. “You think I want tokillyou? I’m a man of God, Finch.”
“You’ll be adeadman of God in five seconds if you don’t explain yourself,” I growl.
“I’m sorry,” Aidan says, although his face has gone pale. “I seem to have said something wrong. And I’m afraid we don’t allow weapons in God’s house. If you’ve brought a gun with you, you’ll have to leave.”
“I’m not the one with the gun. That’d be my bodyguard, and I can call him here with one push of a button.” I pull the keychain alarm out of my pocket and shake it. I don’t carry house keys—that’s Marco’s job—but I’ve piled a bunch of other trinkets onto the keychain along with the alarm button, and it gives a cheerful tinkle as I wave it at Aidan.
I could not sound less threatening right now if I tried.
Aidan stands, head raised and defiant, and looks at me. “You said before that we couldn’t agree on much,” he says in a low voice. “I thought at least we could agree on the pointlessness of family grudges and murder. That’s the only reason I mentioned my uncle. He was a thug, and I won’t defend the way he chose to live his life. I reject violence in all its forms, and my parents broke ties with Uncle Jim before I was even born. He was our family’s black sheep, I suppose. But I pray nightly for his soul. I’d like to pray for you, too. What happened to you recently, the way you’ve been used as a bargaining chip, I think it’s a travesty. I thought—Ihoped—we could be friends.”
Unfortunately, Celia chooses that moment to trip breathlessly down the hallway just as I reply. “I’m more likely to kill you than befriend you, honey.”
“Finch! What inGod’s name—” she squeals.
