I pulled off the blindfold. “Why, did I hit a nerve? Wereyouthe one fucking Tino? Is that why he just couldn’t take you seriously enough?”
Angelo took a hard left and I slammed into the car door with a grunt. He squealed to a halt in a side street—we were back in Brooklyn, I saw, glancing at the street sign—and then he unclipped his seat belt, turned to me, and grabbed my shoulder. “From now on, you keep Tino Morelli’s name out of your mouth.” He pressed me back against the door and grabbed my wrist when I tried to push his hand away. “You hear me?”
“Fuck you!” I spat.
He pulled me forward a little only to shove me back again, and twisted in his seat, rising up above me so he could keep me there with sheer body weight. And then he spoke in a low, quick voice.
“Tino Morelli was agood man. He was good to me when he didn’t have to be. You have no idea what it was like back then in the Family. You think people didn’t talk about us, make jokes? Any other Boss would’ve had those idiots snuffed to make sure there was no talk about him behind his back, but not Tino. He never cared what people said about me, about him. He told me it was my job to make them laugh on the other sides of their faces. So I did. Soon enough those jokers stopped joking and started fearing me instead.Just like you should.”
After a moment, he let me go and moved back into his own seat. I still held my breath, as though just taking in air might break the spell. Angelo had never said so much about his past before. He’d never said so much aboutanything.
He’d never lost control like that.
I knew Ishouldbe scared, just like he’d advised. I should keep in mind that this was the Monster of the Morellis I was baiting, and judging by his current psychological state, his self-mastery was slipping. Maybe it was my fascination with him, or maybe the fact that I’d just walked out of a meeting with Don Morelli himself had made me cocky. Maybe it was the unexpected care and gentleness he showed me in bed.
But one way or another, I just couldn’t be afraid of him, not anymore. “You really don’t envy Luca D’Amato?” I asked softly.
He stared out the windscreen. “I have no desire to lead, and Tino recognized that. I’m a good soldier, a good enforcer when I have to be, but I’m not a team player, not at heart. I never wanted responsibility for all those men. And I certainly don’t want to make myself a bigger trophy for other Families to take out. Luca has always been ambitious. Me, I just want respect. I have that, and so I’m happy.” He glanced over at me. “Don’t ask me about Tino Morelli again.”
He didn’t bother to follow up with a threat.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Angelo
Bax stayed quiet for the rest of the night, and went to the couch to make his bed, even without being told. I’d picked up another comforter, so that wasn’t a problem anymore. But I found myself avoiding bed myself, as though getting into it alone would confirm that he and I were only…what?
Not friends. Not even colleagues.
Certainly not lovers.
It had been the first thing Luca D’Amato had said at the warehouse when he got me away from Bax: “Finch seems to think you’re fucking the Fed.”
I never took offense at the stupid things people said, but I took offense then, and he must have seen it on my face.
“Youare,” he’d said, and shook his head in astonishment. “I said you should take a lover, Angelo, butJesus. I asked you—Itoldyou,” he had corrected himself, and drew down that air of arrogance that he used with the Capos and the soldiers. “I told you to stay away from LE. I know Tino thought keeping our enemies closer than friends was the way to manage things, but I am not Tino.”
“No, Don Morelli. And I do apologize. My initial association with the kid was down to circumstances beyond my control.”
Not “circumstances” beyond my control, I thought now to myself, while I looked at the federal agent sitting on my sofa, in my safe house, after talking shit to me in my own car.Baxter Flynnhad always been beyond my control, negotiating his way into my apartment building, into my safe house, into my bed.
“I’m finessing information that could help us in the future,” I’d told Luca, but he looked unconvinced. Still, despite my inadequate explanations, Luca trusted me enough—respectedme enough—to give me the benefit of the doubt.
“Finesse him all night if you like,” he’d told me coolly. “But just remember, when you look long into an abyss…”
It was exactly what I feared, that Bax would start to figure me out. That the abyss would look back into my soul. “He’s a newly-minted agent with an obsession for the Morelli Family,” I’d told the Boss. “That’s all. A clever boy who has not yet realized that other clever boys grow into cleverer men.”
I should have listened to Luca, though, whose last advice had been not to underestimate the kid. Because in the car on the way back, Baxter had managed to find that one vulnerable place in my armor, and slipped in the blade.
It was late, but neither of us seemed tired. Baxter had the new blanket pulled around his shoulders where he sat on the couch, busy looking through the files again. He’d laid out his notes on the small coffee table as well, poring over them with complete focus.
“Any new ideas?” I asked.
He shook his head.
I sat down in the armchair opposite him. “Listen,” I said, and hesitated. He didn’t look up. “Bax.”
“I’m busy, Messina. Call back later.”
