I needed to remember that, rather than the softness in his eyes when he had tended to the cut on my face.
Chapter Four
Teo
Ireached home that night very late, after telling my version of events to Don Morelli and Mr. D several times, but my sister Marietta was still waiting up for me with a warm plate of lasagna.
“You shouldn’ta waited up,” I grunted at her when I came in. We lived in an apartment, and the living room, kitchen, and dining area were all stuffed into one not-so-large room. I slung my jacket over the back of the chair where she’d set my place at the table and sat down heavily.
“You’re welcome,” Mari said, and went back to scrolling through the feed on her phone. She was sitting on the couch, her feet up, and was close enough that I could reach over and squish the topknot she’d screwed her hair into before bed.
“Thank you, Mari,” I singsonged, and grinned at her when she glared over. “Thank you,” I added, sincere this time. “Really. I appreciate it.”
“You should make them throw in food if they’re going to work you so late,” she grumbled.
“They usually do, you know that. Anyway, wasn’t them. Some other trouble. At the church.”
She looked up from her phone. “At Sancta?”
I’d just shoved a huge forkful of meat sauce into my mind, so I shook my head. Sancta Sophia was where Mari and the kids went on Sundays, and I did too if I wasn’t on duty. It was heavily Italian and a much cozier building than the money-glazed Our Lady on Fifth Avenue, and for a long time I’d felt much more at home there than I had with the Irish lot. Lately, though, I’d come to appreciate Our Lady. And apparently it wasn’t as rich a place as it seemed on the outside.
“The kid priest,” I said after swallowing. “Although he’s not a priest, not yet,” I added, and then I gave in and just used his name like he wanted me to, although it felt like a breach of protocol somehow. “Aidan. Aidan O’Leary. He had some trouble.”
Mari gave me a knowing look. She seemed to think I had a crush on the pr—on Aidan. Something to do with how much I mentioned him these days.
Mari was crazy, obviously.
“Kids okay?” I said, before she could start in with the kissy noises. She was twenty-eight but she acted thirteen most days. Except when it came to the kids—our younger brothers and sisters. With them, she was firm, steady, and above all, loving.
“They’re fine,” she said, and put down her phone. “So. You made sureAidanwas okay?”
“That’s what he wants me to call him,” I growled before I could remind myself not to take the bait. “And yeah. I did. Don’t know what this city’s coming to, when people are attacking priests.”
“Not a priest,” she murmured. Then, suddenly pensive, she added: “I don’t like thinking about you being in so much danger, little brother.” She picked up the long strand of hair that always fell out of her high topknot, and chewed on the end of it.
It was an old argument. We’d been having it for years, since I first started working as an associate with the Morellis. Now I was a made man; I’d taken my vows and sworn loyalty to the Morelli Family and their Don.
Marietta didn’t like any of it, but she couldn’t argue with the paycheck.
“Go to bed,” I said. “It’s late. I’ll do the dishes.” I was getting good at dishes, after all the practice at Our Lady.
She looked like she wanted to argue with me, but she knew as well as I did that it was pointless. She dragged herself up from the couch and made to walk out, but came back to drop a kiss on the top of my head. “I just…I want you to be happy,” she said, and then she left the room.
Happiness wasn’t ever going to be an option for me, I thought as I finished up my dinner. It was a little dried out and not-quite-hot, but it still tasted good. Mari was a good cook, and she had perfected our mother’s lasagna recipe years ago. Plus it was a cheap meal to feed a big family. I did the dishes, organized the breakfast bowls and cereal boxes ready for everyone to grab their preference in the morning as they came running out, and then I pulled out the sofa bed that I slept on in the living area. There weren’t quite enough rooms in the place, even though two of our siblings, Ray and Angie, had moved out a few years back. Our youngest sister, Lucia, had just started ninth grade this year. Marietta and I had agreed she needed her own room to study in and, well, be a teenage girl. So Mari shared with Giulia, Danny and Ricky shared a room and were mostly okay with it, and I took the couch. It was fine. I came in late and left early most days, so it was the least disruptive room anyway.
Mari and I had refused to let any of our siblings go into care, and with our cousin Snapper Marino’s help we’d been able to convince child services to let us keep them with us. And the Morelli jobs paid well. Extremely well. It was enough for us to eat, to make rent, to pay for Catholic school tuition since Mari wanted the kids to be educated “right,” whatever that meant.
But Mari was still uncomfortable with the nature of the work. I got it. Absolutely. Our father had been made with the Giulianos, and he’d always been violent.
On my mother’s side, they tended to be Morelli Family. Snapper, a second cousin, had looked out for me where he could. I’d approached him about helping out with the Morellis, made myself useful. I’d worked my way up. I’d been handpicked for training as a bodyguard under Angelo Messina, and now I was just about part of the inner circle, trailing around as Finch D’Amato’s shadow.
Although not tonight. Tonight I’d been relegated to the kitchen, away from the top secret stuff that the Boss, Mr. D and Aidan had to talk about. And of course I’d stayed in the kitchen like a good boy and definitelynotsnuck back down to listen in.
Yeah, right.
It hadn’t surprised me when I pieced together what the three of them were saying as I listened from the hallway; it was an open secret among us Morellis what had happened to Sam Fuscone, even if none of the people there had ever confirmed it.
At least now I knew what Aidan thought the problem might be. I’d told my guilty conscience over eavesdropping that it was important information that I needed for my work, and I skipped off fast when they finished up. They’d made Aidan stay the night, like I’d known they would. I was glad about that, because there was nowhere in the city safer for Aidan than with the Boss, unless it was with me. In fact, a small part of me had wondered if the Boss would ask me to stay there as well and watch over their friend for the night.
