She stands, looking up into his face, and takes the file. “I can assure you, Don Morelli, they agreed to supply the same quality for these prices. I was simply able to negotiate more effectively.”
“Leave it. It can wait until Bianchi gets back.”
“I can handle it,” she insists.
There aren’t many people who talk back more than once to Luca D’Amato. He looks hard at her for a moment and then turns away dismissively. “Okay. Get me an assurance it’s for the same quality, and I’ll sign. Otherwise, I’ll wait until Bianchi’s opened his third eye, or whatever the fuck he’s doing.”
She gives a ghost of a smile. “I appreciate you giving me the chance, Don Morelli,” she says, and with a nod to me, she takes her leave.
“You know, you don’t have to be an asshole toeveryone,” I tell Luca with a grin, once she’s out of the room.
He grins back. “Maybe not. But do you think I’ll get what I want now?”
“I think a woman like that is going to break as many metaphorical kneecaps as she needs to if she thinks she can bill some hours from the Don himself.”
“And that’s the kind of lawyer I want working for the Family. But she needs to understand, I won’t settle for goodenough. I want the best, always. Anyway, what about you? I saw a bill come through from the lawyers this morning. You’ve run up a whole lot of hours yourself this week. And they’re coming from Carlo Bianchi, too, so that story she spun about his personal time is clearly bullshit.”
Carlo,damnhim. Knowing him, he was even billing hours in the car on the way home. “I…” I say. I pause, take a breath, wondering where exactly to start, but Luca has already moved on.
“As long as he’s working on your behalf, I don’t care about the Sardinians. You’re more important. Now listen, there’s something else I wanted to run by you. Have a seat. It’s about this business that went on at the Hamptons.”
Fuck.
I say nothing yet, still trying to frame out exactly how to put everything I need to tell him. Silently, I join him at the lounge area in the corner, sit opposite him at the chess set and see again Carlo quietly declaring checkmate that second time. Donnie Gee stared at the board a long time, then gave a longer stare at Carlo, making me wonder if I’d need to step in after all, until the old man started cursing him out and laughing.
“You want a game?” Luca asks.
“Hell, no. Let me hear it, Boss; what are you worried about?” Maybe if I hear what Luca already knows, I can fill in the blanks.
Luca sits back in his seat, one finger tapping on his mouth. “They never found that Giuliano, did they? Gatti.”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“There was a New York Commission meeting last night.” Of course there was. Usually I’m all over their schedule, keeping it in mind, but the last few days I’ve had other things distracting me. “Louis Clemenza let it go pretty fast in the end, but the Giulianos are still unhappy. And Alessi and Rossi, as well—even they asked me after if there was anything I could do. Pointed out it’s caused a rift between the Families, right when we don’t need it. And so help me, if I find out anyone in the Morellis had anything to do with it…” He gives me a grim look, and the back of my neck prickles with sweat. There’s an edge of paranoia to his voice that I haven’t heard before.
“Look, it was unfortunate that it happened on the same night as that important meeting in the Hamptons,” I start. I’m going to do it, I decide. I’m going to come clean. “But—”
Luca snorts. “Unfortunate? You think this was a coincidence?”
I’m not sure how to play this. “Don’t you?”
“Do I think it’scoincidencethat a groom disappears on his wedding day while he’s surrounded by five feuding Families? No, Fontana, I don’t think it’s a fucking coincidence. I think someone’s working hard to disrupt what I’m trying to put in place.”
Luca’s been real stressed lately. Not himself. And I don’t like the way he’s looking at me. It reminds me, somehow, of the way my Giuliano Capo looked at me that night years ago, when he told me he needed someone at the docks to receive a shipment, that it was my chance to really prove myself in his crew.
But this is Luca. This isLuca, and he’s not going to set me up like the Gees ever did. Besides, he needs me. I just wish I could get rid of the squirming panic inside me, the part of me that wants to deny, deny, deny. Because if I tell him what happened, who knows what he’ll do. Maybe…maybe I’d be an acceptable loss to keep peace between the Families in New York City. Maybe Don Morelliwouldsacrifice me for the sake of the Family.
Or maybe—more likely—he’d sacrifice Carlo.
He’s been trash-talking Carlo since I got here, and if this Winter woman is as good as Luca thinks she could be, maybe he’d be willing to lose Carlo as a pawn in the bigger game.
I can’t let that happen.
I put my hand on my knee to make it stop bouncing. “Okay,” I say slowly. “Maybe I don’t think it’s a coincidence either—” Although actually? Iknowit is. “—but I still don’t see why it’s our job to fix it. Gatti was the Giulianos’ man. Let them fucking track him down.”
Luca shakes his head. “Come on, Nick, you know it’s not that simple.”
Of course I know. I just don’t want it to get complicated forme. ForCarlo. “But you smoothed things over?”
