“You’re gay?”
“I guess. I mean, yeah. Yeah, I’m gay.” He goes bright red as he says it. I wonder if he’s ever said it aloud before. Unlikely, with his father.
Nick is studying Matt with a strange intensity. Something is coming. “Was your dad working for Sonny Vegas?”
“Yeah.”
Then I knowexactlywhat Nicky is thinking. The knowledge of Dellacroce’s whereabouts could be valuable leverage in negotiating a new alliance with Sonny Vegas, one of the more complicated relationships the Morellis have. Plus it gives us something over the Alessis, who like to play at neutrality—but are obviously working their own game, feeling out things on the West Coast. Nick is starting to look happier, his tongue flicking out to wet his lips like he enjoys the taste of the information.
“I’ll go to my Boss on your behalf,” he tells Matt, “and ask permission to, uh, get your father a new job out of state, let’s say,” he says, with a glance at me. But I say nothing. He turns back to Matt. “But you need to understand, everything changes after that. You can’t take it back once it’s done.”
Matt stands up straight and defiant. “I will becelebratingonce it’s done.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Nick
Carlo says nothing more until we’re back in the car, and by then he seems to have given up all pretense that he’s not up to his neck in this shit.
“Are you really going to ask Luca permission to kill Dellacroce?” he asks.
The old Carlo Bianchi would never ask me a question like that. But over the course of two days and one night in Montauk, things seem to have changed.Heseems to have changed. I’m not sure if I like it. “Don’t ask me questions you don’t want to know the answers to.”
“I want to know.”
“All this time you’ve been telling me not to—”
“Justtell me, Nicky.”
Fine. “There’s no real reason why I shouldn’t go to Luca with this,” I tell him bluntly. “And several reasons why Ishould, which don’t even include the problems that you and I have. Sonny Vegas would be indebted to the Morellis if we can make one of his problems go away, and if the Alessis are looking to fuck around out West, Boss needs to know.”
He says nothing more, and I’m not in the mood to talk. I drive us back to the beach house, silent and tired.
“I’m not sure what I expected from our blackmailer, but it wasn’t that,” Carlo says as we get out of the car. “What now? Do we head back to New York?”
I look across at him, but he’s staring beyond me to the view over the ocean. He walks slowly into the grassy yard and takes a deep breath of the sea air, stretching his arms up and locking his hands behind his head. I come up slowly behind him, wondering what he’s thinking, and I take in the way the ocean and the sky merge at the horizon, exactly the same blue that far out.
The truth is, Carlo and I are different as sky and sea. I can handle it if he doesn’t like everything in me, just like I hate the seaweed in the ocean. There are things I don’t understand about him, either. But I’m worried that he’s decided the differences between us are bigger than just, well, seaweed. “What are you thinking?” I ask him, although I’m not sure I want to know.
He gives a little sigh. “I’m thinking it’s time for me to grow up, Nicky.”
“Huh?”
He turns and looks into my eyes for a moment. “You’ve done a lot to protect me over the last few weeks.”
“Yeah,” I say cautiously. “And I’d do it all again.”
“Well, I want to protect you, too.”
I can’t read his face, his tone. Is he trying to take back what he said last night? “You do,” I tell him, my throat tight. “Youdoprotect me. Every time you come and talk for me to the cops, make them drop charges, argue for bail—you’re protecting me.”
He puts a hand up to my cheek and kisses my mouth softly. “I love you, Nick Fontana,” he says warmly. “But right now, I’m exhausted. So I’m gonna go take a nap. Okay?”
“Okay.” I watch him go into the house, only a little reassured by him saying he still loves me. Maybe he can sleep off whatever’s bugging him. Maybe he’ll see it differently when he wakes up.
Maybe.
* * *
