He makes a shooing gesture with his hand. “Scurry off, little mouse. And don’t give me cause to regret my kindness.”
“I won’t,” I manage to get out, backing away. My brain is ticking over all the possibilities. Alessandro’s laugh drifts over his shoulder as he heads down the stairs.
But then it occurs to me: if he’s so willing for me to wander around unescorted, he must either be certain that I won’t find anything interesting, or it doesn’t matter if I do, because…
He’s not planning to let me go.
CHAPTER18
SANDRO
I makeit through the interminable service at the church, and somehow my mother ends up in the car with me on the way to the graveside. “Lombardo has aged terribly,” she says briskly from under her impenetrable veil. “And Vito DiPietro looks like a walking heart attack.”
I say nothing. The turnout for the funeral has been larger than I expected, and we are being tailed by law enforcement, including agents from the FBI task force that has been shadowing the Family of late. “You took too big a risk coming over here,” I tell my mother. “How long do you plan to stay?”
“I’ve only just arrived, and you’re chasing me away already, Sandro?” She gives a tut.
But you haven’t only just arrived. I keep my eyes, behind large black sunglasses, trained out of the window.
In any case, my biggest problem today is not my mother. “Did you see those Morellis, skulking around at the back of the church?”
“Angelo Messina, wasn’t it?” she says, tucking a compact under the veil so that she can check her makeup. “He’s always been such a handsome man.”
“The muscle-bound mass with him was Baxter Flynn, his lover. His husband,” I amend. “Ex-FBI.”
“A daring match,” she murmurs. “You’ll promise me not to make such a mistake, won’t you, darling?”
I snort. “There are no FBI officers tempting enough for me, I can assure you, Mamma.” But my mind plays over the presence of the legendary Angelo Messina. The Morellis of New York are a powerful Family. A little while back, my father attempted to align with them, through Messina himself, but the episode ended badly.
Very badly.
My fear is that Luca D’Amato, the Morelli Don, has scented blood in the water, and sent his former Underboss to join the feeding frenzy. The last thing I need is some East Coaster trying to move in when the balance of power has been destabilized.
We arrive at the cemetery and I take my mother’s arm to lead her to the graveside for the burial. Despite the issues her presence her raises, I’m glad that she came. It sends a clear signal to anyone watching that I have unbreakable ties to the old country, an alliance of blood, and the support of very powerful people.
My mother might play at being a black widow, but in Italy she’s feared and respected—and here, too. The daughter of an esteemed Godfather, she built up her own networks and power both before and after her divorce. But she raised me in the oldest traditions, impressing on me the importance of strong leadership and wise choices.
For her, today is a day of celebration, despite her black veils. With my ascension,herpower and influence also grows. But something in me chafes against that notion. I do not intend to be a pawn in someone else’s game.
Not my mother’s game, not the Morellis’, and certainly not the unidentified murderer’s.
Is that murderer here today, I wonder? While the priest mouths his homilies, I look around the smaller group here with us. Emissaries from the other notable Families in LA—the Bernardis, the Azzopardis, the Mancinis, even the Espositos—have been sent to pay their respects, despite our differences.
PacSyn’s Chuckles Moran had the sense not to show up.
A little way back stand Messina and his husband, motionless, but I feel their eyes on me.
And behind them, parked some way down the narrow streets of the cemetery, are two FBI agents—the ones my men refer to as the Barbarian and the Ice Maiden. The man is Craig Barbieri, an ambitious agent who has been leading specialized disruption work on our Family since he arrived in Los Angles half a year ago. The woman, Monica Anderson, is supposedly an expert in organized crime, and she’s recently become laser-focused on the Castellanis. The two of them are leaning up against a black Porsche SUV, arms folded, staring from behind their dark glasses.
I hope the two of them find this soap opera more entertaining than I do.
I step forward to throw the first handful of earth onto the coffin, and for the first time today I think about my father, the father I knew, the father I loved before I was old enough to realize his true nature. He was a man who always put himself first, his own needs, his own desires. If there’s one thing he taught me, it’s to act in all ways opposite to him. I will always put the Family first.
Unbidden, I have a flash of Teddy MacCallum’s face as he leaned in to kiss me yesterday, and the breath goes out of me. He is beautiful, yes, but there’s something else beneath that perfect facade that draws me in. He seems…lonely.
It was the texts, I decide, thinking it over as I watch the handfuls of dirt pile up on the coffin.
Any young man his age should have had a million texts come in when I turned on his phone. But there was only one brief message from his mother, and no calls at all.
