“Maybe it’s time for you to find an assistant kitchen manager for him so he can be home with his family,” she suggested. No way would he go for that. This was his kitchen. In his eyes, he’d already been screwed out of running the restaurant; if I cut his hours so he could get shit at home sorted, he’d accuse me of trying to push him out when that was something I’d never consider. She waved her hand in the air. “Don’t mind me, I know it’s a silly thought.”
“No Mama, it’d be a perfect solution if we were talking about anyone other than Freddie,” I told her. As much as I loved Papa, I hated the way he’d always blown off anything Mama had to say about the restaurant. They were from a different time and he’d explicitly told her that she ran the house so he could be in charge of providing for the family. He was probably rolling over at his grave knowing his son’s wife was such a miserable piece of work.
“Frankie, I need you in the storage room. The delivery guy is here and there’s a bunch of shit we never order.” Tony rushed back out of the kitchen as quickly as he’d appeared. I dried off my hands and leaned against the counter for a moment. My head was still aching and my stomach still churned at the thought of food. Why couldn’t today have gone smoothly?
The liquor delivery issue wound up being nothing more than an incompetent driver who didn’t check the contents of the boxes before unloading them. It was easy enough to sort out, and I didn’t hold back when giving Tony a hard time for pulling me away from the wonderful world of yanking shit out of shrimp. He didn’t need to know I was grateful for a reason to pass deveining on to someone else.
Freddie texted me around ten, asking if everything was ready for lunch and apologizing that he wasn’t there. I promised him we had everything under control and strongly suggested he focus on what he needed to do. That resulted in a series of text messages filled with orders for me to pass on to the cooks if he wasn’t there and a warning that he was holding me responsible for making sure they didn’t totally fuck things up. I promised him I could handle it and told him to leave me alone so I could finish getting set up.
We almost made it through lunch without a catastrophe. Matteo seemed to be finding his groove on the serving floor and hadn’t dropped a tray in weeks. Occasionally, he still entered a ticket under the wrong table number, but Mama was always there to help him fix it. Today seemed like a bad day for him, too, and after the third ticket he had to fix, he started banging his head against the wall, muttering about how stupid he was.
Instead of teasing him or snapping on him the way I would have before Calvin, I asked Luis to cover the grill for me and tugged at my apron strings as I rounded the pass through. He flinched when I squeezed his shoulder and guided him into the walk-in cooler, forgetting that’s where Freddie often took his cooks to dress them down out of earshot of his other employees.
“Hey, you’re okay,” I assured him. I pulled my youngest brother into a hug and held him tight. No one knew why, but this had always been the easiest way to calm Matteo when he got in a mood. Mama used to worry we’d squeeze the life out of him, but we knew what we were doing.
“I’m not!” Matteo jumped at his own outburst, a testament to how scattered his mind was today. “Maybe you were right and I’ll never be able to hack it.”
“No, I was an asshole,” I argued. “When you started, I was trying to do everything by myself, trying to live up to the standards Papa set. He never accepted help from anyone, so I thought I had to do the same, and it made me a shitty brother. You’re doing the best you can. Asking to move to day shift because the chaos of dinner was too much for you proves you’re more mature than we give you credit for.”
“You really think so?” Matteo lowered his gaze and brushed a hand over his hair. The way he shrunk in on himself made me feel like an even bigger bag of dicks.
“I do.” I pulled him in for another quick hug. I had work to do and he needed to get back to his tables. “You need to cut yourself some slack sometimes.”
“Thanks, Frankie.” Matteo spun around to leave and ran right into a stack of produce boxes someone had been too lazy to put where they belonged, sending peppers of every color rolling across the floor.Fucking wonderful.He dropped to his knees and started scooping up as many peppers as he could hold while I righted the boxes. “Shit! I’m so sorry, Frankie! See, you were right when you said I was a menace.”
“This one’s not on you,” I told him, even though his spastic departure had cause the pepper avalanche. “Get back to your tables and I’ll handle this.”
After I had everything picked up, I took a moment to lean against one of the racks and calm down. With the way everything had spiraled out of control in the morning, we’d be lucky if there wasn’t a kitchen fire before the night was through.
18
Frankie
The building didn’t burndown Friday night, but that was about the only thing that didn’t go wrong. Freddie showed up right as the dinner rush started, Sophia in tow, which meant he was distracted. We finally convinced Mama that we could run the restaurant without her oversight so she could take the pint-sized terror home for the night. I love the hell out of my niece, but she makes sure everyone knows when she’s overtired or bored.
The newest server made Matteo look graceful and managed to drop a bottle of red wine onto a guest’s handbag. There was no calming her down, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she threatened to destroy us.
The icing on the cake was when Tony got in Freddie’s face, reminding him that he wasn’t the only brother who gave a damn about the restaurant. I raced into the kitchen seconds before fists started flying and dragged Tony back to the office, reminding him that Freddie didn’t cope well when he felt threatened. Which he did, because that crazy bitch he married had told him she wanted a divorce, and he was convinced that meant she was going to try and take Sophia. I’d take out loans against the business, find a loan shark, do whatever I could to make sure that never happened. Once he got over the initial shock, we’d remind Freddie that the Marino brothers took care of their own.
The second the last server finished cashing out and I had the bar tills reconciled, I was out the door. As soon as Max spotted me, he had a drink poured and waiting before my ass hit the seat at the end of the bar. And he made sure the glass stayed full until bar time, but that may have had something to do with the twins flanking me. Enzo once again only had a couple of drinks, but Tony and I wound up going drink for drink until the lights came up and Eli once again poured us into a cab.
When I woke up, there was a text waiting from Calvin.
Good morning, brat. Drink a quart of water and don’t forget to eat. And maybe consider giving your liver a break tonight.
I closed my eyes and took a quick assessment of the situation. My head didn’t feel half as bad as it had yesterday morning, which meant we’d had the good sense to skip tequila shots, but my stomach was definitely sour. Luckily, Saturday dayshift was slower and I didn’t have to go in until mid-afternoon. So, after getting up to piss and get the water I’d been commanded to drink, I flopped back onto the guest bed and went back to sleep.
My nap was unceremoniously cut short by a tiny demon with sharp elbows landing on my chest. “Wake up Uncle Frankie!”
“Freddie! I think I found something you lost.” A little warning that he was dropping Sophia off here today would’ve been nice, but I didn’t mind. Tony and Enzo would be heading in soon, and I could use something to keep my mind off the fact Calvin was going to be out of pocket most of the day today. His plan to keep in nearly constant contact had been foiled by sketchy cell reception, but I was determined to prove I wouldn’t fall apart every time he had to take Ryan to a tournament.
Sophia giggled when I wrestled her to the bed and started tickling her. Thank God for wearing a pair of shorts to bed, otherwise it could’ve been an awkward moment.
“Hey, I tried calling but you didn’t answer,” Freddie said from the doorway. He looked calmer than he had yesterday, but the dark circles beneath his eyes made it clear he hadn’t slept for shit. “Sophia, why don’t you go raid Uncle Tony’s kitchen? You can even steal a bowl of his cereal if you want.”
“The sugar kind?” She batted her big brown eyes at her dad and we both knew there was no arguing with her. Freddie nodded and she jumped off the bed and was gone.
“What’s up? I know this isn’t a social visit.” I leaned over the edge of the bed and grabbed my T-shirt.
