I couldn’t help my curiosity. “Is there something wrong with Sal? He seemed like a very nice man.”
“Oh, he is,” Marco replied. “Unless you get on his bad side. Then you’re fucked. He’s the kind of man who, if he says you’re dead to him, he means that literally.”
Liam sighed. “What Marco is trying not to say is that Sal is in thefamilybusiness, so to speak.”
“Family business,” I repeated. “I don’t…” Then it hit me.Family. Italian. “Oooh,” I whispered. “Okay. But he seemed like such a nice guy.”
“He is a nice guy,” Liam insisted. “He helped us get a friend of ours out of a difficult spot not that long ago.”
“Yeah, he did,” Marco grudgingly admitted.
“Anyway,” Liam said, elongating the word. “I was going to suggest that you, Tony, and Michael get something from the café. You have a few hours before he’s out of surgery.”
I glanced over to where the two brothers were still talking to their mother. “It looks like they might be a while.”
Marco sighed. “I’ll go rescue them. Mom tended to rely on Tony when I was in the Navy. He’s always been something of a caretaker. Pops will listen to him when he won’t necessarily listen to my mother.”
He went over to his mother and spoke quietly to her. She glanced at me, said something to Tony in Italian, and then shooed him and Michael away. They came over to me, and Tony said, “I’ve been told to feed you.”
I chuckled. Trust an Italian mother to want to feed a stranger. “We’d better go before it closes.”
The three of us went back into the atrium to the small café. We got sandwiches and sodas and sat at one of the tables set around the atrium. I leaned over to Tony and asked, “How are you holding up?”
He waggled his hand. “Cosi cosi.” He shook his head. “Sorry. I meant so so. When I drop into Italian, it takes me a minute to get out of it.”
“I didn’t even know you spoke Italian,” I said. “You’ll have to teach me some so I can talk to your parents.”
A soft smile curved his lips. “I’d be happy to.”
Michael had opened his laptop and was alternating between typing on his keyboard and checking his phone. Finally, he made a sound of satisfaction. “Gianna’s on the plane. I got her a first-class seat. The flight will land in two hours.”
Tony pulled out his phone. “I’ll see if Rory is available to pick her up.” He went to get up to make the call, but I put a hand on his arm to stop him. “If you can’t get anyone, I’ll go get her. I just need a car.”
His eyes got glassy and he kissed me. “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”
After Tony left to make the call, Michael closed the lid of his laptop and said, “I’m so glad Tony finally found someone who’s good to him. He needs that.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I simply said, “Thank you.”
Tony came back smiling. “Rory said he’d do it. Set him up with a bonus in his next paycheck.”
“Will do,” Michael said, opening his laptop.
We finished our food and made our way back to the waiting room. Tony let his mother know when his sister would be arriving. I settled myself on a small sofa in the corner and opened my laptop, figuring I could put the finishing touches on the character art I’d been working on while Tony spent time with his family.
I was startled out of my artistic zone when Tony exclaimed, “No fucking way!”
When I looked up, I saw him staring at his phone, with Marco and Michael looking over his shoulder. I saved my work and closed my laptop. “What’s wrong?”
“One of our clients needs a personnel extraction in Colombia,” Tony replied.
It took me a second to remember why that would be a problem. “Oh. But you have a family emergency.”
“There’s no fucking way I’m leaving with Pops in the hospital,” Marco growled.
“But don’t you have those new people you just hired?” I asked.
Marco and Tony looked at each other. “We do,” Tony said slowly. “We could send them in with Gabe, Andrea, and Pete.”
