There’s been a lot of talk over the last year about the Morellis letting a woman into their ranks. Talk and laughs, but I know Nick Fontana wouldn’t have anyone working for him who wasn’t lethal. So if the Clemenza thinks he can charm Sophia Vicente—granddaughter of a renowned Morelli Capo—he’s gonna find himself shit out of luck.
“I hope you didn’t get too knocked around,” Vicente is saying.
“Not at all,” Caligula replies graciously. “You were very professional.”
“Thanks,” she says. “First time. Next time it’ll go smoother.”
He actually laughs. “I’ll look forward to it.”
Fontana, next to me, is silent. He’s staring straight ahead but in that focused way that tells me he’s actually watching me. Making sure I don’t take a suicide run off the bridge.
I’m gripping the wheel so hard the leather is creaking, thinking about the exact pressure it takes to crush a human windpipe, and the Clemenza is making friends with the woman who kidnapped him. He could charm the devil out of his pitchfork. That’s what makes him so dangerous. That’s what makes him?—
My eyes go back to the mirror, and for the first time, the Clemenza meets my gaze. I have to jerk back into the lane when I realize I’m drifting.
“You okay, Orsini?” Fontana asks at once.
“Fine,” I snarl back. “Don’t worry, I won’t scratch up your car.”
“It’s Carlo’s,” he says, referring to his lawyer boyfriend, a smarmy shark that I’ve only seen from a distance. “And believe me, you don’t want to be on the end of that mouth when he’s pissed.”
I’ve got a bitchy mouth of my own to worry about right there in the back of the car. I wonder what he spilled to the Morellis? Well, it doesn’t matter much. Once we’re alone in my house, I’llsilence him forever, then sit down and wait for death to arrive on my doorstep.
Funny how I don’t feel much when I think about that. I’ll have fulfilled my life’s purpose. Everything I’ve been working toward.
Won’t have anything left driving me once that’s done.
Fontana shifts in his seat. “I guess your new Boss is pretty much the same as the old. Doesn’t like the queers much, does he?”
He keeps his voice low enough that the back seat can’t hear over Vicente’s chatter. I don’t respond, because what the hell is there to say? And I’m not going to badmouth the Boss to a Morelli asshole.
“We never crossed paths when I was working for the Giulianos,” Fontana goes on. “But we would’ve been just starting out. Worked different crews, I guess. And I wasn’t with the Gees all that long.”
“Yeah,” I scoff. “You got a better offer.”
“You know how it happened?” I don’t answer. “They beat the shit out of me,” Fontana goes on, like he’s talking about the weather. “My so-called brothers. And they set me up for a stretch inside. Framed me. I’d still be rotting in there if Carlo hadn’t shown up, sent by the old Don, Tino Morelli. He sent his best lawyer to get a Giuliano nobody out of jail. A man I’d never met did more for me than the Family I’d bled for.”
I can believe it. But things are different under Big Gee. His own brother is gay, and he made Seb his Underboss, same level as Fontana. “Times have changed,” I say abruptly. “Big Gee’s cool with his brother, and he’s cool with me, too.”
“In my experience, the Giulianos don’t stay cool for long.”
“What is this?” I ask derisively. “A recruitment drive?”
“Just a friendly heads-up.”
I snort. “I appreciate the concern. But I know what I’m doing.”
He looks at me for a long moment. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s what I thought, too.”
We ride the rest of the way in silence, the city scrolling past outside the tinted windows. Gray buildings, gray sky, the first real cold of the season sitting heavy over the gray river. The Clemenza’s laugh drifts up from the back seat at something Vicente says.
I tighten my grip on the wheel and think about my father.
At last I pull up to the curb at the front of the house, and Fontana and I get out. So does Vicente.
And the Clemenza just sits there patiently until I open his fucking door for him.
“Thank you, Dami,” he says with that sickening smile. And then he slides his arm into mine and looks up at me with an adoring face.
