“Should I call her?” Isaiah asked. “I’m trying to earn brownie points.”
They kissed and Isaiah left with the phone, ringing our mom.
I waited until he was out of the office before passing comment. “I can’t believe you’ve still got him working here,” I said.
“He’s not really working,” Santo said, picking the paperweight up again. “In fact, he’s got his own office.”
“The one with the windows papered over?”
He laughed. “I don’t want any of you pervs spying on him.”
“Don’t worry, he’s not my type,” I said, which seemed to offend Santo even more.
“Are you prepared for this weekend?” he asked, rolling his eyes. “I wish I could fucking be there.”
“You can,” I said, then regretted it. I didn’t need him coming by Palazzo right now, especially not with Kalen’s ability to ignore my threats. “But you’re probably best off staying out of the line of sight.”
He nodded. “I know that. You think I don’t know that?” Then he shrugged. “Dad went to them.”
“Because he had a line of succession already planned,” I said. “You.”
“Then you.”
“Then Tomaso,” I said with a laugh.
We both shook our heads. Of course, there were worse things that could happen. Anyone else could take over, or the families surrounding us could really make a move for power—if they hadn’t already, and we just weren’t hearing about it yet.
“Not even the point,” Santo said. “I’ve got to stay out of all that for Isaiah. It’s different thinking of someone else’s happiness.”
My teeth clenched. “Listen, I love that we’re able to be free and shit now, but you don’t have to rub it in my face. Some of us are still working through all the shit Dad put on us.”
“Tomaso more than you,” he said. “So, let’s just be thankful we’re both functioning.”
And with that, I had to think about how to tackle my Kalen problem. There was no way I was putting that out there for Santo. He’d tell me to kill him, tell me to do it somewhere nobody would find him, but I swear the Feds chipped their agents fresh out of the kennel—I mean Quantico.
***
I’d expected to see him when I got back to Palazzo and was disappointed when I hadn’t. Perhaps he’d chickened out of actually playing this game, since I’d seen his mom. He probably thought I’d take advantage of that relationship to get him to leave, but something about the entire thing told me it was a setup. Something about it told me that even entertaining laying a finger on his mom would lead to a whole heap of charges on my head—something basic, arrested, and then forced into ratting on someone—which would never happen, but in his world, it was probably something he thought was going to.
Standing at the end of the bar, I had a glass of gin and tonic with some petals or shit in the glass that made me think of the potpourri in my mom’s bathroom. But it added a taste to the gin, a nice taste, surprisingly. I sipped at it, savoring the taste on the back of my tongue.
“What did you tell that kid?” Lorna asked, whipping a towel over her shoulder.
“What kid?”
“You know who I’m talking about,” she said. “He’s not turned up for his shift.”
I sipped from my glass to hide the smile, but Lorna waited for me to respond. “Doesn’t he strike you as someone who’s overqualified?”
She shrugged. “He’s just here to help his mom,” she said. “If you knew that, you’d probably be a little more sympathetic. I love it when kids come back to town, wanting to be in their folks’ lives again. It’s sweet.”
Sickly. It was impossible to know if that was true, since he stunk of Fed, and yet, none of my contacts had any information on any ongoing investigation into the family. Most had died off with my dad, which was one good thing he did for the family in death.
Lorna continued, saying that since family meant a great deal to me—the Bianchi family were the entire reason I was alive, of course family was everything—I had to give him a hand if he was only here for his mom. But there was something about him. That bratty approach he had with his hands on my body and the attitude, it just made me want to do those things I knew he was internally begging for... on his knees, begging, and stripped naked to make sure there were no wires.
“I’m gonna call him,” Lorna said in the absence of my words.
“You should just let him show up and then see what’s going on if and when he does show up,” I told her. “And I don’t know how long that will take, but when he comes in, I want to talk with him.” I took my glass of gin from the bar.
