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My thoughts exactly.
“I know just the place.”
Twenty minutes later I pulled up in Little Italy and parked my car in front of a small diner.
“Little Sicily?” Katja looked at the sign.
“Yeah, the food is great. Let’s go.”
It was pretty busy tonight, but I was sure we could find a table for two somewhere in the back. The sweet face of an elderly woman turned to us, and with a smile, she came to pull me in a hug.
“Enzo, dear boy. Are you dinning with us tonight?”
“Yes, ma’am. How’s Lou, is he feeling better?”
“Oh, yes, it was just a cold, but I told him to stay home a couple more days.”
Lou and Tina were like parents to my mom, and they were actually my godparents. The old man scared us a couple of weeks ago when he came down with a nasty flu that sent him to the E.R. I was happy to hear he was all better now.
“Can you find a table for two, Tina? I see business is good.”
“For you I will make a table, honey.” She laughed and looked at Katja. “And who is this lovely young girl? Is she…?” Same nosey Tina.
“She’s a friend. I promised her some of your famous chicken parm.”
Tina showed us to a table close to the window and served Katja with limoncello and garlic breadsticks while we were waiting for our food.
“Enzo, this such a nice place. It looks like someone’s home.”
“Tina wants to make people feel at home. My mom used to work here.”
“Really?” I guess it was a little surprising to think about the wife of the most powerful Don on the East Coast working in a little dinner like this. “Umm, was she really a stripper too?”
“Yes, a long time before I was born. Dad took her out of that life.” I wasn’t ashamed of what my mom did, and I wanted to see the motherfucker who had the balls to tell me I should be.
“They seem really in love, your parents.”
“Yeah, they are.”
“It would be nice to grow up in a house filled with so much love.”
Time to get to work.
“It wasn’t the same in your home?”
Katja laughed and crossed her arms under her breasts.
“You’ve seen my dad. What do you think?”
“That he’s an asshole.” There was no need to hide my opinion because I was pretty sure she already knew it. “What about your mom?”
“My mom was sweet and loving for a while.” I looked at her with raised eyebrows, encouraging her to keep going. “Then she turned cold, started drinking too much, and when I was nine, she took her own life.”
Shit. It couldn’t have been easy for her to get through that.
“May I ask why?”
“She’d been with my dad for fifteen years. There’s only so much someone can take before giving up.” I fucking knew that asshole was rotten to his motherfucking core. I wanted to dig deeper, but there was no use in making Katja relive that. “I’m the only person who has somewhat of a normal relationship with him. He’s not a loving father, don’t get me wrong, but I think he likes to have a child to brag about. It makes him feel like he accomplished something, so I have always been treated nice.”
