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He waved and walked off. A couple of his soldiers joined him, and the place emptied out. Colleen sat next to me, staring at the table top.
“Who’s Aida?” she asked.
“His wife,” I said. “Met her under similar circumstances, come to think of it.”
“Figured,” she said. “You mafia assholes are all the same.”
“You have no clue,” I said. “Come on. Let’s go back home.”
“That’s all you wanted?” she asked. “Just a little social visit.”
I looked at her for a long moment and sighed. I picked up my coffee and took a sip.
“That was more than a social visit,” I said. “You know that, right?”
“How?” she asked. “You barely talked about anything.”
“No, that’s true,” I said. “But he saw you, met you. He heard a little bit of my plans. Now he’ll talk about it with his soldiers, and word about you will leak out.”
She groaned. “Are you serious?”
“I’m serious,” I said. “I want to make sure your uncle knows I have you, and I figured this was a nice and safe way to do it.”
She clenched her coffee cup then slowly relaxed her hands. “He wasn’t kidding when he said you think ahead.”
“Too much sometimes,” I said, my voice soft. “But that wasn’t the only reason I came.”
“There’s more?” she asked.
“I wanted to make sure him and I were still good,” I said. “It’d been a little while since we saw each other. I’ve been busy with my territory and he’s been growing his family. I wanted to make sure that if the Club came calling, he’d have my back.”
“And you found that out?” she asked.
I nodded. “He’s still the same old Dante he always was. As soon as the guns come out, he’ll be there.”
She gave me a strange look and I met her eye with a smile. She shook her head and bit her lip.
“I don’t get you,” she said.
“Good.” I slipped out from behind the table and stood up. “Come on. Let’s get you back home.”
“Wait,” she said. “Can I finish this coffee? It’s really good.”
I hesitated, then nodded. “Sure. You can.”
“And maybe… can we get some bread?”
I laughed and gestured toward the baskets. “What kind do you want?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Whatever’s good.”
“All right then. Drink your coffee, don’t make a mess.”
She nodded and glowered down at her drink, but she sipped it and seemed a little bit happier.
I walked over to the front and ordered a couple loaves from the dark-haired kid. He looked familiar but I couldn’t place his name. When he brought them over, I leaned against the counter and watched Colleen drink her coffee and stare down at the table. I wondered what she was thinking, but I could probably guess.
She was trying to figure out how she was going to get out of this alive.
The answer was right there in front of her face though.
The only way for her to get out of this in one piece was to give in to me and trust that I could take care of her.
Otherwise, fighting me would only make things worse. And trying to run would only make me crack down harder.
And she couldn’t trust her own people. If she wasn’t lying about not being involved with the Club, that meant they had no reason to believe a word she said.
So she was in a shit position. And I was the only man that could help.
Hell, I was the only man that wanted to help.
She just had to open her eyes and see it.
“Thanks for these,” I said to the kid.
“Sure,” he said and nodded.
I tossed twenty bucks into the tip jar then walked over to Colleen. I nodded at her and gestured for her to follow. She got up slowly and shuffled out behind me. We got into the car, and I took her home.6ColleenAfter our visit with that Dante mobster, Steven drove around for the rest of the day and ran errands. He left me in the car and went into random buildings. He spent twenty minutes in a bank, a half hour in a dry cleaner’s, forty minutes in a deli, ten minutes in a hair salon. We drove all over the neighborhood like that, and each time he left me alone in the car with the engine running.
It was like he was daring me to take off.
But I didn’t. I sat there, listening to the radio, glaring at him like I hated him while my shoulder ached.
He picked up dinner from a little Italian pizza place around the corner from his house. It was spaghetti and meatballs, pretty basic stuff, but it was actually really good. I ate sitting on his couch and watched Wheel of Fortune while he paced around in the kitchen, talking on the phone between bites of his dinner.
I tried my best to tune him out, but I kept getting snippets of conversation. I heard him mention the Club a few times, heard my name twice, and heard him say something about hitting them again. I tried to focus on the puzzles, but the way he was pacing around kept me distracted.
