My fingers wrapped around the strip of metal. It took dangling the piece between my fingers for me to realize was the object was.
A watch—mywatch.
I glared at it. “How did you wind up here?”
The metal was silent.
I kept my car pristine. I didn’t even drink in here, let alone leave personal items like change or tie clips tucked in the compartments. Yet here was the designer watch. The one that I knew for a fact hadn’t been on my wrist last weekend when I left The Galway Arms.
Which meant sometime in the last week, the little criminal came to her senses, broke into my car, and returned it. There were several spots where it could have happened. Tomorrow, I would carefully retrace my steps, searching the haunts for any sign of her.
The watch slipped through my fingers. The metal seemed to pulse with a promise. I caught it and let it trickle down again. If I was going to be buried alive by the schemes of my grandfather, I might as well have one more moment of fun.
And my little thief was proving to be exactly that.
Chapter 7 – Nico
While the upper echelons of our organizations made every effort to blend in with high society, the workforce of the mob gathered in three or four local destinations. Stepping into the trattoria felt like coming home. Luna Luce was a fifth-generation restaurant, and the history was plastered over the walls. Pietro Gallo and his sons were ruthless soldiers when duty called, but no one would know the plump cook and his teddy bear sons were anything more than East Coast Italian-Americans who could make simple ingredients taste like heaven.
“Nico! Amico mio, come stai?” Luigi shouted.
“Bene, é tu?” I spoke with a note of warmth.
Men rose from their aperitivo. Coming forward, they took turns clapping me on the back.
“We didn’t know you were in town.” Luigi fake punched my stomach. “When did you get back?”
“Last week.” I braced for another hit. This one packed more force.
“What? And you didn’t tell us?” my oldest friend accused. “No cool, Dommy-boy. Not cool.”
A weight slid from my shoulder to hear his voice. Most of these men were the crew I used to run with back in the day. My father trusted them implicitly, and he insisted I learn the ropes from them. How could I lead them someday if I didn’t understand the nuts and bolts of the business? And that was exactly what I’d done. While my grandfather would rather schmooze with the capos, the aristocracy, and the dirty business colleagues, my father thought it was important that I gain the trust of these men.
To be honest, I’d been dreading this reunion.
After three years away, a secret part of me thought the soldiers would have forgotten me. Or worse, hated me for killing a sworn member without orders. Butas they each took their turn embracing me, shaking my hand, sharing a joke or teasing me, I wasn’t sure I was so scared of this moment.
“I know, I know,” I laughed. “I should have come here last weekend, but I had to check in with a potential business associate. Forgive me?”
They rumbled like a pack of happy, eager hounds.
As they pulled me to a central table, they talked over one another. Dozens of voices rose and fell, each engaging in conversation, retelling tales of the past three years. They weren’t speaking directly to me, breaking off to laugh together, participants in their stories or listening to one another with rapt interest.
I managed to snag Luigi’s eye. My chin tipped to the side in an imperceptible nod. He shot me a wink and then ambled back to the kitchen to shout at his father.
***
“There’s rumbling with a Camorra faction,” Daddy Giuseppe grunted.
Standing out back, under the guise of taking a smoke break with the old man, Luigi, Joey, and I formed a tight semi-circle around the girthy cook.
Emanuele knocked through the back door, shutting it with a slam behind him. “They’re all drinking to your health, amico.”
I grimaced. “I don’t know what for.”
“Shut up, kid. You fuckin’ know why,” Giuseppe’s accent was thicker than the stew he served. “You’re back, which means things can straighten out for us.”
“Cops breathing down our necks, casinos selling dope, construction projects stalled for this or that.” Joey flicked his lighter open and shut. “Things took a hit when your old man died, but it was nearly as cadostropic when you left.”
