Page 335 of John + Siena: The Complete Duet

ONE

“Damn, how much did you lose?”

“A solid five-K,” Michel muttered to John’s left.

Andino laughed hard. “I told you that was not the team to bet on, man.”

“Yeah, fuck you, too.”

At the other side of the table, Lev—also known as Pink to almost everybody who didn’t know the man personally—smirked as he reached for the creamer sitting in the middle of the table to add to his steaming black coffee. “I mean, everybody told your stupid ass not to bet on that team, Michel, and yet …”

“I favor the underdogs, that’s all.”

John chuckled. “Just because, at one point in time, you were the underdog doesn’t mean every other underdog will always win.”

Michel sighed, and turned to stare out the window. He knew better than to keep engaging the conversation between his cousins—and Pink, who was just a friend. Well, Lev was an enforcer for Andino who now moved between the main Marcello faction and John’s side of the business in another part of the city.

Sure, John could have easily used one of the men who had shown they were—mostly—trustworthy from the handful of original Calabrese Capos instead of taking one of Andino’s most favored, and loyal, men to keep his faction under control. But hell, sometimes it was good to have someone a man could trust inexplicably to call on when shit needed done or someone had to be watched.

Pink was that guy.

“You know what,” Michel said, drawing John back to the chat at the table, “don’t you have somewhere to be, man?”

John shrugged, resting back in his chair with a warm mug of the best coffee this side of Manhattan between his palms. “Not for another ….” He made a show of checking his watch before giving his cousin a grin that he knew would irk Michel like nothing else. “Well, I’ll have to leave in ten minutes or so to make the meeting and not be terribly late. That’s more than enough time for me to annoy you a little more. Besides, I can stretch it a bit.”

Andino flashed his teeth in a grin. “Nobody says shit to a boss when they show up late, anyway. Everybody else is just early.”

He pointed a finger at his cousin. “Yes, that right there. Exactly that.”

“Fucking hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

Laughter rung out over the table, and likely drew in the attention of other patrons of Andino’s restaurant. Every single morning, this was where John came. Sometimes, it was just him and Andino having breakfast or a coffee. Other times, it was all of them. Just like they were right now. Either way, it was a good start to John’s day.

He needed that.

More than people understood.

Routine was still the thing that kept John moving from one thing to the next day after day without spiraling into a chaos of his brain’s making. Sure, the routine had changed a bit from what it used to be—and for the better, if he were being honest—but it still did the same thing for him regardless of what it was.

There was something to be said for the nostalgia of sitting down with old friends for a drink and good conversation. It was something Johnathan Marcello tried to do more often because, next to when he was home with his wife, this was one of the only times when he could actually relax and be himself.

Something that was easier said than done, considering everything. He figured … well, he’d probably earned many of the titles that people called him behind his back. Some were to his benefit, of course, because being the boss of the new Marcello faction—the old Calabrese Cosa Nostra—meant he constantly dealt with men who didn’t know John beyond his last name and the way he’d taken over their famiglia.

They called him crazy.

Unstable.

Not to be crossed.

Before, some of those things might have bothered him. Now, John knew it was better people feared the unknown about him than the things they did know. Everyone else in his life—the people who really mattered like the ones sitting at the table with him or his family spread out across the city—they saw the real John.

He liked that just fine.

“You know what, I was going to come and run interference with you for those bunch of assholes on your side of the city,” Michel muttered under his breath, “but I don’t think I will now. Should let you listen to their whiney asses all on your own.”

“No, you won’t,” John said assuredly, “because Gabbie is in court all day, you’re supposed to be on vacation from the hospital, and you have nothing else better to do with your day. At least with me, you get to play mafia.”