Page 71 of One Second After Another

The values of Cosa Nostra had been at the base of their family’s entire life. Everything about the way they invited people to their home to the color car his father could drive was determined by the rules of made men.

Of mafia.

His father would do and say a lot of things—but he would never speak against la famiglia. Not even to tell his son that he was right.

That was fine.

Silence could still be respect.

“Maybe I just want to be more than this,” Luca told his father. “Or maybe I just don’t want to be told what I have to be.”

“Does being more also mean being alive, too?” Zeke returned, softer than Luca expected.

He didn’t get the chance to answer. His mother slipped into the entryway beside Zeke, the cordless phone to their home pressed against her palm where she covered the receiver end.

“It’s Naz,” she said, her gaze flicking to Zeke and then back to her son. “He said he was told to call here to find you.”

Luca didn’t hesitate to step across the room and take the phone from his mother. “Thanks, Ma.”

“You busy?”

It was the first thing Naz asked when Luca said hello. Was he busy? He thought about Penny, and how he only ever wanted to help. It was sadly ironic that in the end, helping meant doing nothing. That killed him.

Still, Luca replied to his friend, “No, man, I’m not busy.”

• • •

“I WAS AT MY FATHER’S place when she got there,” Naz said.

Although his words were clear, his gaze was distant, stuck on the little boy who sat beyond the doorway of his mother’s music room. Little Cross either didn’t know his father and uncle were watching him, or the kid just didn’t care. He tinkered with the keys as a familiar tune echoed from the brown bear perched on the edge of the piano. Soon enough, his tinkering of the keys turned into a matching melody that he played by ear.

Huh.

Luca missed that—somehow, his godson went from showing interest and taking lessons to seeking a piano out and making music. It was that moment when he realized just how much of his time and life had been wrapped up in a game he wasn’t sure he would be able to win. Or even ... a game he still wanted to play, for that matter.

He didn’t want to keep missing things.

“Luca,” Naz murmured.

He dragged a hand through his hair and tried to shrug off the distraction when his attention came back to his friend. “Sorry—she was there, you said?”

“I was already there—I had business to settle with my father. Personal and otherwise.”

Luca let out a soft damn. Then, he asked, “How was that, anyway?”

“Hard.”

Yeah, he bet. Luca wasn’t the only one dealing with issues relating to the most important man in his life. Still. Was that maybe the fate of men like them? Fathers and sons that pushed and pulled just a little too much from one another.

“She asked him to help again,” Naz said low, like he didn’t want the little boy in the music room or even the woman down the hall to hear. “Penny asked my father to help her.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

Luca’s gaze caught and held his best friend’s. “How the fuck do you not know when you were there?”

“He asked me to leave.”