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The oldest of the men, Lauro Romano, narrows his eyes at Giulio. “Did your manners die along with your father?”
Giulio shrugs, still smiling. “Nah, Lauro, you know I’ve always been like this. You were there at the third wedding.” He stops to chuckle. “But it’s lucky you weren’t there for the fourth wedding.”
Lauro obviously doesn’t find it amusing. “Quite. The event was quite… tragic... How lucky you somehow managed to evade being caught in the crossfire.”
“Yeah, good thing I got out. Most of my dad’s close friends, not so much.” Giulio makes a show of frowning. “Hey, that’s a good point. Whyweren’tyou at the wedding?”
The younger Romano puffs up. He’s dressed in a fine suit, with equally expensive shoes, but none of that distracts from the fact that he’s younger than Giulio—maybe even closer to Vanessa’s age. “We had other business to attend to that day.”
Giulio looks at me. “Damn, more important than my old man’s wedding? That’s—nah, I’d call it cold if it weren’t the fourth one. Between you and me, I think there would have been a fifth one on the horizon, just as soon as he got tired of what’s-her-face.”
“Lucia Bellini,” I supply carefully. “That’s why we’ve got so many of Bellini’s former capos working for us now.”
“For you, and for Victor Corvi,” the sour-faced Lauro says. “I hope you have plans to contain him, Giulio.”
“Yep, I’m already working on it.” Giulio glances around the warehouse. “Did anybody bring lawn chairs? Or are we really just going to stand around the entire time?”
Romano’s consigliere Luigi Bucci scowls. “There are no chairs. This isn’t a social event.”
“Aww, Luigi, don’t be like that. I’m just thinking of poor Lauro! At his age, he’s not going to want to stand around for hours.”
“If you could stop your prattle and get to business, we wouldn’t need to stand around for hours,” Lauro snaps. “This isn’t some informal gathering, Giulio.”
“Right, right.” Giulio sets his backpack on the floor and puts his hands in his pockets. “So, business. Here’s my proposal: We carry on as we did before. You can keep the northeast, and I really don’t care what happens on the other side of the bridge. You help us process any shipments, we ensure your product makes it where it needs to go. Easy, really. We could have done all this by phone.”
“We don’t do business over the phone,” the younger Romano snaps. “That’s how the feds get you.”
He’s right, of course, and I would have chided Giulio about it too… if I thought Giulio was in any way serious about transmitting anything sensitive over potentially tapped lines.
Giulio’s full attention is on the young man now, though. “What’s your name, kid?”
“Nilo,” he says, glowering at Giulio. “We’ve met before. Twice.”
For a second, Giulio actually looks taken aback. “We have? No way. I remember names.” He glances at me. “Have I met Nilo before?”
I take a closer look at Nilo, but he doesn’t look familiar to me beyond the obvious resemblance to Lauro. “If you have, it wasn’t with me.”
“Damn, Nilo, sorry you weren’t memorable.” Giulio looks at one of the Romano foot soldiers. “I remember Paulo over there, and I remember Marco—though let’s be real, I could guessMarcoas somebody’s name and be right a good amount of time.”
The two men in question share awkward glances with each other, like they didn’t actually want to be noticed by anybody. Which makes sense. They work better as security if nobody pays attention to them.
“Anyway, doesn’t matter. Nilo, give me your number, I’ll take you to some of the clubs, make a real man out of you. How old are you? Eighteen?”
“Twenty-two,” Nilo says, though he really doesn’t look a day over eighteen on a good day. “And you’d have to be a real man to make one out of me.” He sneers at Giulio. “You’re just a stupid playboy who kept getting by because of Daddy.”
Lauro glares at Nilo, because no matter what somebody thinks of Giulio, it’s a bad idea to open any sort of negotiation with insults. Although Giulio, as always, provoked them first.
Giulio laughs and claps his hands. “That’s cute! Nice fire. Who is he, Lauro? Your nephew? Your grandson?”
“My youngest son,” Lauro says tersely. “I’m trying to teach him the family business.”
“Good for you!” Giulio rests an arm on my shoulder and pats my chest. “You think we’ll be doing this when I’ve got a kid? Taking our precious babies into highly charged situations where somebody might—”
Suddenly, a phone rings. It’s a highly obnoxious technopop tune, one that I recognize instantly.
“Don’t answer that,” I tell Giulio.
Grinning, Giulio reaches into his pocket and takes out the phone. “Sorry, I gotta take this.” Rather than putting the phone to his ear, he hits the speaker button. “Yo! I’m in a meeting, but what’s up?”
