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Immediately, Angelo’s expression sours. “You know I hate you working with the Irish.”
“You hate me working with anyone who doesn’t have a nonna with a secret alfredo sauce recipe.”
When it comes to business partners, I don’t discriminate. If they’re smart and can front cash and connections, I’ll look past their family ties. Kelly might be an O’Hare, but he’s all right in my books. We’ve got three joint ventures in Vegas together—a casino, a bar, and a boutique hotel—and our partnership has worked seamlessly for the last eight years.
“What does he want, and why do I have to be there?” Angelo grunts.
“He…has a habit of wanting things that aren’t his,” I say with a tight smile. “Just need him to know Dip isn’t unclaimed territory.”
He nods. “All right. But I don’t want you whining at me if he gets a bullet in his head.”
I roll my eyes. “No whining.”
Angelo leaves me in my office with a near-empty liquor bottle and violent thoughts.
In dire need of something stronger to distract myself, I decide I probably should choose my top three sins of the month for when my brothers and I meet in the church on Sunday.
I open my laptop, pull up the Sinners Anonymous voicemail box, and click autoplay.
One by one, the sound of sin fills the room.
There’s always the usual shit when I listen. Shaky confessions of road collisions from the side of a highway. Drunken, unintelligible slurs from people whose demons only come out at three a.m. But occasionally, there’s a sin that brings a perverted smirk to my lips and sweeps a thrill under my skin.
Today though, they aren’t scratching the itch as well as they usually do. So, I reach over and open the sub-folder of calls I’ve removed from the shared network.
I slip a cigarette out of its carton and tuck it into the crook of my mouth. Swipe the flame of a Zippo underneath it.
Then I lean back, close my eyes, and let Penelope’s silly ramblings soak into my skin like an ointment.
If I’m sinking to the bottom, at least her voice will keep me company on the way down.
