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"Don't be. Life happens to us all." And it is my choice to live without any connection to mine.
It is the price I pay to keep both me and Lenny safe.
"How long have you lived here?"
"So sure I wasn't born in Oregon?"
"Besides your slips into Italian? I hear some Michigan in your voice. Maybe Detroit."
Ice washes through my vein, momentarily freezing my vocal cords. "How?"
"I notice things."
I wish he hadn't noticed that. It makes me feel exposed, and I'm not about to confirm or deny it. "I moved here five years ago to open Nuovi Inizi."
"Why a nightclub?"
Memories of another life in another place assail me. "I started the nightclub because that's what I knew."
After I lost the baby, Tino thought keeping me busy would help me get past the grief. It worked to an extent, but losing a baby isn't something you get over quickly.
Tino and his dad ran the Cosa Nostra clubs in Detroit. He asked me to take over doing the books for the clubs. I discovered an aptitude for bookkeeping, both balancing the real income and expenses and for ways to launder money.
I liked my new job. It was a respite from babysitting my adult brother-in-law and it gave me a chance to spend more time with my husband. Every aspect of running a club goes through the books in one way, or another. Hungry for knowledge of any kind, I ate it up.
What I didn't learn about running a club from doing the books, I learned from listening to Tino. Once I started working for the clubs, he never hesitated to talk business in front of me. Not that he was ever interested in my opinion about running them.
However, back then? I thought he was a modern thinking man because he let me listen in. Other mafia wives I knew weren't allowed to work and their husbands never talked shop in front of them.
I never got used to the noise and the crush of people at the clubs though. Mostly Tino made sure I spent time in them during the day.
I could have suggested he bring the paperwork to me and I do the books at home, but I never did. Because I didn't trust my husband not to expect me to watch over Lenny and do my work at the same time. So, I put up with the sounds and smells of the clubs. Something I still struggle with at Nuovi Inizi.
My favorite part of owning the nightclub is the administrative stuff that happens during the day, when the club is closed.
"I'm good at it," I add, realizing I've been silent too long while lost in my memories.
"You are. Nightclubs fail at a rate of 75%," Atlas says. "That you made Nuovi Inizi a success shows you're savvier than most."
I'm surprised he knows that. "Are you a trivia geek as well as an accent savant?"
Why did I say that? It implies he's right about where I'm originally from. Not that he'd find my family looking for Lucia Esposito.
"It's not trivia to me," he dismisses. "My family owns a few clubs in San Francisco and LA."
Woah. Okay. Seriously rich family.
"What would you do, if you didn't own the nightclub?" Atlas asks me.
"That's not an option." Lenny's care will always require a level of income I can't make anywhere else. "I'm not a dreamer I'm a doer."
Although the profit margins for Nuovi Inizi are good, they will just cover Lenny's care, my new mortgage and putting aside the money monthly that will be necessary for expansion.
Once I have enough saved, we will open up the second floor to private parties and install a VIP area for patrons willing to pay what will be hefty membership fees.
"Why here? Why the suburbs and not downtown?"
I answer his second question because answering the first would reveal too much. Unless I lie. And for some reason, even though I've spent the last five years lying about myself to pretty much everyone, I don't want to outright lie to him if I don't have to.
