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“I won’t leave without telling you. If you need me, come back down to the den. If I go out and you need something, Aunt Sylvia and Uncle Salvatore’s room is across the landing at the far end. Just knock. Uncle Sal’s a light sleeper.”
“I won’t disturb them in the middle of the night.”
She’s so aghast you’d think I told her to traipse into a palace and wake a king.
“You can if you need anything. Or you can go to Auntie Paola’s room. It’s the first one on the right down that hallway.”
“Okay.”
She sighs and accepts that suggestion.
“Wait. Does that mean if you go do something, Salvatore won’t?”
“It’s rare any of my uncles to go do something.”
I smile at her, and she nods. She won’t ask for more, and I appreciate it. She rolls onto her side, and I give her a quick kiss before I return downstairs. Cesare speaks first. He’s like a second father to me. He’s a good man who married into a family with a bunch of old fuckers who treated him like shit. I can remember both of Carmine’s grandfathers. Uncle Salvatore and Uncle Massimo couldn’t be less like their father. Same for Cesare and his father. Uncle Salvatore rules with an iron fist, butallof his family is everything to him. It’s how I didn’t get thrown out with the trash years ago.
“Is she all right?”
“Yeah. Tired. I watched that video. I knew what was coming. I shouldn’t have let her see it. I can’t believe I didn’t think about what she’d witness Aleks do.”
“We get desensitized to this stuff.”
He shrugs. He’s right. He may seem like a mild-mannered insurance agent, but he has all the same skills as the rest of us, with plenty of practice. Uncle Salvatore knows his skills are better used elsewhere. He’s only been coming to more of our meetings since shit went sideways while Carmine and Serafina were dating.
For all his parents’ dysfunction, they were always united about putting Carmine first. He’s had to let Carmine make his own mistakes and learn from them, but he’s always been there to point out that Carmine has to take responsibility for his actions. Then he’d help Carmine stand back up. Just like Auntie Paola has been a second mom to me, he’s been a second dad to me. Right now, his reassurance goes a long way.
I look over when Uncle Salvatore speaks.
“What do you want to do? Your decision.”
That’s more trust than he’s put in me for years. Two years ago, he wouldn’t have given me the opportunity to lead even if it were my girlfriend in danger. I’ve come a long way. I glance at Carmine, and he smiles. We’ve both come a long way. It helps that our family understands why we did the stupid things we did.
“I want Bartlomiej to lick our boots. His men work exclusively for us. If any work for the Kutsenkos, we ruin all their side hustles. Jacek— he’s going to pay us to stay alive. We’ll be collecting on that for years.”
I look over at the TV, which is now turned off.
“They’re going to deny targeting Sinead. They’re going to say they were staying informed. They’ll say Morris took it upon himself to put those devices in place. They’ll say they had nothing to do with O’Toole. They’ll fucking deflect. But they knew about her and gave Morris the green light. We all know they’ll claim it’s nothing like what we did.”
I look at Luca and Carmine.
“And it’s not. But they’ve always acted like they’re so much better than us. That they would never stoop to involving our women. That’s exactly what they did.”
I stop to think for a minute. I sit back and grin.
Carmine put his hands up as if to say, “spit it out.”
“There’s a Yale alumni dinner next week. Laura and Sinead were in the same class. I hadn’t planned to attend, but I’ll ask Sinead if she wants to go. If she does and Laura’s there, I might suggest Sinead strikes up a conversation with Laura. If we go together, it won’t be a secret we’re involved. I might suggest Sinead mention to Laura how Aleksei told a cop to investigate her. Then that cop got another guy involved who tried to ruin her career and endangered her. I might also have Sinead mention Laura’s husband is friends with two men who tried to blow her up. We won’t need to do a damn thing after that.”
I sit back against the sofa and watch the others laugh. Sinead might be the spark, but Laura is the powder keg. When she detonates, there won’t be a Kutsenko brother who doesn’t face her wrath.
* * *
“You look beautiful,piccolina.”
I brush the back of my fingers up the outside of her arm, loving how she shivers at my touch. She’s wearing an ice-blue cocktail dress that matches her eyes. We picked it out together after I suggested she talk to Laura. She had plenty of idea about things she could say. When we spotted the dress online, she was the one who said it would definitely make Laura think of her husband’s eyes. They’re the same color as Aleksei’s. It would likely make Laura even more pissed, even if it was subconscious.
Now we’re riding up the elevator to the floor with the ballrooms in the hotel that’s hosting the alumni dinner. As soon as we step off, we spot Laura and Maksim.
