AllFreeNovel
Share Us
11
SERA
The next morning Daddy calls me, to have me catch him up on business matters that have been taking place while he’s been gone. I do my best to tell him everything, leaving out the parts where Antony helped me with Ronnie Greco and the union reps. Daddy seems happy and impressed with how I’ve been handling things. I wish I could be prouder about that. But the sad fact is, I know I couldn’t have done it without Antony’s help.
Daddy and I discuss the upcoming monthly tribute that must be paid to Luca Pagano. This one is trickier: I know there’s no way that I, a mere woman, can show up to pay tribute to the boss with all the other capos. Daddy assures me he’ll be back in time to do this.
“When are you coming back, Daddy?” I ask.
“Soon, soon. Don’t you worry. Meantime, keep out of trouble.” He sighs. “Ah, how I wish you were here to entertain your mother and your sister. They are in my hair,Madonna! The silliness.”
“Well, to be fair, Daddy, there’s really not a lot for them to do there. Neither of them are big readers. And there’s no shoppingmall. They must be going stir-crazy out there with nothing to buy and no window shopping to be had.”
“And they’re taking everyone with them on their trip to the looney bin,” Daddy agrees. “Those two are on my last nerve, I swear to God. At least there is no trouble they can get into while they’re here. But they are driving me around the bend, little one. I think they’re trying to drive me to the edge of insanity so I’ll agree to take them back to Cleveland. Your mother has already extorted from me a grand shopping trip to New York City just as soon as they get back.”
“I heard. And unfortunately, it sounds like they’re hell-bent on taking me with them.”
He chuckles. “Well, at least in that case, I can count on you to watch them so they don’t spend me out of house and home.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it. Mamma’s got an engagement party on her mind. And a wedding after that. I can only imagine the plans she’s making.”
Daddy groans again. “Madonna. That woman will drive me to an early grave.”
Don’t worry, Daddy,I think as I hang up the phone.There won’t be an engagement party or a wedding. Maybe the money they won’t be spending will be a consolation to you that this whole engagement has been for show.
Later on, around noon, I’m in my father’s office trying to decide whether I should break for lunch, when there’s a discreet knock on the door. It opens, and Fay enters.
“Antony D’Agostino is here to see you,” she says as she stands in the doorway. Our long-time cook — and sometime nanny back when Tina and I were kids — has a bizarre expression on her face. It’s somewhere on the continuum between amusement and perplexity. “Or should I say, yourfiancé?”
“Send him in,” I tell her, ignoring the piercing look she is giving me. Unfortunately, Fay knows me a little too well forcomfort on this one. I remember confiding in her when I was fourteen or so and had my first crush, on a boy who worked at a store in the local shopping mall. Fay was a safer person to tell a secret like this than my mother, who would have just clicked her tongue and told me boyslike thatwere not for me.
I certainly haven’t talked to Fay about the male species much since then. All she knows about my romantic life is that I’m at least nominally heterosexual, and that I recently got engaged to a man who was almost a total stranger to me two weeks ago. But still, she watched me grow up, and something in her expression tells me she suspects more than she’s letting on.
Fay gives me a coy smirk and steps outside. A second later, Antony strides into my father’s office. He half-scowls when he sees me, a preoccupied expression on his face.
“You work too much,” he says by way of greeting as he drops into the seat across from the desk.
“Hello to you, too.”
“Do you spend all of your time in this office?” he asks, his eyes sweeping around the room. “I don’t see a cot in the corner yet, so it stands to reason you must leave it from time to time. Yet I see no evidence of that.”
“I have a lot of work to do,” I say drily. “My father’s business won’t run itself in his absence. I do still sleep upstairs in my own bedroom, thanks. No cot, yet.”
“So you just make a straight beeline from there to here, and back again? Come on, Sera,” Antony chides me. “Even the extremely capable Serafina Mucci needs a little rest and relaxation from time to time.”
“I’ll rest when my father is back.”
“Meanwhile, you’re alone in this house.” His brow creases into a frown. “With no one to tell you that you’re working too hard.”
“Well, not totally alone,” I laugh. “There’s Fay. And two security men.”
“Sounds like a real party.”
I huff out a breath. “This conversation is truly scintillating, Antony. Did you come here for the sole purpose of finding out how much time I spend working? Because that was a conversation that could have been had over text.”
He eyes me. “No. I came for another reason.”
“I’m waiting.”
