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After breakfast I decide to give Sera some space, and take off for my own apartment. On the way I use the voice recognition in my car and call Sal and Marco, and ask them to come for a meeting at my place. I’ve just hung up with them when another call comes through my line. It’s my brother Dante.
“Hey,” he grunts. “You got a minute?”
“Yeah, sure, I’m in the car. What’s up?”
Dante is five years younger than me, and four years younger than Marco and Matteo. He’s got the same jet-black hair as the rest of the D’Agostino brothers, but he’s the only one of us boys who didn’t get back involved in the mafia as an adult. Dante is a member of an outlaw motorcycle club called the Lords of Carnage, Ironwood Chapter. Yep, that’s right: Ma took us away from Cleveland to get away from the crime, and landed us in a town with an outlaw MC that Dante ended up joining. I guess we’re all examples of what they say: you can take the boy out of the life, but you can’t take the life out of the boy.
“Just checkin’ in. You good?”
“Yeah,” I reply. “Things are going good up here. How about you?”
We D’Agostinos, it must be said, are not great phone conversationalists. Of course, part of that has to do with thefact that most of our business can’t really be discussed over the phone.
“Tried to call Matteo a bit ago,” Dante says. “He’s not answering his phone.”
“He’s on a job for me,” I tell him, not elaborating. “He’s probably outta cell phone range.”
Dante calls all three of us about once a month since our brother Dominic’s death a few years ago. Before that, we hadn’t been all that good about keeping in touch. I can understand why he needs to do it. Us brothers are all the family we have left now. And I know that even though he’s never said it, Dante feels like if he’d done a better job of keeping in touch with Dominic, maybe he’d still be alive. I’m not so sure. But I understand the impulse.
“How’s the wife?” I ask, to change the subject.
“Good,” Dante replies. “She’s great, as always. She says hi, by the way. The kids are doing good, too. Growing like weeds. Vaughn just started walking, so now it takes all our energy to chase those little fuckers around the house.” He chuckles, and I can hear the affection in his tone. Never thought he’d end up being a husband and a dad, but I can tell he loves it.
“Hey look,” he continues. “Me and Tori and the boys are gonna be coming up to Cleveland next month. She’s got some ceremony she needs to go to up there. She got nominated for an award for a story she did for our local paper that got picked up and got some national attention. So we figured we’d make a weekend of it. You gonna be around? I was hopin’ we could maybe hang out.”
“Wouldn’t miss it. Let me know the dates. I’m about to head into a meeting with Marco, so I’ll mention it.”
“Sounds good, brother. I’ll talk to ya.”
“Yep. Talk to ya.”
Twenty minutes later I arrive at the high-rise apartment building which I own, and where I live. I park my black Maseratiin the underground parking space reserved for me, then take private elevator up to my penthouse. When I get inside, Marco is already there, lounging on the long leather couch in my living room with his feet up on my glass coffee table.
“Get your filthy feet off of that,” I bark as I stride into the room.
Marco is dressed for the construction site. Looking at him now, no one would guess that he lives in a separate apartment in this very building, one floor below me. Matteo lives in the apartment next to his. Marco and Matteo own Phoenix Construction, but the two of them have always preferred to be hands-on with their crews as much as possible for the legitimate side of their business.
Marco, never one to be serious, snickers. He flips his light-brown hair out of his eyes. “Sorry, Antoinette. I forgot you don’t like it when people mess up your pretty things.”
“That table cost twelve-thousand dollars,cretino.” I step forward and smack his feet with a magazine.
Marco yelps and pulls them away. “You didn’t sleep here last night,” he remarks, nodding at my clothing. “Where were you?”
“I spent the night at the Mucci mansion. Carmine Mucci is still out of town. I wanted to make sure Serafina was protected.”
“‘Protected’,” Marco echoes with a knowing grin. “Sure. That’s what we’re gonna call it, eh? Well, I hope you used ‘protection’, in any case.”
For some reason, his remark makes me unreasonably angry. Of course, it’s not a leap to assume that I spent the night in Sera’s bed. And there is nothing wrong with a woman taking her pleasure outside of marriage. I am not a caveman chauvinist like so many of the men of previous generations of our family. Having sex before marriage doesn’t make a woman a whore, or dishonorable, in spite of what our Catholic upbringing would have us all believe.
But the fact remains that I didnotsleep with her. And it seems important to not dishonor her with this lie.
“Get your mind out of the gutter,” I growl, turning angrily toward the floor-to-ceiling windows that show the skyline, including the office tower where Phoenix, LLC is headquartered in the distance.
But it’s not the view of Cleveland that ends up catching my eye. Rather, it’s the reflection of my living room in the window. I find myself looking at it from a stranger’s perspective, all sleek furniture, dark hardwood floors, and modern, minimalist decoration and light fixtures. Understated, clean lines. An air of confident luxury without opulence.
For some reason, I cannot help but picture Sera here. I try to imagine what she would think of this place. Whether she would like living here. Whether she would want to redecorate. My apartment, I am realizing, is all hard surfaces. Nothing soft or yielding. Would she want to bring a more feminine touch to the space?
I find that this idea does not bother me.
