AllFreeNovel
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A piece of Valentino’s St. Joseph’s bread sits on the edge of his plate. He picks it up and uses it to motion to his food. “Hungry?”
“I appreciate it, but no. I have dinner waiting for me at home.”
He ticks his mouth. “Nothing a woman hates more than when her man allows the food she sweated over to go cold.” He swipes some of the gravy up with the bread and takes a bite. “Best bread in the world. Had it growing up. Brings back memories.” He does it again. Then he looks at me. “This woman of yours—she can cook?”
I shrug.
He laughs. “Better find out now. I’d rather marry an ugly woman who can cook than a beautiful one who doesn’t. I can always get the beautiful ones on the side, but there’s nothing like coming home to a home cooked meal.” He tilts his head to the side when he finishes the slice of bread. Crumbs fall and are soaking up the sauce.
I have no idea whose home this is. It doesn’t belong to him. I know where he lives. So, whoever cooked this meal wasn’t his wife.
He sighs. Takes a sip of wine. Looks straight at me. “You wounded me deep, Shadow Man,” he says. “I thought we had a good thing going, me and you. You exceeded all my expectations, just like Ghetti told me you would. ‘It’s in his blood,’ he says. And he was right. It’s in your blood. So I put in a good word for you. Your name is known now. And what do you go and do? You fuck me over by pulling out and then stealing my gym from right underneath my nose!” He pounds the table with a fist and everything on it jumps and rattles, including the gun.
He picks it up and points it at my chest. “I’m not going to use this on you. You know why? Because once it’s over, it’s over. That’s not how I do business. You should know better. Why would I get rid of not only a money maker but a money shaker? Get it? You shake pockets for me when I need you to—money just rains down. So, it makes no sense to make you go swimming. So I tells myself, ‘Gallo, do what you gotta do with this guard dog. Make him see how he fucked up. How he bit the hand that fed him. Not just now, but for years to come.’” He turns the gun from side to side and then sets it down.
He looks me right in the eye. “You owe me, Shadow Man. And I expect payment. This is how it’ll go down. You going to get straightened out. Under me. Like we talked about. You’ll make your bones before the books open up. And when they do, your name’s already in. You’ll take your oath. And that.” He tilts his hands, swiping his right hand over his left, like he’s wiping them clean, but he’s spreading more crumbs on his plate. “Is the end of that. You’ll answer to me every day. You’ll do as I say, for as long as I say. Or else it won’t be you that I go after. That little girl of yours. Her father is Sonny Girardi. He places bets sometimes. I’ll start with him.”
Straightened out—being initiated into the “life.” Make my bones—kill someone. When the books open up—when it’s time for me to take the oath. Become an official member of this organization. My new family.
Before, he was always squeezing my shoulder and telling me how I made him so proud. There’s something different between us now. Something with claws. But I’ll always remember this moment, because it’s the moment I vow to get rid of him someday. I’m sure he’s made some of his own when it comes to me. And there might be more. Because I don’t plan on staying underneath him.
He should have thought long and hard about this. Because he was right.
It’s in my blood. And so is the defiance that comes from Michele.
Gallo’s a capo. One day I’ll be a capo. I’m already making plans.
I’m tempted to smile, but I resist.
I realize we’re staring at each other when he picks up another piece of bread and waves it, dismissing me. I’ve never felt it before, but I do then. He doesn’t deserve anything that comes from Valentino’s. It represents the American dream, and men like him piss on it.
“Nose!” he yells, then sniffs. “Get him outta here.”
It takes me a moment to move, because the urge to stick the bread so far down his throat that he chokes on it has its claws in me.
“If—” She stops, hesitant.
“Talk to me, baby,” I say.
I turn to face her. Our eyes meet.
“If I would have asked you not to do that—to that guy. Would it have stopped you?”
“Possibly,” I say. “In the moment.”
“After?”
“Depends.”
“Talk to me,” she says, repeating after me.
“It depends on what’s been done. If I can live with it or not.”
Her voice echoes in my mind. I can live with it. For now. I turn and leave.
It’s late, and I tell Nose to drop me off at Ghetti’s. He’s outside, smoking on his stoop. His parent’s rent one of the units inside. But as soon as my feet touch the cement, his ma sticks her head out of the door, like she’s been waiting.
“Lilo! You have a phone call, handsome.”
