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Not really.
I’d say late fifties. Maybe just short of sixty. Not even retirement age in this country.
I stood there, waiting for him to say something. When he didn’t, I tried to break the awkwardness I felt.
“I’m just about done closing up…”
“Stay. Please.” He kicked the leg of the chair next to him, sliding the bar stool out for me.
I stared at him a moment, studying the tired lines under his eyes before nodding. “Yeah, okay.”
I grabbed a bottle from beneath the bar. It was an old bottle of vodka I’d filled with water for when customers bought me shots, but I needed to stay sober.
Topping a glass with ice, I capped it with the fake vodka and rounded the bar to take a seat beside him.
My marks usually let their guards down when they thought I was drinking beside them. I had no doubt Vincent Romano was always on high alert, but it didn’t hurt to be proactive.
“What’s your favorite thing about living?”
“Pardon me?”
“If you had to choose one thing to do before you died, what would it be?”
“I’m…not sure.” I floundered for an answer.
I’d been asked all sorts of questions as a bartender but none like that one.
“You can’t think of a single thing?”
“I—” The compounded lies in my life compelled me to answer with the truth. “No. I’m still figuring myself out. What I like. What I dislike. My family’s gone, so I wouldn’t be able to spend time with them. I’m not in a relationship. Other than Tessie, I don’t really have any ties to people. And anything other than spending time with somebody feels unworthy of the last few moments in my life.”
“I knew I liked you.”
I let loose a laugh that I hoped didn’t sound as alarmed as I felt. “With all due respect, Mr. Romano, you don’t even know me.”
“For the purposes of this conversation, pretend I do.”
“Umm, okay…”
He laughed a little, and it shook his frame.
He seemed so different than what I’d thought a head enforcer would be, from the awful stories my aunt had told me about Made Men and the damage they’d done to my mom’s life.
“I’m a grown man. I don’t pussyfoot. I’ll say it. I like you. No, not like that. I like you as a person.”
“Why?”
I didn’t even like myself.
I mean, I liked the vain things—how I looked, my intellect, the way I cared for other people and animals, the weird skills I’d acquired under my various covers.
But the darker parts of me, the parts that could betray others like they meant nothing… they were not worth liking.
“My son, Asher, got married today.”
That was why I hadn’t seen Bastian today.
Thank you, Asher Black.
