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“Not melancholy. I just appreciate you, that’s all.” He ran his finger over the top of his coffee mug. “Keep meaning to ask you something.”
“As long as it’s not about Chris Mann.”
“No.” Gio cleared his throat. “Tara and I saw a lawyer last week.”
“What the hell for?”
“We hadn’t updated our wills since Leah was born, and we needed to appoint a guardian, just in case.” Gio paused. “We want you, Dom. We want you to take care of our daughter if it comes to that. I mean, Tara’s parents are great, but they live in a retirement community, and they’re always traveling. You’re the only logical option.”
The cherubic face of my six-month-old niece flashed through my mind, and my heart contracted. I’d hang the moon for that baby girl. And for her father too. As Giovanni’s words sunk in, the weight of all that love and trust got me feeling kind of choked up. Out of all the people Gio and Tara could choose from to entrust their precious daughter to, they’d picked me. That wasn’t the kind of faith that came along every day.
“I’m honored,” I said quietly. Then I nudged my brother’s knee. “I don’t give you permission to go anywhere, though.”
He flashed me a smile. “I don’t intend to.”
I stood up and grabbed both coffee mugs to refill them.
“Shit’s about to get real, you know,” I said from the kitchen.
Gio turned and peered at me curiously. “Shit hasn’t been real up until now?”
“It was real enough with one store. Two stores mean double the work, double the worries, more than double the staff.”
“You think we’re biting off more than we can chew?”
“Hell no. I can’t wait.”
Gio laughed. “That reminds me of two things. I got a call on Friday from this reporter at the Sun Republic. They’re looking to do a big write-up to coincide with the opening of Espo 2.”
I shrugged. “Great.”
“They also want to touch on a little bit of the backstory. You know, the rebirth of a great New York restaurant family.”
“Sounds like a good story to me.”
Gio gave me a funny look. “You know Frank died five years back, but they might decide to track down Steve.”
I almost growled at the mention of my corrupt uncle and cousin. Together they’d destroyed what had taken eighty years and four generations of Espositos to build. They’d also broken my grandmother’s heart. “Well, if some reporter can flush him out of whatever hole he’s crawled into, then so be it.”
“Remember Dave Shapiro?” Gio said, eyeing me carefully.
I nodded, recalling a skinny kid with glasses who used to pal around with Gio in the old neighborhood.
“Well, a while back he told me he heard Steve moved to Syracuse with Beth and the kids. Don’t know if he’s still there.”
“If he is, then I hope he likes snow,” I said, keeping my tone level. Hearing all these toxic names spoken aloud rattled me. I didn’t want Giovanni to catch on to that, though. It had been a long time since we’d discussed the shit that had gone down in our last days in New York. There was no reason to bring any of it up now.
Gio knew when to drop the subject. He asked if I wanted to go visit Donna later this afternoon with him, Tara, and the baby. When we first had to move our grandmother to a full-time care facility, we’d felt guilty. But eighty-two-year-old Donna Esposito was the belle of the ball there. The only thing she loved more than her card games, sing-alongs, and movie times were visits from us.
“Yeah, I’ll come,” I said, figuring I could push the gym visit back a few hours. This was technically my first full day off in a month and would probably be my last one for quite some time, so I needed to grab the opportunity to visit my grandmother when I could.
“Good.” Gio rose from the couch and stretched. “In that case I’m glad we had the chance to hash out all this now so we don’t end up torturing Tara with it.”
“Hey, wait. You said there were two things you needed to talk about. One was the SunRepublic story. What was the other one?”
“Oh yeah. Melanie’s starting tomorrow.”
“Who?”
