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“It’ll happen,” he said. “It’s worth the wait,” he added, his gaze going from his kid to his woman, making his gaze soften. Via was the only woman in the world who could make Lucky soften like that.
It wasn’t the first time I found myself jealous of my brother and the life he had that I wanted.
“I bet,” I agreed, taking a sip of the beer.
“How’s that deal you’re working on going?” he asked, knowing work was always a safer topic than the lack of my own family.
Work, at least, was something that was plentiful and often a point of pride. Even if, more and more these days, it was a hollow sort of pride.
“Got the container coming in tomorrow,” I told him. “Meeting the crew at the docks to take our cut. Then it’ll be done.”
We didn’t usually deal in actual physical products when it came to the docks and the illegal shit that came in through them. We just wanted the cash to look the other way.
But this crew made me an offer that I felt duty-bound to bring to Luca himself. And after mulling over the pros and cons of it, we’d decided to move forward.
Besides, it wasn’t like we would be sitting on a pile of clean guns. There was an arms-dealing biker club right in Navesink Bank who would be happy to take it off of our hands, and distribute the goods to their customers.
It was an easy deal that would leave the Family with little to no work on our part, and would give us a quarter of a million dollars when all was said and done.
A good chunk of that went right into my pocket after the twenty-percent kick-up to Luca.
Did I need the money?
No.
But at this point of my life, I was working as much as I could to squirrel away as much as I could. So when the day did come when I did find the right woman, I could take the time to devote to her and our kids.
“Who’re you bringing?” he asked.
“Dante and Santo,” I told him. “And some of my soldiers. They aren’t a big crew.”
Lucky nodded at that.
Then, he exhaled hard.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re showing me the fuck up, huh?”
“In my defense, I got nothing else to do with my time,” I said.
Even if we weren’t talking about Lucky’s wife and kids, he also had a chain of legit pizza places that the Family washed our money in to oversee.
My legit business was a non-chain convenience store that I bought and let the previous owner, who’d been losing it because he’d been drowning in medical debt, continue to run it. It didn’t take much attention from me aside from occasionally dropping in to make sure the books were cooked the way the Family needed them to be.
“Fair enough,” he agreed as Milo rushed out of the back door, just barely avoiding closing one of Lucky’s kids in it in the process.
“Christ,” he hissed, looking frazzled, with a flour handprint on his black pant leg. “That’s some serious birth control you got going on in there. My ears are still ringing.”
“Don’t let Ma hear you talking like that,” Lucky said. “She’s counting on you having at least five of them.”
“I’m double-wrapping from here on out,” Milo said, getting a laugh out of both of us.
“Did Smush get here yet?” I asked.
“What?” Lucky asked when a strange look overtook Milo’s face. Something a mix of amused and dark.
“Her buttons were done up wrong,” he told us.
