I clench my teeth, feeling my nostrils flaring. “My check is almost two grand short. Did you import those fucking chairs from Italy?”
He sighs. “Look, Julia. I really don’t have time for this. I’m waiting on a call, so maybe we can talk about this next week.”
I slam the check down on his table. “We’re talking about this now.”
He turns his chair slowly to face me. “Don’t make me remind you. One call, and you won’t even be getting a three hundred dollar paycheck from me.”
“I could get three hundred dollars working at McDonalds.”
“Go ahead,” he says. “You could probably find more tattooed neanderthals to fuck at McDonalds than you will here.”
I grab the glass paperweight he was playing with from his hand and throw it as hard as I can at his window. “Maybe you can use some of the fucking money you stole from me to pay for that, too.”
47
Leo
Marco Bianchi sits at the end of a table occupied by the top guys in the Bianchi family. Smoke clouds the room, making everything smell acrid and sweet. Marco taps his ashes directly on the table and leans back to squint at me through the smoke. “What can I do for you, Leo?”
“I want your blessing to go after the Morettis.”
“It’s my understanding that you have been doing exactly that for the last four years, despite my express instructions to let sleeping dogs lie.”
I clench my jaw. “You expected the Morettis to kill us a long time ago. You would’ve preferred it, even. It would let you smooth things over with the Morettis so you can keep greasing your pockets.”
A few of the guys around the table get twitchy, shifting in their chairs or subtly moving their hands closer to their guns. Marco leans forward slowly, taking a long drag on his cigar and puffing the smoke out. “You know I’ve had men shot for less disrespect than that?”
“If you were going to have me killed you wouldn’t be wasting your time with threats.”
Marco sits back, smiling faintly. He makes a calming gesture to the men around the table. “Easy boys. This Citrione dog still has a little bite left, and it would be a shame to let his talent go to waste.”
“I’m going after the Morettis.”
Marco considers for a moment. “You do so without our formal blessing. I will not devote any manpower to this. I will not make any movement to protect you when they retaliate. But privately, I wish you success.”
Spineless prick. “Great. Thanks,” I say, leaving without a backward glance.
“They are going to make me,” says Angelo. He sits across from me in the cafe booth.
I nearly drop the cup of coffee in my hand. “They what?”
He grins like an idiot. “Yeah. Your little brother is going to be a made man. Shit man, can you believe it? I’m going to be a fucking capo. I’ll have soldiers assigned to me, and I’ll be running my own jobs, pulling in bigger cuts.”
“You have to say no,” I say.
The hurt on his face is clear as day. “Why the fuck would I say no?”
“Think about it. Why would they make you? Why now?”
He shakes his head, frowning. “Wow. I thought you would be proud, but you’re just jealous. Even Carlito was happy for me.”
I suck in a breath, pushing down annoyance. “Listen to me. They have no reason to make you right now. You’re on their shit list. Something is wrong here, Angelo. Just tell them no, or get the fuck out of town.”
He sets down his fork and wipes his mouth. “I’ll call you when it’s done. I don’t need to sit here and listen to this.”
I’ve known him long enough to know there’s nothing else I can say without pushing him even harder toward what he’s already going to do. Fuck.
Later that night, I’m cleaning my gun when I hear a loud pop and hissing sound through the wall in my apartment. It’s coming from Julia’s room. She shouts something loud that sounds a lot like “shit”. I rush out to the hallway and bang on her door. If anything happened to her.
The door swings open and she’s standing there, soaked to the waist. Her white blouse sticks to her tits, completely see-through. I can even see the dark circles of her nipples through the bra she wears. My cock hardens and I lick my lips, smirking when I see Roman behind her, frolicking in the water that’s spraying from beneath the sink.
“Do you have a wrench?” I ask.
“There was a box of tools in the closet when I got the place,” she says, showing me where to look.
I grab the tools and move to the sink, lying on my side to get beneath the counter and find the shutoff valve. A quick twist turns off the torrent of water. It’s a simple enough problem. The pipes came loose and need to be tightened.
“Want to learn how to fix this, bud?” I ask Roman.
His eyes light up and he crams himself under the sink with me, waiting for orders. I smirk, fighting an urge to hug him. I don’t know what it is about this little kid, but he makes me soft. I just don’t want to push the limits of what Julia is comfortable with, so I hold back. “Take this,” I say, handing him the wrench.
He grabs it with two hands, mouth opening slightly in awe, as if he’s never held something so cool.
“Now put it here,” I say, guiding his hands toward the loose valve. “Now if we want to make this tighter, what should we do?”
He looks at me in confusion. “I dunno,” he says.
“Righty tighty, lefty loosie. Do you know your rights and lefts?”
He nods proudly.
“Good. So if we want it tighter, we push this way,” I say, moving his hand that holds the wrench and tightening.
Roman smiles when we’re done, rushing out from under the sink and moving to jump in front of Julia. “Mommy. I fixed it!”
She smiles reluctantly, hugging the soaked little boy to her leg and looking at me. “Thank you.”
I turn her water back on and stand, realizing I’m soaked too. The white T-shirt I wear is probably just as see-through as hers, and if the way her eyes are struggling to stay on mine is any indication, it definitely is. “You know I could fix that crooked cabinet door in a few minutes.”
She looks where I’m pointing. “Oh, it doesn’t really bother me.”
“You sure? I could fix it now. It’d only take a minute.”
She crosses her arms, covering her wet tits from my view. “Let me just go get changed real quick. You can start though. Come on, Roman, let’s go to mommy’s room.”
Roman plants his feet. “I want to help Mr. Leo.”
I shrug at her. “I could use the help,” I say.
“Okay, but you make sure Mr. Leo doesn’t break anything.”
I help Roman up to stand on the countertop, holding his back protectively while I explain why the cabinet is crooked. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t understand half of what I’m saying, but he keeps nodding his little head and smiling.
“See this?” I ask, pointing to the joint that holds the cabinet in place. “This is the most important part. When you start learning to fix thing, you’ll see that everything isn’t as complicated as it looks. Break it down and it usually comes down to one piece. Just one thing that’s out of whack. It’s kind of like what your mommy does. She fixes people. That’s what makes her so special.”