Well, Beni didn’t blame or fault Tommaso for his desire to let everyone else handle the dirty work of packing the guns and getting them ready for transport. Like him, his cousin had been born into more privilege than he knew what to do with when it came to the mafia. And at the same time, Tommaso had also been given very little of that privilege when it came time for him to earn his button. If after everything, as a made man, he didn’t want to fuck with the bullshit and just be the man who made the calls ...
Who was Beni to tell him not to?
Different strokes for different folks.
He liked that motto.
“Let’s go, let’s go! Faster, boys! I want this shit done before the sun sets!” Theo’s shouts bounced off the warehouse’s walls, echoing back to Beni’s spot. He gave Tommaso a shrug, but then laughed when Theo came into view, pointing at Tommaso. “And you ... you fucking help, too. Stop standing around like a cafone.”
Tommaso gaped. “But—”
“Work! Nobody’s kissing your ass tonight, Tom.”
That was that.
In the next second, Tommaso had grabbed a box and a bag of packing peanuts. His grumbled complaints flew over Theo’s head when the man spun on his heel and headed for the same office he had just come out of to yell at the rest of the crew.
“That’s some shit,” Beni told his cousin, laughing. The sight of Tommaso in his designer suit with pink packing peanuts stuck to him as he dumped a bag into a box was one he wouldn’t soon forget. That was for sure. “Now fucking look at you.”
This time, Tommaso gave him the finger.
Beni only shrugged.
It was good, too, though. Working like this with his cousin, the rush of the gun run coming up with time ticking down ... all of it, Beni lived for it. He was sure Tommaso felt the same in a lot of ways even if the asshole whined a bit while it all happened.
So was their life.
They asked for this.
“This is the last run for a while,” Tommaso said.
That perked Beni up. “Yeah?”
Tommaso shrugged, moving one box out for another. “Yeah, Theo wants to lay low for a bit after this one. Let any heat die down, you know? Anyway, we’re looking at a few months or more before he’s even going to entertain another deal, and then it’ll be a while before we’ve got to run the guns, right? A break is good.”
Really fucking good.
“Think I might slow down, too,” Beni said. “After all this, I don’t know.”
Resting his arms over the boxes, Tommaso grinned. “Why? Ready to really settle down, Beni? What, are you thinking two-point-five kids to go with that picket fence you painted white for August last summer? Never took you for the type but I mean, your twin did it ... I guess it’s only expected that you were next, right?”
“Fuck you.”
The two laughed.
But yeah.
Beni shrugged, adding to his cousin, “Probably exactly what’s gonna happen. I mean, what else was I going to do?”
Right?
33.
August
“SHE is definitely your wild child,” August said to her sister-in-law, Ginevra.
She laughed in response, not the slightest bit offended at August’s observation of her oldest child, Coraline.
“I blame the boys,” Ginevra replied, an easy shrug falling from her shoulders as she grinned at the sight of her four-year-old daughter running across the monkey bars. On top. Like the kid had no fear of slipping and falling. Down below, her two-year-old brother, Lev, stared up at his sister in total wonderment. As though he planned on being the next one up there doing the exact same thing. As soon as he figured out how. “Corrado and Les let them ... do whatever.”
On August’s right, the other woman who had joined them for their day out laughed lightly. Cara, her mother-in-law, had the idea of the park earlier when the kids wouldn’t settle long enough for them to eat a late breakfast at a restaurant nearby.
They just need to run off some energy, she had said.
She wasn’t wrong.
It was also incredibly endearing how much Cara Guzzi loved her family. Not just her sons, no. Their wives. The grandchildren they gave her, too. All of them. In fact, her mother-in-law made it one of her first priorities to make sure each of her five sons’ wives knew how much she adored and appreciated all of them in her own ways. Usually by spending individual time with the women in a way that was specific to something they enjoyed.
For August, Cara never missed a thing that was published with her name attached. She was always one of the first people to congratulate August and was forever wanting to chat about her articles and accomplishments beyond the surface. Because she cared and she wanted her daughter-in-law to know it. They also shared a love of fiction, and regularly kept up on what the other was reading and what they thought of the book.
If anything, it showed August that Cara was more than just her mother-in-law. She was also someone she counted as a friend. One of her very best.
“The word no doesn’t exist, hmm?” Cara asked, still smiling over at Ginevra.
“Not in our house, apparently.”
Cara only shook her head, still seemingly amused, while she fixed the cashmere shawl around her shoulders. Turning her attention back to the playing children, she said, “It’s not a bad thing to let children find their own boundaries. There are, however, many times when setting boundaries can lead to bad things. Do we let them find and know safety through exploration or overprotect to their possible detriment? Something to think about.”
“True. Which is what Alessio likes to say, and Corrado agrees, of course. Sometimes, it scares me to death,” Ginevra replied, nodding at her daughter who was currently making a second trip across the top of the monkey bars. “Like now ... Coraline, you be careful up there!” Then, under her breath, she added, “Gonna give me a fucking heart attack, kid.”
“Okay, Mama!”
The sweet, unbothered reply of the four-year-old carried over the park. Little Lev was still observing his sister like she was his hero for the day. It made August think that what Cara said about kids finding their own boundaries through exploration made sense—to an extent—especially if the boy watching his big sister had just learned there was nothing to be scared of when it came to the monkey bars.
Considering he’d cried when she first climbed on them, clearly wanting her to come back down where he thought it was safe. Or, that’s what August assumed.
Who knew what was in the mind of children?
Or babies.
Speaking of which ...
August suddenly found it a lot harder to sit still on the bench between Cara and Ginevra while the pregnancy test she had taken—several, actually—sat in her purse on the ground. Three tests, to be exact. One for each day that she had been in New York visiting with her family and Beni’s, too.
“How’s your mom and dad?” Cara asked at her side.
She swallowed the lump forming in her throat to say, “Good. They want to do dinner tomorrow and since you’re in town ... Ma said the table is open for you to join if you want.”
Cara lit up, beaming. “Of course. It’s been too long since I saw them. And since they’re one of the only in-laws I have ... I try to make time, you know?”