"Curry favor?" he repeated softly. "He’d like that. Sounds like what a commoner does with a king."
As much as he could be deliberate with his words, I could be too.
"Yes. I intended to please him. Not agitate him."
"Explain," he commanded, his tone stern.
"You’re right. Your... research into me was right as well." Although, I’d like to know which so-called friend would tell a fucking mobster that I was obsessed with the mafia. Talk about a frenemy. "People in your line of work have always fascinated me."
"Why?"
"I don’t know why. They just have."
"That’s a lie."
His stark words hit me like they were a bullet. Each one to the shoulder and then to the gut. I might as well have jerked back in response to them, but managed, barely, to stand my ground.
"I beg your pardon?"
"There’s no begging for anything. Certainly not a pardon if you goddamn lie to me again, Savannah." His mouth tightened and a clammy sweat made my back stick to my shirt. "I thought we’d already established that I can see through your lies. You might pull the wool over some fat fuck editor’s eyes, but you can’t do the same to me.
"Now, we started things off so well," he rumbled, making the hairs at my nape stand on end. "You were being honest. I believe you about not wanting to annoy my father. Let’s not take things down another path."
Outraged, I glowered at him, but my fear for the situation which had begun spiraling out of control, was going to win.
For the first time, I knew what death looked like.
It was this man here.
He’d sign my death warrant with a disinterested arch of his brow as he made the call or sent the email.
This beautiful face shielded the heart of a murderer, even if those deaths were by proxy and not with his own hands... Although everyone knew that to enter the Five Points, you had to spill blood, so Junior wasn’t so innocent after all.
He looked like a businessman. His suit was sharp, elegant. A fine pinstripe that was so delicate, it was almost nonexistent. His shirt was white and the Oxford knot of his tie was pristine. The rich scarlet and gold contrasted perfectly with his dark navy sport coat. From across the table, I could scent his aftershave. Clean, citrusy undertones with the faint hint of something deeper, lighter. A fresh tone that was as elegant as the man himself.
He was a shark. But he could have been seated on any board of directors in Manhattan. Well, to be fair, he was, I just meant he could do that without having the part-time gig of being a mobster as well.
"Now, less of the bullshit," he rumbled. "Why have men in my line of work always fascinated you?"
Fear hit me, fear worse than the one memory that drove me to this day. That guided me down all the wrong paths and took me along for the ride when a story intrigued me to the point of not eating, drinking little, and barely sleeping. Fascination was an understatement.
My heart started pounding as I stared at him, blasted by his resolve, seared by the nasty twist to his lips… Was this the expression his enemies saw before they were tortured to death by him?
Feeling nauseated, heart throbbing in my ears now like there was a string orchestra in my head, I whispered a truth that had haunted me since the day it had happened: "I saw Jerry Isardo being stabbed when I was twelve."
He frowned, but he evidently believed me because it didn’t morph into a scowl. "That was unfortunate." Jerry Isardo’s stabbing had been big news back in the day. In some circles, it was still talked about.
Despite myself, I had to snort. "Unfortunate isn’t the word. It was a..." I hesitated, "...trying time."
"I’ll bet." He scraped a hand over his jaw. "What happened?"
"I was being driven home from school." I swallowed. "The car braked to a halt when Jerry ran out in front of us. We clipped him. I can still remember the sound of the metal colliding with his bones." Thousands of hours of therapy made it so that I didn’t need to flinch at the memory. "Then another guy came running behind him, dragged him off the fender and stabbed him." I blew out a breath. "Right in the stomach."
"He gutted him. I remember."
I pursed my lips. "There was blood everywhere. The car, the windshield. It sprayed."
"Must have hit an artery." His tone was as clinical as mine. His came from a lifetime in that world, mine came from time with expensive psychotherapists.
"He must have, yes. At the time, I didn’t register any of that, of course. I was just blindsided."
"I can imagine."
"Not sure you can, not being raised the way you were."
Silence fell at that, and just when I thought I’d pissed him off, he agreed, "You wouldn’t be wrong, but I wouldn’t want a daughter of mine to see that. Whether she was a part of the life or not."
"Do they have a choice?" I asked bitterly, surprised by my tone, especially when Aidan’s ability to scare me hadn’t abated.
I’d never been scared of a man in my adult life.
Until today.
With barely any words, with only a few inferences, he’d managed to...
God, I didn’t know what.
My throat was dry as he replied, "No, none of us have a choice. I’m sure your research would have shown that too."
I dipped my chin, because I did know that. A little like a bar mitzvah, the various mafia families all had their own ways of introducing kids into their world. From boys, they turned them into men with their various hazing methods.
It was disturbing.
Even to someone who was acclimated to the way they worked, it was difficult to process.
Kids were meant to be protected. Shielded. Not inserted into the path their fathers and brothers and uncles had been forced to take too. It was wrong on so many levels.
My mouth twisted as I murmured, "It begins and ends with blood."
"That’s almost poetic."
"There’s a twisted kind of poetry to the way you all lead your lives, don’t you think?"
He stunned me by snickering. "If you told my da that, then he’d say there’s nothing poetic about our life. He’d say we weren’t fairies." He tipped his chin to the side. "Yes, he’s a politically incorrect old bastard. What would you like me to do? Make him woke? I’d like to survive my thirties if at all possible. The old fucker can’t live forever, after all."
Well, wasn’t that a lot of information to process?
"I never imagined he’d be woke. Everyone knows you’re expected to follow the Catholic way if you’re in the Five Points."
Aidan hummed. "And God help you if you’re different."
I frowned. "Are you... different?" I wasn’t even asking for a scoop. As much as he made my skin crawl with nerves, he was hot. The level of hot that made a woman sigh when she found out that the man in question was gay.
He snorted again. "Savannah, my dubious reputation is hard-earned. No, I’m not gay. But I can appreciate things my father doesn’t. We’re not cut from the same cloth." He pursed his lips. "That was a hard way to be introduced to adulthood."
Recognizing that he was talking about Isardo, I dipped my chin. "It took me a long time to get over it." Lie. I wasn’t over it. I had just adapted to knowing that society wasn’t as clean cut as it appeared.