Indebted to the Mafia King
Tony's Story

Tony

"You're supposed to stop the Q-Tip when you feel resistance, jackass," I say into the phone. "When I say Tuesday, I mean fucking Tuesday, not next Thursday."

"Sorry, Mr. Bellini," the importer on the other end of the line mutters. "I guess I heard you wrong. But I can't-"

"Can't," I repeat. "Last guy who used the word 'can't' with me didn't live long enough to regret it. So, my cars? On Tuesday?" "Tuesday, Mr. Bellini," he says.

I hang up and stretch. We gotta get a new space. I've been working on this basement underneath Lou's Deli for the past two fucking years, and it still looks like a deli basement. Sure, the meat hooks give it a certain menacing energy, but the smell of cold cuts takes that right out. And I can hear Lou's kid's punk music through the part directly under their house sometimes, no matter how much soundproofing I put up. I shut my laptop.

It's seven, so I should be getting home. Federica Freddie, she says will be waiting for me to start dinner. Honest to God, I don't know how Dante survived so long with how little staff he had. I can't imagine going home to a house as big as either of ours and knowing it's going to be empty.

My phone vibrates. I check the message.

Meet me in the city for a drink tonight or I'll sic as many Kings as I can replace in five minutes on yer ass. Thought I was getting a chattier don in you.

Cal Duncan, who is pronouncedly as much of an ass as he was the moment I met him, though a lot less dangerous. The worst thing his boys would do to me is piss me off. Still, as much as I know Freddie's waiting, whatever tacky bar he chooses might actually be better than going home and looking at syndicate shit all night. Maybe I'll pick someone up. I have been bored.

Fine, I reply with a smirk.

He's been bothering me about this for weeks. He should know a comment about chattiness is going to get something like that in return. I slide my phone into my pocket and head up the stairs into the deli proper. The smell of cold cuts does not get better.

Two years have passed, but sometimes it feels like two weeks. Like the Saints are still in a goddamn holding pattern. I'm leading us well. We got all the territory we agreed upon in the Russian play, and I've wheedled a little more out of Cal here and there. But we're not growing. We still don't even have a goddamn club.

Time to pull my head out of my ass and stop wasting time. I wave briefly to Lou and escape into an alley-garbage stink, even more pleasant-then out onto the street proper. My car sits there. My nice, clean car, where I will be trapped with all the smells that stain my days now.

Pass. I'll take the ferry, maybe make Cal pick me up. The city hasn't been at war in ages.

On the walk to the shore, I place calls and send emails. A few of them are running Saints business. The rest are new. A realtor Dante left me, to look for more club properties. Carla, who used to run Piacere, for her expertise. Anyone else I can think of who might have a bright new idea.

The ghost of Seb threatens. I don't see him like I did in the days right after his death, but he's never far from my mind. Tonight, he's laughing at me for taking this goddamn long. I shrug him off and catch the ferry just before it pulls away from the dock.

Lower floor is packed, so I head to the upper. I'm here for the breeze, anyway. A gaggle of women in tiny dresses shriek with laughter. Oh, great. A group of I glance at their hair-Staten Island locals, determined to make jackasses of themselves in the big city. Honestly, I'm just surprised one of them doesn't have a "bride-to-be" or "twenty-one" sash on, with the way they're behaving. I roll my eyes and twist to edge past them, up to the railing where I really want to be.

Perfect timing. One of them drops a little black purse right in my path. I step on it, hear something crack, and wince. They might be tacky and irritating, but I'm not a monster. I bend down to grab the bag and offer to pay for whatever I broke. At the same moment, what I assume to be the owner of the bag also bends down. I smash my forehead into her chin.

"Fuck." I wince and try to get out of the way so she can stand. "Sorry, uh-"

The woman straightens, and I recognize her immediately, even though it's been, shit, like a year and a half since I've seen her. Chloe. Same pale blonde hair, same cornflower blue eyes, same kissable little dent in her lower lip. "Tony," she says.

Breathlessly?

No. I'm imagining shit now. It's probably because I damn near smashed her teeth in.

"Been a while," I say.

She nods. "You've been too busy for most of the Saints activities lately."

"Yeah." I rub my aching forehead. "Uh, I can pay for your "I look at the crushed remains of the bag. It seems what cracked was some kind of skeleton holding the whole thing together. "Purse."

She glances over her shoulder, then opens it to show a cracked phone and splattered lip gloss inside.

"And the rest of it," I say quickly. Fuck, aren't I supposed to be the smooth one? There's just something about her that makes me feel like my lines would bounce right off.

She steps away from her group. "You know, I really shouldn't go into the city without a phone."

"Makes sense." I grimace. "You want mine?"

"That depends." She looks up at me with those blue, blue eyes. "What are your plans tonight?"

Deciding to forget Cal Duncan is easy. It may well be my natural state of being. "You know, suddenly they just opened up."

Chloe smiles.