Page 51 of Married With Malice

I need to touch base with Monte. He’s hanging out at his father’s Lower East Side pizzeria today. The place is known for their basement poker games that were my first introduction to high stakes betting back in high school. Lessons were learned that I carry to this day. I still stop by now and then for old time’s sake.

Monte is agreeable when I ask him to swing by the library later and escort Sabrina home to the Barones’ Long Island castle. She’s bound to get annoyed if she sees me watching over her but Monte can say he has orders from her father. For all Albie Barone’s paranoia about his own personal safety, he’s disgracefully unconcerned about protecting his daughters.

“Come on down for a visit,” Monte urges. “Have a calzone. Dad was just asking about you.”

“Another time,” I say. “I’ve got some legwork to do. But let’s meet up for a late dinner. Nico too. I’m gonna need your help with something but I want to warn you it could mean some trouble.”

“Count me in. Getting bored with being the local chauffeur and messenger boy.”

There are few things more valuable than good friends who will have your back no matter what kind of twisted shit you cook up. I’ve always been on good terms with the Castelli brothers but we’ve only gotten really tight within the last year. They are loyal and unflinching and won’t go tattling to Richie before I can set things in motion.

If there’s any fallout from my revenge plans, I’ll deal with it later.

10

LUCA

“WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?” Richie slams his hand down on the desk.

This might be the first time he’s screamed at me since I was eight and decided to test if I could scrape the paint off his Cadillac with a chunk of steel wool I’d found under the kitchen sink.

I could. And I did.

On that day Richie pulled me in here, belt in hand, acting like he planned to dole out a hefty punishment. He’d never hit me before and he couldn’t bring himself to hit me then. He took one look at me standing the middle of the room, small and stubborn and slightly terrified, and dropped the belt like a hot potato.

With his anger drained, Richie pulled two chairs together and ordered me to take a seat. What followed was a thoughtful monologue containing Richie Amato’s best pieces of life advice. His parting words are as clear in my head as if they were spoken yesterday.

“Listen to me, kid. You want to make a move in life, you better understand the penalty. Be sure that you can cover the cost.”

I had no clue what he meant. After all, I was only eight years old. I’d just learned that Santa Claus wasn’t real.

But sometimes on random occasions my uncle’s dogma would echo back at me and I never found a way to make it apply. As an athlete, I’m familiar with the fact that there’s no reward without risk. You fire the pass down the field. You take the shot at the goal. Winning is otherwise impossible.

Given everything I’ve learned about how my uncle operates, he doesn’t even follow his advice. In all likelihood, he was just spit balling that day as an excuse to avoid using the belt. Richie never did lay a hand on me and he always conspired to keep my transgressions from reaching the ears of my devoted older brother, who would have been disappointed to hear that I wasn’t really a model citizen.

I can now appreciate being raised with a more gentle parenting style as opposed to the brutality Anni suffered but it would have made far more sense if Richie had just said, “Don’t fuck with my car anymore.”

“Luca,” Richie now says, calming down a little when I stay silent in the face of his unanswerable question. “This will need to be explained.”

My uncle looks older, more tired, than he ever has. The fingers on his right hand sometimes vibrate with a tremor. His cardiology appointments have become more frequent. While I sit motionless in the leather armchair facing his desk, he slides open a drawer, shakes out a pair of aspirin and swallows them with a sip of cold coffee and a grimace.

It’s impossible for me to feel much affection for him anymore. Richie has been my default parent for most of my life. Yet my greatest value to him was as a pawn in his legacy plans.

If that was the worst I might have forgiven him, but this possibility ended when he dangled Cale’s life at the end of a string. The threat is always there, always implied, even if never spoken. He’s taken advantage of the love my brother and I have for each other. He’s used it against us. He’s been doing that for a long time and now I finally see him with clear eyes.

My uncle is my enemy. He has no idea I’m aware of this.

From his carefully tailored suits to his fondness for the imported Italian antiques he pretends are family heirlooms, Richie Amato is a fraud. He waxes poetic about ‘the old country’ as if he himself was ferried across the Atlantic in the dark, dank steerage bowels of a ship, only to be dazzled by the first sighting of the New York skyline.

Nope, he’s fourth generation American, the product of a mafia family that passes down their cosplaying traditions to the next generation while clinging to the mythology of another place and time. He’s a stain on the good name of millions of hardworking, honest Italian Americans who are rightfully proud of their heritage and recoil at the shadowy evil Richie represents.

My mother was his only sibling and I’ve always wanted to know what happened when she bucked tradition and ran off with a handsome firefighter. According to Cale, there was a lot of grumbling and he credits our father, always a charmer, with squashing the doubters. Though the details in my memory are few, I was born into a happy home. I’m sure of that.

Richie lifts his bushy eyebrows and studies my face, trying like hell to read the thoughts behind my eyes. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“Rocco gambled himself into a hole.” My shoulders rise with a dismissive shrug. “He should have heeded your advice and made sure he could cover the cost.”

“He’s Barone’s man. You knew he was good for it.”

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