Page 54 of College Town

“What is your role here in this family?” Tommy asks, tone like ice.

Noah huffs an annoyed breath that stirs unpleasantly at the back of Lawson’s neck.

“Whatis your role?” Tommy repeats, words landing like whipcracks.

“Support,” Noah relents.

“That’s right. Support.” Tommy tips his head back, so he’s looking down the sharp line of his nose, as fierce and unbending as a Roman emperor. “You don’t get to makeanydecisions where Lawson is concerned. Nobody does but me.”

“Do I get a say?” Lawson asks, but his heart pounds, and his head throbs, and he thinks seventeen-year-old him would have an anime nosebleed and pass out if he saw Tommy like this.

Tommy ignores him, which is just as well; he’s probably gaping like a fish.

“Do you understand?” he asks Noah.

After a beat, Noah says, meekly, “Yeah.”

Tommy nods, turns back around, and tugs Lawson along after him again.

The doorway leads into a hallway that passes rooms with soaring ceilings and obviously expensive furnishings. One resembles a library, another a cozy sitting room with a fireplace. Lawson doesn’t register many of the details, choking on his pulse, following helplessly along in Tommy’s wake.

There are guards, more than a few, dressed in simple, dark clothes, wearing guns on their hips. Lawson feels as though he’s fallen headfirst into a movie, and he’s too overwhelmed to see the humor in it. He can do nothing but walk where he’s led, Tommy’s grip his only touchstone in this whole surreal experience.

Tommy takes him up a curving staircase with a heavy, dark wood banister, down another hallway, and finally to a door, on either side of which are posted yet more guards. Tommy doesn’t acknowledge them, so Lawson doesn’t either; trails along in his wake as Tommy twists the handle forcefully and shoves the door open.

It's a room which obliterates the last of Lawson’s logical hope that perhaps Tommy and his family reallyaren’ta crime family. It’s a study, done up in European, masculine splendor. Shelves loaded with leatherbound volumes; a sideboard of decanters, bottles, and glasses; a hunt scene on the wall, smudgy brown oils in a gilt frame. A bay window overlooks a wooded hillside, and, beyond, another secret garden nook: a bit of stone wall, a bower heaped with roses.

Lawson takes in all of this at a glance, and then his gaze fixes on the center of the room, where a massive, gleaming mahogany desk dominates the space. The computer looks too-modern amidst the leather blotter, the ledgers wedged between gargoyle bookends, and the green glass lamps.

Frank Cattaneo sits behind it, shirtsleeves rolled up, expensive watch winking as he laces his fingers together and sits forward to rest his elbows on the blotter. His expression is a portrait of disapproval.

Lawson wants to turn and walk out. After the day he’s had, another smug offer of payment from Frank – like he’s a fucking hooker or a stool pigeon – is the last thing he wants to endure.

But Tommy twists an even tighter grip into his sleeve and tugs him forward as he charges up to stand at the desk and send a fearsome glare his uncle’s way.

Frank stares back levelly, calm in the face of Tommy’s vibrating fury. “You brought him. You actually brought him here.”

Tommy takes a harsh breath, chest swelling, and says, “Get out of my chair.”

Lawson blinks. Glances between them. Sees the way Frank’s jaw works unhappily.

Tommy says, “Do I need to repeat myself?UncleFrank?”

Frank’s nostrils flare as he exhales – an expression too like Tommy’s for comfort – but then he pushes the rolling chair back and vacates it.

Tommy steers Lawson to a padded leather chair and pushes him gently down into it. Lawson sits, head spinning. Then Tommy takes Frank’s place behind the desk, and Frank moves to stand across from it beside Noah.

“Wait,” Lawson says, belatedly. “Yourchair?”

Tommy rummages on the desk, dropping things in drawers and straightening pens and notepads. He scoots the phone over a half-inch and wipes a bit of invisible dirt from the marble top with a Kleenex he snatches from the box on the corner.

Lawson turns to Noah and Frank. “Hischair?”

Frank’s lips compress.

Noah sighs. “Tom–”

“Yes, my chair,” Tommy answers, finally, still fiddling with the items on his desk, head down, refusing to meet Lawson’s questioning gaze. His tone is matter-of-fact…and resigned. “My desk. My business.” He stacks multicolored blocks of Post-Its one atop the other. “You were right: we’re a crime family. The goddamnmafia. But we didn’t start out that way.”

---