Page 53 of Working for the Mob

“As a complete ass?”

Jamie barked another laugh. “Yes. That may be the best way to put it. But he looks out for me. Hell, he looks out for the whole town. And he may be struggling to find the right way to look out for you.”

He sounded ridiculous. There was no way that Art was looking out for me or my sister. Sure, he just gave that speech to Lucy and escalated her self-worth. And took us to town to buy the oven. But he just wanted to keep putting us further and further into his debt to hold us prisoner here. Free labor.

“I’m sure that’s it,” I lied. I didn’t want to ruin a good moment.

I wiped down the table and moved on to the trash bins, when Bert stuck his head out of the door to the café.

“We got the oven all installed. Would you like to look it over?”

Lucy let out a whoop, bid Mrs. Jenkins a “farewell,” and ran into the café. Jamie and I followed her into the back room. By the time we reached it, Lucy was kneeling in front of the appliance, stroking the faux-wood finish.

“She’s even more beautiful than I remember,” she said, and peeked inside the door.

“That’s because you haven’t seen this one. They didn’t have a floor model,” I said, but the words fell on deaf ears. This oven sat lower to the ground than the one displayed in Herrington’s, and a seafoam exterior coated it as opposed to cherry-wood.

“Everything looks good. I connected it to the gas and everything. Already tried it out myself,” Bert said. “Feel free to play around with it.”

His last statement was unnecessary. Lucy was already tinkering with the settings on the dial. “We’re going to be able to bake with this tonight.”

“Alright, let’s move on to the espresso machine,” Bert said, and led Jamie and I to the front. Bert had laid the espresso machine on the counter in front of the wall, next to the regular coffee machine.

“She’s beautiful,” I let out before I could stop myself. Now I sounded like Lucy.

The copper cylinder stood a foot and a half high, with two spigots on each side, resembling arms.

“I can’t install the machine, but all directions you need are here in this packet,” he said, and dropped a book’s worth of papers onto the counter. “I hope you read Italian.”

His partner honked the horn to the delivery van, and Bert strode out the door. “Good luck with everything.”

“But wait,” I called after him, and ran through the door. I caught up with him as he climbed into his van. “I don’t know how to read Italian.”

“Not my problem,” he said.

I ran after him, but by the time I got outside the delivery truck had already pulled onto the road and left me in a cloud of black smoke.

Chapter 16 – Genevieve

Even though we returned home late that night, the excitement of the day kept me running through baking the bread and the walk home. For the first time, we were able to bake more than two loaves at a time; it only took us a few hours to bake all eight loaves we needed.

Only the espresso machine left the day unsatisfied. Jamie and I flipped through the manual with no luck. The instructions contained no pictures and no English.

Despite the excitement, I was relieved when Jamie declared that it was time to go home.

“And you ladies are coming tomorrow night, right?” he asked, as he locked the door to the café. The three of us stood outside, our breath visible. “It’s going to be held at Lance Necci’s speakeasy.”

“Not with my current wardrobe,” Lucy began, but I stepped on her foot.

“We wouldn’t miss it, “ I said. No one in East Lannington had been as nice to us as Jamie. I didn’t care if I had to bring Lucy in Bert’s jumpsuit. We would be there.

“See you then. And tomorrow morning, ” Jamie said, and the three of us parted.

The next morning, Lucy had us stop at the supermarket to pick up cream, egg, vanilla, and apples.

“I want to bringsomethingto Jamie’s tonight, and I thought I’d try scones. We have an oven now, and I’d normally use blueberries but they’re out of season,” she said.

“It's not our oven to use whenever we want,” I protested, but Lucy rolled her eyes.

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