Page 70 of Working for the Mob

“What do you mean?” Art asked, and started the car.

“Jamie’s not going to be there Monday morning. Who is going to open the café, do the stock, order the meats, ingredients, and coffee? Is it going to be you?” Lucy asked, as Art pulled out of the parking lot and the wind whipped me like a slap in the face.

I shook my head. Art wouldn’t have time to run all the managerial activities of the café. He already spent the whole day running the Necci empire from his desk.

“Genevieve will be store manager now,” Art said, simply.

“What?” I asked, perplexed. “I can’t run the café by myself. I don’t know the first thing about being a store manager. And what about the books I’ve been helping you with? I still have a month’s worth of paperwork to organize.”

Art shrugged, without taking his eyes off the road. “You know enough about running a small business from managing all the ones you’ve helped me with. And those work orders will still be there once you get back.”

“But they’ll just keep piling up. You have no organization. No system,” I said.

“I’ll just follow your system. Come in tomorrow and teach it to me.”

The damn man had an answer for everything. “But Art … I can’t. I just can’t run the café all by myself. What if I mess something up?”

“You’ll definitely mess something up––”

“Thanks for the assurance,” I cut in, but Art pressed on.

“––but part of being a manager is the ability to fix problems. Like you did that day the café shut down. We didn’t lose any sales or customers. Plus, you’ll have Lucy to help you out.”

Lucy put her hand on my arm. “It’ll be fun as long as you don’t expect me to call you ‘manager.’”

I shivered, which had nothing to do with the freezing air blowing through the open windshield. Could I do it? Did a month's worth of running orders really prepare me to be the manager of the café? Art and Lucy’s faith did little to reassure me. One was my sister and the other one had just slept with me. How could I know whether I was ready or not?

“What do you say, Genevieve?” Art asked, and the way he caressed my name brought me back a couple hours. I said it earlier––I wanted to submit and give this man everything, but did that include making a fool out of myself? But I did want this. I wanted a chance to prove myself. Prove that I could do more than get married and have babies. Prove that women could bemore.

“We need to renegotiate my salary.”

???

“What were you thinking, endorsing me to be a manager. Luce, you don’t want to be my subordinate,” I said, as soon as we walked through our door at home.

“I think I mean more to you than that,” Lucy said, and walked back to her room. “Hang on.”

Lucy stopped in front of my room and put her hand on the doorframe. She sniffed the air, and then poked her head into my room. “Iknewit.”

“Knew what?” I asked her, and followed her into my room. Did she think I borrowed one of her dresses?

“I could tell by the way you two kept shooting googly eyes at each other all afternoon. You had sex!”

No. Lucy couldn’t know about me and Art! I didn’t even know what Art and I were. I wasn’t ready to explain anything yet.

I took a calming breath. It was impossible for Lucy to know that anything happened. She had no proof.

“No, we didn’t,” I said.

“Yes, you did, Genny. I cansmellit.”

“You can’tsmellit,” I retorted. She was being silly.

“Any baker worth a damn has a good sense of smell. Your room smells like sweat, pomade, and come. You definitely had sex,” she said.

When did Lucy become Sherlock Holmes combined with a bloodhound? Do I own up to it, or double down and keep denying?

“We did not have sex,” I said, but my smile gave it away.

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