Skin (6 page)

A few minutes later, Frankie pulled up in front of the family building. Several minutes went by and she still sat quietly in the seat of her ragtop Bimmer. Part of her wanted to run up the stairs to Unk’s — and what was once her father’s — office and scream and vent until she was hoarse. The other part wanted to contemplate and scheme. She waved to old Mrs. Loguzzo, whose black suitcasesize purse was no doubt loaded with bread and leftovers, her fifty-year-old bachelor nephew, Phil, in tow as they exited La Trattoria, another family-owned business, this one run by her cousins Della and Louie.

Of course her father and now Anthony had their fingers in the Trattoria pie, but it was how things were done. In the alley there were two entrances to the restaurant. One frequented by delivery trucks and employees, the second, the private entrance, reserved for her father’s men, who could usually be found sitting around their favorite table, shooting the breeze, smoking cigars, or eating. It was through the back door that much of the family business comings and goings transpired. Frankie preferred to use the front door.

As she made her way down the hallway to Unk’s office on the third floor, it occurred to her how quiet it was, the usual boisterous voices of Unk’s entourage absent. Alarm bells shrilled in her head, and she hurried to his office. The door stood ajar.

“Unk?”

“In here, Francesca.”

Relief flooded through her. She was getting paranoid. Frankie smiled despite her anxiety and urgency to get answers. Unk always called her by her full name, never in anger, always with love. Why couldn’t he have been her father? She slowed her agitated gait and decided she wouldn’t unload on her uncle as she had intended.

“Francesca?” he called, a note of urgency raising his normally deep voice.

“Coming,
Zio,
coming.” She picked up her pace.

The rich aroma of fresh ground espresso beans tantalized the air. She’d forgotten Unk had his own espresso machine, one of his few indulgences. The light from his small corner office lit her way forward. Her smile widened. That was Unk, hard at work after everyone else had packed it in for the day, the quiet, unpretentious force behind Donatello Brothers, Inc. Unlike her hotheaded father, who liked the trophy wives, custom suits, and hand-rolled Cubanos, Carmine was old-school Italian. Formal but loving, and as level as the horizon. She wondered why Unk wasn’t the figurehead of the family and the business.

She greeted him as she always did, with a hug. For a long moment she held on to the man who had shielded her from her father and, on more than one occasion, herself. She inhaled his fine tobacco and basil scent.

Unk liked his pasta. He was the polar opposite of her father. Whereas Papa had been tall, dark, and angry, Carmine was short, round, and jovial. He pulled back just enough to take her face into his sausage-plump hands and smile down at her, his dark brown eyes glittering.

“Bella, bella, bella, como esti?”

“Bueno, Zio.”

He kissed her on each cheek and took her hand. “Come. Here, I have an espresso for you.”

She raised the bag she carried in her hand. “And I have Gina’s cannoli for you.” His dark eyes beamed. He bustled around the little table that held the espresso press and poured her a cup of the thick, hot liquid. “Come into my office, it’s too cold out here.” It was a beautiful autumn evening, the temperature perfect. But she didn’t argue the point. If he said it was thirty below zero, she would humor the man.

Like a mother hen, he pulled out a plush chair for her from the corner of his small office after setting her tiny espresso cup on his desk. His disheveled appearance didn’t go unnoticed by her. “You look like you’ve been working too hard, Unk.” He looked up from the napkin he spread out on his desk. “I have. With Sonny gone, it all falls into my lap.” He quickly made the sign of the cross and said, “Sit, and
mange.”

She wasn’t hungry, but even if she had been, she steered clear of sweets. Her Italian heritage made her thighs subject to cellulite and she worked hard to keep from resembling her matronly cousins. She sipped the hot espresso, then set the cup down on its saucer.

“I didn’t see any of the boys around, Unk.”

The old man shrugged and waved a hand like he was the Pope in Saint Peter’s Square. “They’re downstairs having dinner. I told them I wanted some peace and quiet with my niece. Since the assassination, they’ve been worse than Nona Cece around her grandchildren.”

“That’s not a bad thing —”

“No, but it’s annoying. I’ve never had the craving for people fluttering around me like your father and brother. You’d think they were Elvis or someone.”

“You need to be careful. I don’t think I could stand losing you too.” The unexpected sting of tears pricked her eyes. From years of practice, Frankie sucked it up before her weakness could be detected. She wasn’t quick enough.

Unk patted her hand. “We all need to be careful, especially in these times. Suspect everyone, Francesca.”

Frankie nodded, but an icy shiver raced along her spine. In all of the years she had been alive, there had never been the dark tension hovering over the family like there was now. A war was brewing, and not for the first time she wished she was just a normal girl, living a normal life with a normal family.

“Do you miss him?”

“Sonny?”

She nodded.

“Si,
I do. More than I thought possible. We didn’t see eye to eye on everything, but our styles worked. We were a good team, Sonny and me.”

Now it was Carmine’s turn for melancholy.

She understood all too well his bipolar feelings for his brother. A part of her had so much bottled up anger, frustration, and, she admitted, love for her father that the cool indifference she’d worked so hard to perfect over the years had become the norm, no longer the exception. Had she become as callous as her father? Like him and Anthony, turning off emotions like faucets?

“Did you love him?” she asked.

Her uncle choked on his second cannoli. The dusting of white powdered sugar Gina used as a garnish shot into the air like tiny snowflakes.

“Of course.” His eyes watered. Frankie stood and hurried around to his back and thumped hard. Carmine coughed and sputtered but raised a hand, signaling her to stop.

She hurried to pour him a glass of water, and he drank it down when she handed it to him. His reddened face slowly returned to deep olive. “Francesca, why would you ask such a question?”

She shrugged and picked out the chocolate chips from the filling of her cannoli, pushing them aside. “I didn’t mean it like it sounded, I was just wondering if it’s as easy for you as it was for my father and is for my brother to tune people out?”

He patted a napkin to the corner of his mouth. “I can tune people out.” He smiled. “It’s what the male of the species does.”

“No, I mean, turn off your emotions. Like Father did when he took someone out.”

Carmine’s eyes widened. “Took someone out?”

She wasn’t going to play coy. “I’m not talking about a hit, although I wouldn’t put that past him, but taking out a friend for business, cutting them out of the deal, turning yourself off so you can make the deal, you know, just business.”

He sipped his espresso and nodded slowly. “I can do it. To a point.”

Maybe she needed to adopt that single-minded sociopath angle. If she played by the family’s rules, she just might come out on top. Her stomach churned at the thought. It wasn’t her nature to be cold and unyielding, to put business first. But she told herself that if she was to hang on to
Skin,
she would have to play like the pros. Her heart hardened a notch.

“Then you aren’t like Father in that way.”

Carmine cocked a dark graying brow. She continued. She needed to get her anger out on the table, to see if she was justified, to see if her uncle would turn on her in the end like her father and her brother. “I know Father had my mother’s cousin Johnny Trino removed to pave the way for Anthony. Do you know where Johnny is?”

“What is really bothering you,
cara?”

Everything.
“Nothing.”

“Come now,
cara
— remember who you’re talking to.”

He always could catch her in a lie.

“Anthony.”

“I told you not to worry about him.”

“How can I not? He barges into my office and starts throwing his weight around. He has some vendetta against me.” Her hands shook, she was so angry. “He wants
Skin,
Unk.”

Carmine’s eyes narrowed and he sat forward, the fine leather of the chair creaking under his substantial weight. “What exactly did he say?”

“He claims Father left him
Skin.
Is it true?”

Carmine’s features didn’t flinch. “So Anthony claims.”

Cold infiltrated her body.

Carmine brushed the powdered sugar from his hands and looked thoughtfully at his niece. “Your brother always cries for more than his share. I wouldn’t worry about him.”

Frankie folded her hands on her lap and looked down at her fingers entwined so tightly her knuckles whitened. On her right ring finger was her maternal grandfather’s signet ring of bloodred rubies in the shape of a hawk’s head. The hawk’s diamond eye twinkled at her. Her grandfather gave it to her on her eighteenth birthday.
“Never fear the hawk,
cara,
embrace him, use him, look to him for strength when you feel the world is against you, and always know the family will protect you.”
She laughed, the sound brittle. Maybe her mother’s Calabrian family would protect her, but it was the other family, her half brother, Anthony, and his gang of Sicilian thugs she needed protection against.

“Is there proof Papa wrote me out of
Skin?”

Carmine’s hands fisted and he pounded the table, the rare show of anger surprising her. “Your brother is a fool.”

“Did Father write me out?”

Carmine’s eyes flashed. “So Anthony insists, but I have yet to see written proof. Sonny would have not only informed me of a change but he would have made sure I had a notarized copy. I gave Anthony ten days to produce this supposed new will, a week ago tomorrow.”

“So he hasn’t produced it?”

Carmine shook his head. His dark eyes flashed dangerously. “No, and if that remains the case, the last document recorded will stand.”

“What does that mean?”

“I retain control — then dole out my brother’s personal assets.”

“Skin?”

“He had the lion’s share, but the family has the other piece.”

“Can Anthony gain control?”

“With backing — yes.”

“I don’t get Anthony’s hard-on for
Skin.
It’s totally legit.” Her eyes widened and she looked at her uncle. “He wants to put his people on the payroll and pay out benefits and probably run his dirty money through it.”

Carmine shook his head. “He has other ventures for blowing up the payroll, even laundering —”

“Does he hate me so much that he wants it out of sheer spite?”

Unk’s dark eyes reflected his sympathy.

“I don’t want your pity, Unk. I can handle how Anthony feels about me.”

He reached across the table and patted her hand. “Your father was a bigger fool than your brother. You’re a good girl, Francesca.”

Emotion welled in her chest, and she quickly tamped it. There was time for tears later, now she needed to focus on
Skin.
She smiled and nodded, contemplating her position. In the event the will didn’t surface, and if she had the time to prove to the family she had what it took to control
Skin,
then Anthony would lose support. “I need to position myself, Unk. To do that I need to get busy and I don’t need distractions. I have
Skin
’s anniversary edition to launch. If it fails, then I lose with the family and I lose with our advertisers. Can you find something other than
Skin
to occupy my brother?”

Carmine shook his head and sat back into his chair. He pushed what was left of the second cannoli away from him. “I’m afraid,
cara,
Anthony is much like your father at that age. The difference being your father knew how to create allies. Anthony just plows through whoever stands in his way, and right now, the family dynamics are too volatile to issue edicts. I suggest we both lie low, and so long as Anthony is only making noises, we tune him out.”

Carmine’s reserved approach to explosive situations was his trademark. He never reacted impulsively. The complete opposite of her brother.

This was all the fault of Anthony’s mother, Constance Vezzio. Santini Donatello bucked the old guard on most levels, especially when it came to philandering and divorce. After Connie, a stripper at one of her father’s clubs, gave birth to a bouncing baby boy and blood tests proved the up-and-coming don the father, Sonny-boy pulled a Henry the Eighth and had his first marriage, the one to her mother, annulled. Everyone knew it was a polite way to say divorce. Her mother never forgave him. For that and a laundry list of other things. With a male Donatello and an annulment, Connie swooped in and made Francesca’s life miserable.

Whatever Connie wanted Connie got. Including zero interference when her sweet little angel Anthony required discipline. Anthony learned at a very early age that all he had to do was run to Mama and his problems were solved.

“I heard his uncle, Sal Vezzio, is yucking it up with the family.” She smashed a chocolate chip under her thumb. “They seem to be listening.”

Carmine chuckled and eyed the half cannoli on his desk. He picked it up and plopped it in his mouth. He chewed slowly, a look of satisfaction caressing his full features. “Sal is an ass. His brains wouldn’t fill a thimble.”

“All the more reason to be wary, Unk. He’s a hothead like his nephew. He scares me.”

Carmine nodded and stood. “Good you think that way,
cara.
But don’t worry. Your health and interests are safe as long as I am alive.”

Frankie swallowed hard. Her skin flashed cold and she had the uneasy sensation of creepy crawlies scurrying up and down her back. She shook off the feeling. No one would dare touch Carmine. She caught her breath. She had thought the same of her father. Her heartbeat slowed. Carmine didn’t have the enemies Santini did. Carmine always treated the family and foes with respect. In fact, over the past few years, Frankie knew many of the cousins bypassed hotheaded Santini in favor of Carmine’s levelheaded advice.