Deep(3)

Usually, he, Uncle Ben, and Fred met at lunch for their daily meeting; in the past few years, as he neared eighty, Ben had slowed down in the morning and didn’t, as a rule, get to the office before ten unless there was strong cause to be there earlier. Nick knew that the old man was coping with debilitating arthritis and preferred to keep his morning hours private, until the stiff weakness he felt after waking had eased and he could walk with his back and shoulders straight.



This morning, though, he’d wanted an earlier meeting. The previous day had been too full of blood family obligations for more than a quick ‘job’s done’ update, and he’d put Nick off when he’d said he had good intel. Now, he wanted a full briefing.



When Jimmy Lupo, his driver and bodyguard, knocked on his office door and leaned in to let him know it was time, Nick closed his laptop and went down the hall to Ben’s office.



Fred was already there, sitting in one of the red leather chairs in front of Ben’s desk. He stood when Nick came in.



“Morning, Nick. New suit? Sharp.”



In a habitual gesture that he always noticed himself doing but couldn’t seem to stop, Nick tugged lightly on the French cuff of his white shirt, bringing it out from the sleeve of his Armani suit coat—midnight blue, three button. It wasn’t a new suit, though, and it would have been difficult to tell if it were. All his suits were Armani, all of them midnight blue except his tuxedo. Some, like this one, were pinstriped. Though he didn’t always wear a tie, and wasn’t wearing one now, he dressed for business.



“No, Fred. Not new. But thanks. And good morning.” Before he sat in the other chair in front of the desk, he extended his hand across it and shook with the don. “Good morning, Uncle.”



“Nick. You left the party early last night.”



Nick loved his Uncle Carlo, and his cousins, too. He would certainly do everything he could to keep them safe—and he had. But he didn’t enjoy their company much. He felt a wide distance between him and them, between their family and his. They spoke of the family ‘on the other side of the pews’—meaning the Pagano Brothers—and he heard the word ‘wrong’ when they said ‘other.’ There was judgment in the distinction they made. He’d felt it as a child, and he felt it more keenly as an adult. They knew who he was in the organization, what he did, and they judged him. He didn’t care, but he felt it. So he stayed on the edges and watched.



He’d always felt isolated among his generation of the family. Uncle Ben’s girls, much closer to his own age, had been silly, frilly little princesses as children. They’d each left the Cove as soon as they’d graduated high school, going away to college and then marrying and leaving for good. Carlo Sr.’s children, though substantially younger than Nick, had at least been more fun, until they were old enough to make that distinction and see themselves as the better Paganos. His own siblings, an older sister and a younger brother, had both died in earliest infancy. While his cousins had all grown up in bustling, busy homes, Nick had grown up in a nearly empty house. He didn’t care, but it made him different. So he stayed on the edges.



And left parties early.



He answered his uncle as he sat. “Yes. Met up with Vanessa.”



“You should bring her more often. It’s good for family to see you with someone.”



Choosing to ignore that statement rather than be derailed into a conversation about his sliver of a personal life, Nick said, “Landers talked at length before we were done with him. He gave us Jackie Stone. If we can take Stone out of the equation, then that’s the last line between us and Church.”



In the past two months, Nick and his crew had located, secured, questioned, and disposed of seven men who had worked for Alvin Church or one of his affiliates in the collective of up-jumped street rats trying to take the Paganos down. Three drivers. Four shooters. The men who killed his father, and the men who shot up the funeral, killing three Pagano associates, nearly killing Nick’s cousin Carmen and her then-unborn daughter, and injuring five other people, three of whom were civilians. His interrogations of those seven men had brought him to Raymond Landers, one of Church’s affiliates, an aimless asshole who’d been little more than a pusher with a good corner two years earlier and had lately been strutting around Lower South Providence in a customized Benz and five-hundred-dollar jeans. He’d soiled those jeans more than once before Nick and Brian were done with him. Now, that Benz had been chopped into anonymity, and Landers had, too.