“I know Sunday is your day at the house, so we won’t keep you. But tonight, after dinner—say, nine o’clock—stop by the warehouse. We have some business.” Ben reached out and gave Luca’s arm and squeeze. “You enjoy your day. We’ll see you tonight.”
With that, he knew he was dismissed. He nodded and went back to his father and siblings.
He felt fairly sure he was fucked.
oOo
“What are you doing out here in front, man? Everybody’s out back.”
Luca had been sitting alone on the steps leading up to the house. The chaos of Sunday on Caravel Road had just been too much for him today. He had a lot on his mind.
Carlo’s voice brought him back to the here and now. He had come up behind him and now sat a couple of steps up from him, handing him a cold beer over his shoulder. “You okay? Saw the summons. Does that have you bent?”
Luca shrugged. “I guess. I have to go to the warehouse after dinner. I have no idea what they’re gonna want.”
“I didn’t like that Nick was standing with them.”
“No, sir.” They got along fine with Nick. He’d always been a decent cousin. He was five years older than Carlo and nine years older than Luca, but he hadn’t been a shit about it when they were kids. They’d played together as kids and hung out some as teens. But he was not someone with whom to fuck. With him involved, it was hardcore, whatever the Uncles wanted from Luca.
“They haven’t come to you yet, have they?” Luca looked over his shoulder at his brother.
“You’d know if they had. It’s been almost a year, but they have long memories. It’ll happen. I was hoping they’d bring us in together.”
Luca laughed. “We have different skill sets, big brother. They’ll probably ask you to make them a building. Me, I think I’m gonna end up bloody. Mine or somebody else’s.”
“You don’t know that.”
“We both know that, Carlo.”
The brothers sat in silence, drinking their beer. Then Luca asked a question that he’d been gnawing at before Carlo had come out. “If you could look at the last, say, eight years of your life—starting right before you met Jenny—and see eight years into the future, all the crap you were gonna live through, would you do anything different?”
He’d asked the question without looking back at Carlo. Now, the silence behind him extended into uncomfortable territory, and he turned his head to see Carlo staring at him, his forehead creased. “What’s going on, Luc?”
“What d’you mean? It’s just a question.”
“That question is wicked philosophical—not usually your style.”
“Fuck you, asshole. I think about shit.”
Carlo cocked an eyebrow. “Luc.”
Luca laughed. “Okay, maybe not as much as some.” He finished his beer. “You got an answer?”
Looking out over the road below, and with a heavy sigh, Carlo was quiet, thinking. Finally he said, “No. I’m sitting here thinking about all the shit, the scary stuff, the heartbreak, almost losing Trey, what happened to Joey, what Bina went through, and there’s a lot I wish hadn’t happened. But it all got me here. You know? I can’t think of any one thing I could change that would still land me here. And, brother, I am good here. I can’t say I wish I hadn’t married Jenny, because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have Trey. Maybe Pete and I would have left Supratecture and gone out on our own earlier, and maybe we would have been too busy to bother with James Auberon’s stupid party. I met Bina at that party. Maybe she’d still be with that sadistic piece of shit. Or, no—she’d be dead. No. The bad makes the good. And I want to be where I am. So I wouldn’t change anything at all.” He pushed at Luca’s shoulder. “You have regrets, bro?”
“Nah. I guess I’m wondering if I will someday. If shit I’ve already done, or shit I might do, will fuck things up. I guess I haven’t done much changing.”
“No, Luc, you have not. You’ve worked one job in your whole life. You live in the same apartment you moved to from this house—where you were born. You’ve never had a serious relationship with a woman. You’re the same guy you’ve always been.” When Luca looked down at the step between his feet, feeling some kind of weight in his gut at that bleak summary of his life, Carlo went on, “That’s not bad, bro. You’re a good guy. If you’re happy, then just…live. You’re all set.”