The Promise

Chapter Two Shakespeare

I woke up feeling a t-shirt-covered chest under my cheek and hand, an arm angled down my back, hand resting on my hip, and I heard baseball on the TV.

I opened my eyes and saw I was right, white tee stretched across a broad chest, a chest my hand was resting on.

I instantly rolled to my back. The arm around me let me, but the tee came with me and then Benny was up on an elbow in the bed, forearm under me, upper body looming over me. Now I could see tee spread across a broad chest and shoulders, a handsome face with the beginnings of a sexy five o’clock shadow, tousled dark hair, and gentle dark brown eyes.

“Sleep good?” he asked quietly.

“Why are you in bed with me?” I asked back, not quietly.

One side of his lips hitched up slightly and he repeated, “Sleep good?”

I decided to dispense with the back and forth and snapped, “Yes,” then did my own repeating. “Why are you in bed with me?”

“Watchin’ the game,” he replied.

“Don’t you have a TV in your living room?”

“I do, but got home, started up here to check on you, heard somethin’ that freaked me out. Thought you were takin’ a chainsaw to my bed. Got in here, saw it was you out and snorin’.”

I closed my eyes.

I opened them when Ben kept speaking.

“Looked at the TV, heard the TV, knew it was fucked up. Babe, you messed with my contrast?”

I fought my smirk by glaring at him.

He ignored my glare and continued, “A man’s TV has gotta be the way he wants it to be. So I decided to sort that shit without delay. Took a while so I figured I should be comfortable doing it, and bein’ comfortable meant movin’ you so you’d stop makin’ that God-awful noise.”

I said not a word, but what I thought was that my TV ploy was an epic fail.

Benny did say a word, more than one. “Jesus, Frankie, you even fucked with the receiver.”

“No one has surround sound in their bedroom, Ben,” I informed him.

“I do,” he informed me.

“Why?” I asked.

He leaned slightly into me and I tensed because Benny close was bad. Benny very close was very bad.

“Tell me this, cara,” he started. “Why does a woman ask ‘why’ about shit a man does? I’m not askin’ just to ask. I honestly wanna know the answer to that. He does what he does. If it doesn’t hurt anybody, why does there have to be a ‘why?’”

It was more than a little annoying that he had a point.

“We want to understand you,” I explained.

“Half the shit any woman I know does I do not get. Not even a little bit. And I do not care that I don’t get it. She does what she does. She doesn’t get in my face doin’ it, who gives a fuck?”

“So you’re sayin’ you don’t give a fuck about how women think?” I asked.

“I’m sayin’ I don’t need to know how you think,” he replied.

“Is this why you’re thirty-five and single?” I went on snottily.

“No,” he returned immediately. “I’m thirty-five and single because I am not gonna settle for somethin’ that doesn’t feel right, doesn’t feel good, doesn’t bring me joy, doesn’t have my back, doesn’t know how to cook, keep house, listen, laugh, make me laugh, give great head, or ask me why I do shit.”

“I’m not sure that woman exists,” I shared, and something changed in his eyes that I could probably read if I tried. But I didn’t try.

“I’ll find her,” he replied.

“I’m thinkin’ you won’t,” I told him, no longer being a bitch. I really didn’t think he would. The giving-great-head part especially. It was my experience, both personally and anecdotally, that most women found that a chore. It had to be done occasionally, but you went through the motions to do it.

He leaned in even closer. “Then I’ll train her.”

I felt my eyes get squinty. “We’re not dogs, Ben.”

“A woman gets in a relationship, you’re tellin’ me she doesn’t do her thing to train her man?” he shot back.

She did. Absolutely. She started building her lesson plans the day after a first good date.

On that thought, I decided a change in subject was in order so I brought us back to priority one.

“So you fixed your TV. Why were you still in bed with me?”

“You felt good. I like you close. And when you aren’t sawin’ logs, you’re makin’ cute little noises, like little whimpers, that I like hearin’ nearly as much as I like you close.”

Suddenly, we were catapulted into dangerous territory, and that dangerous territory was that what he said was making me feel warm inside.

“Benny,” I whispered, but said no more.

Benny didn’t need me to. He had plenty to say.

“Seven years, fucked around. I knew. I figure you knew. Told you before I left, not fuckin’ around anymore. Playin’ it straight. You asked, I gave it to you straight.”

I decided not to ask Benny Bianchi another question in my life, which meant I fell silent.

Benny held my silence for long moments before he asked, “You hungry?”

I was, so I said, “Yep.”

His eyes changed again, they grew warm with concern, and he went on quietly, “You got pain?”

I absolutely did.

I didn’t answer verbally. I nodded.

The skin around his mouth tightened momentarily before he muttered, “Right.”

Then he moved. Carefully extricating his arm from under me, he rolled off the bed and immediately shoved his hand in his back pocket. He pulled his phone out, then nabbed the remote from the nightstand and shoved it in his pocket, taking away any further opportunities of TV revenge.

Since he did this, he clearly didn’t know I considered the first try spectacularly unsuccessful. I wasn’t all that smart, but I was smart enough not to repeat an ineffective maneuver.

He started walking toward the door with his thumb moving over the screen of his phone.

He was out the door when I heard him say, “Man? That pie I made? Put it in the oven and have someone bring it over when it’s done. Breadsticks. Salad. Yeah?”

I heard no more as I figured either Manny agreed to what his big brother ordered and/or Benny was going down the stairs.

I moved a hand to rest just above the bandages at my midriff and stared at the ceiling.

I wanted to think about the fact that I was soon going to experience a pizza pie created at the hands of Benny Bianchi. This thought was too titillating, so I couldn’t think of it and opened my mind to find something else to think about.

Seeing as I was lying in Benny’s bed, where my mind took me was to the fact that, growing up, the Bianchis went to the same church as my family. I used to watch them, even as a little girl. All six of them.

I watched them because I liked what I saw.

Ma, being a crazy, rowdy, trouble-making, fun-loving, adventure-seeking slut (the last part was not nice, but it was true and she’d say the same damn thing with crazy, rowdy, fun-loving, pride), weirdly did not miss church on Sunday.

“Gotta wash away the sin, my precious girl, so you can sin again,” she’d tell me frequently on a flashy smile.

Watching the Bianchis, and having years to do it, truth be told I’d had my eye on Ben way before I even thought about Vinnie. Vinnie was five years older than me, so back in the day, he was out of my league.

Ben was not. He was one year older than me. I went to school with him and every girl in school had their eye on Benito Bianchi.

Way back then, Ma had her eye on Benny too. For me. She used to don a tube top and a pair of short shorts, put hot rollers in her hair, tease it out to extremes, spray it so it barely moved (in other words, her normal routine), and then drag my ass to his baseball games.

Even though Benny was not hard to look at, and back then (and now) he had that thing—that thing the cool boys had which set them apart and made you want them so much it was like an ache—I avoided Ma’s many and varied plans to throw me in his path.

This was because he played the field, even in high school, and I wasn’t talking about baseball. Stealing bases in all the ways that could be implied was definitely a specialty of Benny’s. By his junior year, he’d gone through all the available, easy girls in our school and had started to concentrate on casting lures more widely.

Even in high school, I knew I didn’t want to get involved with a boy like that, no matter how cute he was. No matter that he had that thing. No matter that I’d secretly watch him and wish so hard he had that thing in a one-girl type of way (instead of an any-girl-who-would-give-it-up type of way) and ache for him to be mine.

And even in high school, I knew why the unbeatable lure of Benny Bianchi was beatable for me.

My half-Italian, half-Irish father had a kid—my brother, Dino—from some chick he knocked up before he knocked up my mother with me.

Enzo Concetti, my dad, was hot (still). He was rough. He was crazy. He was adventure-seeking. And he got a kick out of my ma. So after he knocked her up, he took her ball and chain and they enjoyed themselves immensely for the next five years. I knew this because Ma squeezed out both my sisters, Catarina and Natalia, and my baby brother, Enzo Junior, in that time.

Unfortunately, as time went by with marriage and family in the mix, neither Dad nor Ma stopped being crazy or thinking life was about having a really fucking great time as often as you could get it, and if life didn’t give it to you, you made it. The drag of a family and a spouse was just that: a drag.

So things went as they were bound to go when my parents were faced with something like responsibility, which, no getting away from it (though they tried), kids were. It got ugly and my parents weren’t about ugly. They also weren’t about fixing things that were broken, even if those things were important. And, being how they were, they didn’t let it stay ugly for long before they bailed.

Dad never got remarried. Dad spent the next decades doing what he liked most: having a great time. Dad was currently fifty-six and living with his latest piece, who was four years older than me.

Ma did get remarried, three more times. All of them had been to good guys that I liked. All of them had failed because those guys were good guys who eventually wanted to settle down, or who were settled and thought they could have fun with Ma for a while and then settle her down. When they failed, they bailed. Or, more to the point, she bailed or made it so they had no choice but to do the same. She was currently living in Florida and had a rock on her finger, setting up plans to get hitched to number five.

This was obviously not conducive to a stable childhood home. Ma and Dad got along, yucked it up when they were together, and it was not unusual in times when they both were unattached (or even times when they were) when we woke up to Ma at Dad’s house or Dad at Ma’s, seeing as they frequently hooked up for a trip down memory lane.

During all this, they did not have a formal custody agreement.

Well, actually, they did. They just didn’t adhere to it. They went with their flow. Therefore, we were bounced from one to the other, to aunts, uncles, grandparents, boyfriends, girlfriends, wherever they were or whenever they needed to be quit of us, all of this at random. When we got older, we just went wherever we wanted. They didn’t really care, as long as we eventually came home breathing.

Through this, I’d developed a deep jealousy I never told a single soul about toward my brother Dino. His mom got her shit together, got married to a stand-up guy, gave Dino a brother and sister, a lot of love, a solid family, and a good home.

So by the time I hit high school, I knew that was what I wanted. I didn’t want a guy out for a good time with the mission to get laid and drunk as often as he could, participating in the parking lot fist fights and bar brawls that came along the way.

I wanted a solid family. I wanted to be part of building a good home. After that, I wanted to spend my energy making it stay good.

How that led me to Vinnie, I had no idea, except for the fact that Ma’s eye eventually turned to him for me.

And Vinnie was a Bianchi.

Vinnie was good-looking. Vinnie was loud. Vinnie was the life of any party. Vinnie never met anyone he didn’t like. That was, unless you rubbed him the wrong way. Then he didn’t have any problem letting you know you did and acting on it if he felt that kind of attention was deserved.

Vinnie had one life plan: to live large. He just didn’t know how to get that.

So he saw a good thing—the thriving success of his father’s restaurant—and tried to convince Vinnie Senior into franchising the pizzeria, telling his father it would make them millionaires.

That didn’t go over too good. Vinnie Senior was vehemently against it, feeling Vinnie’s Pizzeria was about quality and tradition, both of which would no doubt get lost in an attempt at nationwide franchising. Vinnie Senior went so far as to be disappointed (openly) that his son didn’t get that and would even suggest franchising.

In order to show his father, Vinnie Junior washed his hands of the pizzeria and opened his own sandwich business. He had no idea what he was doing, even though I told him he should learn before he dumped his time and limited money into that kind of thing. In the end, unsurprisingly, it failed.

A dozen other schemes, all half-baked, either died an ugly death or never left the starting gate.

Enter Sal and his business, something that Vinnie took to with scary ease, something I should have read as what it was when it happened.

Through all this, the Bianchis cast their eyes to me as the woman behind the man pushing Vinnie to do stupid shit in order to hand her the world. They didn’t judge outright. They didn’t say shit. But as time went on, I felt the blame I didn’t deserve.

I didn’t say a word.

I didn’t say a word because I loved their pizzeria. I loved what it represented. The solidity of their family. Their history. Their loyalty. Their teasing. Their warmth with each other. Their spice when one of them would get pissed, but it was okay because it was based in love and loyalty and it felt good to be around, rather than shaky and dysfunctional.

So I held on when I knew I should’ve let go. I held on thinking that Vinnie would eventually get his head out of his ass and give me what I wanted. I held on because I loved being a part of the Bianchis, something I always wanted.

And I held on because I loved Vinnie. He was loud and loved life and I understood that. I’d lived it with my parents. I felt comfortable there, even though I knew it was dangerous.

I held on.

Then there was nothing to hold on to.

I was too young to recognize I’d found my father.

I also had no clue at the time that I’d picked the wrong brother. I had no clue I’d be forced to watch from up close, and then afar, as Benny started to settle down.

First, he quit his job in construction and went to work at the pizzeria. This meant he stopped carousing at night because he was working at night.

Then he bought that house.

A row house in the middle of the row, built up from the sidewalk. Front stoop. Back stoop. Nonexistent front yard. Backyard big enough to play catch in and house a two-car garage and another spot for family parking. There were four bedrooms in all the other houses, but Benny’s was three, with a converted master bath. Living room/dining room up front. Kitchen, den, utility room in the back. Small powder room downstairs. Family bathroom upstairs.

It was settled—had been there over a century and the surrounding inhabitants were mostly Italian American families whose relatives had lived in that ’hood for generations and weren’t going to give it up.

Once he got the house, he got rid of his muscle car and bought an SUV.

And he eventually took over the pizzeria from his old man.

He still fucked everything that moved, but I paid attention to the talk. I knew some of the women he took to his bed. I knew exactly when it went from being about getting off to being about finding the right one.

Sure, he would have his times that were just about getting laid.

But Benny started to move down the path that I knew was leading him to find someone who would help him build a solid family and create a good home.

Vinnie never did that. Vinnie had no interest in that path. He only was interested in his path, however murky, and he dragged me along with him.

The problem was, I let him.

On this thought, I sensed movement and cast my eyes down my body to see Ben walking in. He was carrying a pint glass filled with ice and purple liquid in one hand, a little pharmacy pill bottle in the other.

I pushed up to sitting as Benny hit my side of the bed. He put the stuff on the nightstand and leaned into me in order to arrange pillows behind my back. When he was done, I scooted up the bed to rest on the pillows and Ben went to the bottle.

I had the glass by the time he handed me the pill.

I took the medicine and decided not to argue when Ben sat his ass, hip to mine, on the bed.

“Pizza’s comin’,” he stated.

“Okay,” I replied, putting the glass on the nightstand.

“Read your doctor’s notes,” he told me and I looked his way.

That was none of his business and he knew it.

I decided not to share that that irked me, and just how much, and stayed silent.

“Wants you to make a checkup appointment next week. I’ll get Ma on that.”

I did not want Theresa “on that.” I was quite capable of making a phone call to set an appointment with my own freaking doctor.

I decided not to give him that information either.

“He wants you movin’ around. Not much at first, but he wants you active.”

“Okay,” I repeated.

“And he says for a few days you can’t shower without someone close.”

Again, we were in dangerous territory. Dangerous for Benny because he was not going to go there. He could kidnap me (because he did). He could put me in his bed (because he did).

But he wasn’t getting anywhere near me in a shower.

“If you think—” I started.

“I don’t,” he cut me off. “But I want Ma around when you do it. I have a friend whose woman had surgery. They weren’t livin’ together then and she’s independent, thinks she can do it all, she decided to take a shower by herself. But when she took off the bandage and saw that shit, she freaked and passed out. Hit her head on the tub. Gave herself a concussion and another hospital stay. So you let Ma help you out and you let her dress your wound. You don’t want that, you got a girl, I’ll let you call her. You don’t let Ma do it or make a call, not fuckin’ with you, Francesca, you’ll shower with me in this room, the door open, and I’ll dress your wound.”

I was about to serve the attitude when it hit me this was an excellent idea.

If I called one of my friends, I could enlist her in helping me escape.

“I’ll phone a friend,” I told him, but I forced it to sound annoyed so he wouldn’t cotton on to my game.

“Good,” he muttered.

“Did you buy my tapioca?” I asked.

His eyes lit with humor, and when they did, I remembered how very much I liked that in a way that made me wonder, if I had a different kind of life—in other words, I’d made smarter decisions in the life I had—if I would ever get used to that. Watching Benny Bianchi’s eyes light with humor. Feeling that light shine on me, making me warm all over, even on the inside. If that would ever become commonplace.

But I’d never have that life.

Still, I knew if I had it, if Ben and I had a year together or fifty of them, I’d go for that light. I’d work for it. I’d do it every day for fifty years.

And I’d never get used to the warmth it would give me.

“Yeah,” he answered.

“A trashy novel?” I pushed.

More humor in his eyes and a, “Fuck no.”

“Benny, TV and magazines aren’t gonna get me very far.”

“Seein’ as you got my company tonight, Ma and me tomorrow, not to mention one of your girls comin’ over to help you shower, you’ll be good. After tomorrow, I’ll send Ma out to buy you some smut. That’ll mean she’ll do it after goin’ to church and lightin’ a candle in aid of your soul, but she’ll do it.”

She would. There was a breach to heal. She’d frown on my smut, but she’d buy it for me.

“I was kinda hopin’ that tonight you’d bring me pizza, leave me alone, and go watch the game downstairs,” I noted.

“You’d be hopin’ wrong since your ass is walkin’ down the stairs to have dinner with me at the kitchen table so you can get some exercise in. After that, we’re watchin’ whatever we watch up here together, in my bed, ’cause I know you. I know you’re fuckin’ crazy. I know a bullet to the belly will not stop you from crawlin’ out the window. So my ass isn’t on that couch downstairs until you fall asleep.”

He intended to sleep on the couch.

This made me feel relief.

It also made me feel a niggle of gloom.

I’d been alone a long time. Living alone. Sleeping alone. Keeping myself to myself.

I knew Ben was dangerous and I knew prolonged exposure to him would increase that danger significantly.

That didn’t change the fact that he was not hard to look at, it was not a hardship to watch him move, I got a kick out of squabbling with him, and it far from sucked waking up with my cheek to his chest, his arm wrapped around me, the feel and smell of him everywhere.

Obviously, I not only didn’t share this, I didn’t let these thoughts show.

Instead, I mumbled, “Whatever. Until you release me from captivity, I’ll go through the motions to avoid the hassle.”

“You’ve never gone through the motions to avoid hassle,” he returned. “You’ve gone through the motions to deflect attention so you can carry out whatever scheme you’re hatchin’.”

I focused on him. I did it intently and with some annoyance I didn’t bother to hide because it was annoying that he knew I was plotting.

He grinned at my reaction and kept talking.

“Like I said, bein’ straight up, Frankie. You should know I’m not fallin’ for your shit. So whatever girl you got lined up to help you make your getaway, get that shit out of your head. Old lady Zambino saw what you did on TV. She knows you took one for family and she’s all over keepin’ you safe and settled, recuperatin’ at my house. Probably half a second after my chat with her enlisting her officially in the cause, she was on her phone with that bowlin’ posse of hers and, swear to God, I saw one of those women in her Chrysler, cruisin’ the alley when I got home. You’re stuck. Give in to that and this’ll go a whole lot smoother.”

Old lady Zambino lived across the street from Benny. Old lady Zambino was Italian. Old lady Zambino was nosy. And if she knew anyone referred to her as “old lady Zambino,” she would hire a hit on them.

She was in her eighties, but she looked like she was in her fifties. She had peachy-red hair she wore up in a puffy ’do fastened at the back through curls. She was trim and fit. She wore jeans, nice blouses, and high heels. She had weekly manicures done to her talons and was never without one of her signature nail polishes: gold or wine red in the winter (scarlet red for the Christmas season); silver or fuchsia in the summer (pale pink for Easter). Her face was always made up perfectly, and she was the poster child for a good skincare regime because she had wrinkles, just not many of them.

She power walked daily and she did this in sporty athletic gear that many would say she should leave to the twentysomethings, but she worked that shit like no other.

She also played with a team of old lady bowlers in three different leagues and they took that shit seriously. If there was a senior ladies tour, she’d be the champion. Her famed ball was a marbled black with hot pink, gold, and silver veins, and she carted her ass and that twelve-pounder from alley to alley without effort and with a great deal of determination.

If she and her bowling buddies intended to keep me at Benny’s, they’d succeed.

In other words, it was time for me to act on the fly and hatch a different scheme.

So I did it.

“Does it bother you in the slightest that I don’t want to be here? That I don’t want this talk you wanna have? That I don’t wanna let Theresa have a sit-down with me? That I don’t want your dad to say his words to make amends? I just want to get on with my life after seven not-very-great years, and before that, six years with Vinnie that I realized too late weren’t real great, all of that ending with me running through the forest with a woman I did not know, and a grand finale of blood and bullets and a fair amount of gore. Which, luckily, wasn’t all mine, but watchin’ Cal blow a hole in that man’s head was not fun, even though I hate that man and I’m glad he’s rottin’ in hell.”

“Frankie—”

I shook my head. “No, Ben. I’d really like to get in your truck and for you to take me home, then leave me alone. I think I made the leavin’-me-alone part pretty clear the night I got shot because I told you that, straight up. Then I made it clear a more subtle way, hopin’ you’d get it, fakin’ sleepin’ every time you or one of your family showed at the hospital. Now you’re bein’ straight, I’ll be straight right back. I do not want what you want; I want to be left alone.”

I should have known by the look on his face that I liked way too much that what would come next would be a blow, but I stupidly didn’t brace.

So when he whispered, “But…you’re family, baby,” it was a blow.

Because it was the wrong thing to say.

It hurt. Too much.

Emotional pain was far worse than a gunshot wound and I was in the position to know.

I’d wanted that…once. I got it…once.

Then they took it away.

“Family doesn’t turn their back on family for seven years, especially doin’ that shit when one of their own loses the man in her bed.”

I saw his flinch. He tried to hide it, but I saw it.

He recovered from my hit and his voice was gentle (and, thus, beautiful) when he asked, “So you know what family does, cara?”

“Uh…yeah,” I snapped. “I know what family does.”

“Then where’s your ma?”

I clamped my mouth shut.

“Where’s Enzo Senior?” he went on.

I glared at him.

“Where’s Nat, Cat, Enzo Junior? Talked to Cindy and the girls at the nurse’s station. Not a visit. Not from one of them.”

“Ma’s in Florida,” I reminded him.

“Babe, you were shot. The only excuse she can give not to be at your bedside after that kind of shit happens is she’s on the fuckin’ moon and NASA declared there’s no safe reentry without burnin’ up.”

“You know Ninette is not the bedside-vigil type of mom,” I reminded him.

“I know not one of those folks you count as blood is the bedside-vigil, takin’-care-of-their-girl type at all. That is not family, Frankie, and it proves my point. You don’t know family. You did, you’d know that shit is not right. Fuck, your dad, Nat, and Cat all still live in the city and they didn’t haul their asses to the hospital to see you.”

“Nat works nights,” I pointed out. “She has to sleep during the day.”

“She works as a cocktail waitress,” Benny returned. “She’s not an ER doc who takes the night shift and has to get her shuteye in ’cause, if she doesn’t, she could make a mistake the next day that might cost someone their life.”

He’d been annoying me.

Now he was pissing me off.

“Why are we talking about this?” I hissed.

“Because, for some fool reason, you’re denyin’ yourself somethin’ you want.” He shook his head. “No, somethin’ you need. Somethin’ I’m handin’ you and you refuse to reach out and take it.”

“What I’m tryin’ to get through that thick head of yours is I don’t want it, Benny. I definitely don’t need it. I want to move beyond it.”

“That’s a straight-up lie,” he shot back.

“It is not.” My voice was rising.

Suddenly, his face was in my face and all I could smell was his aftershave, all I could see were his eyes. “So you’re sayin’ I kissed you right now, you would not want that?”

I stopped breathing.

The slightly good thing about that was now I had confirmation about what Ben’s talk would be about. I had guessed, now I knew.

That was the slightly good thing.

Slightly.

“I’m your brother’s girlfriend,” I reminded him.

“You were Vinnie’s girlfriend,” he retorted immediately. “Now you’re just Frankie.”

“If you don’t think he’s always gonna be between us—the history of bad blood your family clung to for seven years and the shit they laid on my shoulders for years before that isn’t gonna be between me and them—you’re cracked.”

“I think we give this a go, we’ll both get to the point where we remember we loved Vinnie and that’ll be all there is about Vinnie. Gettin’ to that, there’ll be shit we hit that’ll be awkward and uncomfortable, but we’ll power through it and get there in the end.”

“You’re so sure?” I asked snidely.

“Yeah,” he answered firmly.

“And how are you so sure, Ben? Hunh? Tell me that.”

“’Cause if I didn’t waste seven fuckin’ years, that would be where we were now if I had finally pulled my finger outta my ass and made my move on you then. Instead of sittin’ on this bed arguin’ with you about where we should be goin’, I’d be doin’ somethin’ else to you in this bed while our kids were at Ma’s house, tearin’ it up.”

His words hit me so hard in a way that felt dangerously good, I sucked in a painful breath. But Benny was not done.

“’Cept I did it back then, we’d have to live with Vinnie knowin’ I stole his woman. Until he got whacked, that is.”

The word “What?” came out of me in a gush of breath.

“Francesca, you givin’ me a week and a half to think on all this shit, things got clear. And what got clear was that the minute Vinnie became a made man, you lost him. I lost him. My family lost him. He stopped bein’ ours and he became Sal’s. Say it didn’t end in his bein’ dead. Do you think Ma would let that kind of man sit at her table for Christmas dinner?” He shook his head again. “No fuckin’ way. Ma and Pop are stubborn. They were holdin’ on to hope. But it was slippin’ and he was cruisin’ straight to bein’ disowned, dead to them in a different way, and you know it.”

I did. Vinnie Senior and Theresa were gearing up to let him go. I knew it then. I felt it. It hurt. Vinnie felt it. It killed. There were a lot of things family forgave, looked beyond, got used to, sucked it up for, and they could shift the blame to me for a lot of shit.

But he’d been made in the Mafia. The things he was doing were going to get harder and harder to blame on me. The things he was doing were all on him. He knew it and they were figuring it out.

And once you were made in the mob, you never got out.

There was no turning back.

For him.

For me, now, that was another matter.

And Benny immediately got into that matter.

“And I know you. You would not let him plant babies in you—not go out and do the shit he did for Sal, come to you with blood on his hands after puttin’ drugs on the street or shakin’ people down or whatever the fuck they do, and let him put a baby inside you. I know that, Frankie. He was livin’ on borrowed time in more ways than the one that got him and we both know it.”

“So you were gonna move on his woman?” I asked.

“Why do you think I was so fuckin’ pissed when you made that move on me after we put him in the ground?” he asked back. “You stole my show, babe. And you did it too fuckin’ quick. I was not ready, you were not ready, and I got pissed. Too pissed. Held a grudge. Pissed away time. Now we’re here.”

“I didn’t make a move,” I reminded him sharply. “You kissed me.”

“You made a move, Frankie,” he said with rigidity.

I did.

Fuck.

I did.

“This is insane,” I snapped, because it fucking well was!

He got even closer. “This is real and you fuckin’ know it.”

“I do not,” I bit out.

“You so fuckin’ do,” he returned. “I get where you are. I was there for seven years. Denyin’ where I was at and where I wanted you to be. Holdin’ guilt about all a’ that. How I felt and what I wanted before he died. How I felt and the same thing I wanted after he was gone. You see the woman you want bleedin’ from a gunshot wound on a forest floor, she survives that shit and gives you a week and a half, Frankie, that’s plenty of time to pull your head outta your ass. I did it on my own. Now you’re gonna do it, and if you don’t, I’m right here and I’m gonna do it for you.”

“You are not!” My voice was beginning to rise as my heartbeat was beginning to escalate. “Primarily because there’s nothing to pull my head outta my ass about.”

“You need me to kiss you?”

“No!” I shouted, my voice now loud and my breathing now harsh.

“Shakespeare,” he clipped, and my head jerked.

“What?” I rapped out.

“What’d he say about protesting?”

I felt my eyes go squinty again.

“You got it all figured out, don’t you, Benny?” I asked sarcastically.

“Bet you five hundred dollars I kiss you, in about five seconds you’d have it figured out too.”

No way in hell I was taking that bet.

“Gambling is a sin,” I hissed.

“Yeah, so you go to Vegas every year to catch the shows?”

My eyes got squintier.

“Five hundred bucks, Frankie.”

“I’m recovering from a major bodily trauma, Ben.”

“Read your doctor’s notes, babe. Said nothin’ about you not kissin’. Told you to refrain from intercourse, so we’ll save that for later.”

I clenched my teeth, even as I felt my nipples tingle.

God, I wanted to slap him.

I also wanted him to kiss me.

And I couldn’t even think of intercourse with Benny, not with him that close. Hell, not ever.

“Not gonna take the bet?” he taunted, moving an inch closer.

“Fuck off, Ben.”

He grinned.

Then he repeated, “Shakespeare.”

“Whatever,” I muttered, pressing back into the pillows and sliding my eyes away.

“My win,” he said softly. “You’re off your game. Figure you’ll get yours in when you get stronger so I gotta get in as many as I can now.”

I slid my eyes back and informed him, “You’re taking advantage of an injured woman.”

“Yep,” he replied easily.

I glared.

We heard the doorbell ring.

Ben pushed up from the bed, sauntered to the door, and ordered, “Ass downstairs, babe. Time for pie.”

I did not get my ass downstairs.

I stared at the door and I did it for a long time after he disappeared. I did it wondering if what just happened actually happened. After that, I did it trying to figure out if I could pretend that what just happened didn’t happen. Eventually, I figured out I couldn’t.

Then I realized there was a pizza pie downstairs created by Ben.

Not to mention Benny himself was downstairs.

And as much as it sucked (and it sucked huge), I couldn’t stop myself from swinging my legs over the side of the bed, making my way to the door, and doing it more excited than was healthy, all in order to taste Benny’s pie.

And do it with Ben.

***

I woke enough to feel Benny slide my hair off my neck and then slide his finger along my jaw.

I also felt how nice that was.

Behind my closed eyes, the dim light penetrating went out.

Finally, I felt his presence leave the room.

He didn’t close the door.

I opened my eyes to the dark.

Score one for Benny before dinner. Score one for me during and after. This was because I managed to hold on to the silent treatment throughout both (mostly).

The silent treatment was not a weapon in my female arsenal. My mother came from German, Polish, and French stock, probably with a few more things thrown in.

But my father was half Italian, and considering how he was, I was, and all the other fruit of his loins were, Italian blood was clearly dominant.

This meant I was hotheaded, low on patience, and had a flair for drama.

So managing the silent treatment, going so far as not even moaning when I took my first bite of Benny’s deep-dish pie (it had been a long time so maybe I was wrong, but in that moment, I would swear it was better than Vinnie’s), was a feat.

A Bianchi pie, I’d been told by Vinnie Bianchi Senior himself in better times, had no single secret ingredient. It wasn’t the dough. It wasn’t the sauce. It wasn’t the cheese.

It was all of that.

All of it was homemade except the cheese, which was not grated and dashed around. It was sliced off a ball of buffalo mozzarella and laid on to melt its mild, smooth, milky goodness into tangy red sauce that leaned a bit to the spicy side, and pan-style or hand-tossed crust that made you know there was a God and He was Italian.

I could do a hand-tossed pie and be happy.

But I was from Chicago.

It was all about the pan.

And no one did better pan pizza than Vinnie’s Pizzeria. Sure, there were some who could extol the virtues of Uno’s and Due’s.

They were wrong.

Vinnie’s was the best.

Now Benny’s was the best.

I didn’t share with him my overwhelming approval of his culinary skills with a Chicago-style pan pizza pie.

I just ate it and kept my mouth shut.

After Benny was done eating, but I wasn’t, he left the table and went out to his garage. He came back with my phone.

He set it on the table beside me and said, “Phone a friend.”

I glared at him. He grinned at me. I snatched up my phone and he sat down to watch me call my friend Asheeka.

Asheeka was a woman I worked with who I’d met after the Vinnie debacle. We became friends and she became acquainted with my story.

With experience, I found it was better with those who learned after the fact that I could have been on a reality show of Chicago’s mob wives and girlfriends. This was because I could attempt to convince them I was beyond it and on my way to becoming a better person who made smarter choices. Seeing as I made no choices outside of what I’d wear that day, living my life quiet, without a man, this turned true.

Asheeka had come to visit me twice in the hospital and she was all over coming in the morning to be around when I showered. She was a little concerned about the staying-at-Benny’s part of that scenario, but she got from the tone of my voice that I couldn’t talk about it at that moment and she let it go.

This was one of the reasons I’d called Asheeka. She was very sweet, very generous, very funny, and she could take a hint like no girlfriend I’d ever had. She could read an eye gesture or a hair flip at twenty paces. She was the master and, therefore, didn’t press about me being at Benny’s because she knew I needed her to leave it alone.

She also knew I’d give it all to her in the morning.

After the call, Benny confiscated my phone.

I let him, sat at the table and watched him do the dishes, wishing I wasn’t watching Benny do the dishes because I didn’t need to know he could be gentle, he could take direction, he could make amazing pizza, and he could do the dishes. He was like a man out of a dream except for the fact that I could get up, wrap my arms around him, kiss his neck and then kiss other parts of him, and men you made up in your dreams obviously didn’t afford those opportunities.

As I thought this while watching him do the dishes, close to him finishing up, he decreed, “You get a pass tonight ’cause you had a big day. Tomorrow, your ass is at my side helpin’.”

The idea of doing dishes with Benny was bizarrely alluring.

So I quit thinking about it.

Benny finished the dishes and ordered me upstairs. I went because I was exhausted and that was the only place he’d let me lie down. I didn’t need another altercation with him. I wasn’t doing too good with those. I needed a chance to regroup.

He came upstairs with my bag, dumped it on the floor by the door to the bathroom, and kept issuing orders.

“Get ready for bed, cara.”

He then left.

I went to my bag with more hope than realism and, upon perusal, found my hopes dashed.

The nightgowns and robe Gina got me were there. The panties and the toiletries my friend Jamie went to my apartment to get were there. My purse, with my wallet and phone, wasn’t.

I got ready for bed, then I got in the bed, pulling the covers up to my neck.

Ben joined me ten minutes later.

He produced the remote and asked what I wanted to watch. Committed to the silent treatment and satisfied with my performance thus far, I said nothing.

Ben asked again.

I still said nothing.

He found a game.

I continued to say nothing, just lay there, eyes to the TV, mind wondering how drama found me even when I lived quiet.

It was at that point I remembered I’d heard that Daniel Hart was on a rampage with Cal in his sights.

Joe Callahan, known to all but his woman as Cal (his woman called him Joe), was Benny’s cousin. He was an awesome guy, a good (albeit distant) friend of mine who had been tight with Vinnie Junior and the entire Bianchi family, mostly because they were family but for a lot of other reasons besides.

And Daniel Hart was the man who waged war against Salvatore Giglia, the man whose war meant Vinnie was no longer breathing.

When I got word things could go bad for Cal, I warned Benny. Directly after that, as I was wont to do, I got a wild hair, acted on that wild hair, drove to fucking Indiana to have Cal’s and his new woman’s, Violet’s, back, did something stupid, and ended up getting shot by none other than the man who ordered the hit on my boyfriend.

So that was how drama followed me.

I went searching for it.

Shortly after this uncomfortable realization, I carefully curled on my side in order to sleep and do it not snoring. Shortly after that, I fell asleep.

Now was now.

I was in Benny Bianchi’s house, alone in Benny Bianchi’s bed, and Benny had thrown down. I knew where he stood. I knew what he wanted. I knew where his head was at.

And I knew I’d never go there.

Not because I didn’t want to. I was going to hell for it, but Benny was not wrong and neither was Shakespeare. This particular lady doth protest too much.

In the dark in Benny’s bed, I couldn’t go there.

I had to go where I needed to go.

And that was to formulate a new plan.

I knew I didn’t have it in me to fight the good fight—that fight being my normal fight, all about drama, hysterics, shouting, and eventually getting my way.

I had to wait it out and fight the slow, calculated fight—that fight being about quiet and giving in early to get what I needed in the end.

So I would have to see Theresa, let her mother me, give her the forgiveness she needed and should have. The same with Vinnie.

And in the meantime, I had to find some way to get Benny to let go of his idea that there was a future for us.

There wasn’t.

He was a good guy. Decent. Strong. Loyal. He went into the family business not only because his father wanted him to—it meant something to his dad and he respected his dad—but because Benny was all about family and that was what you did. He ran the Little League. He bought a house and started a search for a good woman with whom he could make a solid family and build a good home.

He deserved to find that good woman.

She just was not me.

But I had to find a way to convince Benny of that.

And I would do it. Because I was a quarter Italian, which meant I wasn’t only hotheaded, impatient, and dramatic, I was also crazy-stubborn.

And I would do it because Benny should have a good woman.

Which meant he had no business being with me.