Chapter 65

“Good,” Andre snaps, sharp, snatching the towel out of my hand even though I just get started. I make a little huff of protest, but he waves me over to the counter at the back of the bar, grabbing a couple of salt and pepper shakers.

I frown, a little confused about what’s going on, but I don’t say anything.

“Now,” he starts, lifting his eyes to meet mine with a level of gravity that exceeds even his own usual seriousness. “What I’m going to tell you isn’t precisely secret, but it is something that’s not widely discussed. Now. How many mob families are there in this city?”

“Five,” I say, instant. Everyone knows that.

“Good,” he murmurs, setting out five salt and pepper shakers in front of me. “Five families.” As I watch, he moves the two pepper shakers to one side. “Romano and Abruzzi,” he says quietly, tapping them. And then he moves the salt shakers to the other side. “Bonnetti and Pesci.” He taps on the one pepper shaker still in the middle. “Who is this?”

The name is instantly on my tongue. “Marino.”

“Good girl, Bambi,” he says quietly, raising his eyes again to mine with a smirk. “And how do you know the Marino family?”

“Because they were here last night – or at least, some of them. The old man for sure.” I answer, my words quiet. Andre’s smile deepens, because nobody told me that – nobody told me the identity of the old man at the table. It’s just something I picked up by listening in at the table.

“Good girl,” he says, giving me a full grin. Then he turns his eye back to the pepper shaker in the middle, tapping it with his forefinger. “The Marino family is in a very unique, potentially perilous, but very powerful position at the moment.”

As I watch, Andre slides the pepper shaker in the middle between the two pairs on either side of it. “We’re at war now. Those two men who came in here yesterday were sent by Bonetti and Pesci supplied one of them – a sacrifice – to show how dedicated he is to the Bonetti family. Bonetti and Pesci – they want Marino on their side just as much as we do.”

“But he came to dinner here,” I say, raising my eyes now to Andre’s with a little frown. “Doesn’t that show…friendship?”

“An interview, of sorts,” Andre says softly. “Marino feeling our Don out, seeing what he can get out of the situation. He’s in a unique position to make demands. Both sides want him bad.”

“Oh,” I say, my eyes again dropping to the pepper shaker in the middle, considering the position we’re in now. And then I remember that Andre isn’t filling me in on these points just to be friendly – I remember that Don Romano wants something from me. “So…” I say, slowly raising my eyes to Andre’s. “Marino – he’s going to be coming around more often?”

“Much more often,” Andre says with a nod. “At least, until something changes – until he takes a side. And if he takes our side, then for the time being we’re going to have to make damn sure that we kiss his ass. I’m going to give you a dossier, printed photographs and facts about every Marino that comes through that door. You’re going to memorize it. Yes?”

I nod, letting him know that I can handle it.

“And beyond memorizing the facts that I give you about them,” Andre says, lowering his voice even further, “I want you to memorize everything that they do.”

“What?” I ask, my eyes wide and my voice breathy.

“Everything,” he says, nodding to me seriously. “If they bring a date, I want you to know what kind of shoes she wore, what purse she brought, if not her name, her date of birth, and the town she was born in. You should be able to rattle off the cocktails they ordered on command. Any snippets of conversation you hear – you lock them in your brain.”

My mouth falls open at this because – I mean, because Andre is basically just asking me to be a spy now, with no veneer of being a bartender or a waitress.

“And don’t you write a damn word of it down,” he says, sharp, pointing a finger at me. Shocked, and a little afraid, I slowly nod. “You lock it all up here,” he says, raising that finger to tap on his temple. “Everything, Bambs. Romano wants everything. You got it?”

“Yes,” I say, nodding slowly.

“And Bambi,” Andre says, his voice low. I cock my head to the side, a little surprised because – I mean – there’s more? “There is one Marino client in particular that Romano wants you to pay special attention to.”

My mind flicks immediately to the old man we served last night. Seriously? Does Romano want me to ensure that the Don of the Marino family gets everything that he needs when he comes to Lupa? How did I get this deep – balancing the whims and desires of two Mafia dons?

But wait – is that even who Andre is talking about? “Who?” I ask, my brows knitting together.

“He’s coming today,” Andre says, giving me a steady nod and then standing up straight with a sigh. “You continue on these glasses – I’ll let you know when he’s here. In the meantime, I’m going to work on that dossier. Every detail, all right, Bambi? Memorized.”

“I got it!” I say, a little overwhelmed and confused about why he’s pushing so hard. I mean, I’ve never screwed it up before, have I? And he’s had me memorize plenty of stuff about the bar.

Andre nods to me and then walks away, off to his other tasks, and I get started polishing the glasses as the bar starts to fill up with the lunch crowd. I can see that the crowd is a little jumpier than usual, half anxious and half thrilled. I cast my eyes around, not seeing anyone that Andre or Frankie has pointed out to me before as a person with any actual connections. Instead, the crowd today is mostly what they call “tourists” – wealthy people who come here for a thrill, willing to drop money on a $30 cocktail just for the chance of brushing shoulders with someone connected to the mob world.

“Idiots,” I murmur, watching two wide-eyed girls walk to their booth, their faces eager, looking around for tommy guns and men with machetes. Their eyes skip easily over Frankie, lounging at the corner of the bar, even though he is actually the most lethal person in here now.

These girls – they just don’t get the reality of this mafia world.

All they see is the glamorous surface.

I sigh, a little sick of them, but then I go still wondering…well, wondering when I went from being precisely that girl to being me – so deeply entrenched in a mafia bar that I know who the most lethal man in the room is.

“Shit,” I murmur, looking down at the glass and the polishing rag in my hands, wondering at the turn my life is taken. Who even am I anymore? Am I just Bambi now? Does Iris even exist?

I’m still doing the basic grunt work of the bar – polishing glasses, folding napkins, even cutting up lemons and limes – when Andre comes and claps me on the shoulder. I almost shriek in surprise, so lost in my thoughts and my worries that I drop my citrus knife onto the floor.

“Jesus, Bambi,” Andre says, frowning at me and quickly pulling his hand away. “You’re going to have to get a lot less jumpy than that if you work here!”

“I’m sorry,” I say through my teeth, embarrassed and a little ashamed. “It’s not like we didn’t have a shooting here yesterday, though. It’s not like I don’t have a reason to be jumpy.”

“Again,” he says, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms, “not an excuse. Not in this bar. Besides,” he gives me a little smirk now, pointing over his shoulder at the other end of the bar – the opposite to where Frankie is sitting. “Your client has arrived.”

I follow the direction of Andre’s thumb and my eyes settle on the only person he could mean – the only person sitting at the bar.

And my mouth drops literally open when my eyes settle on…what is absolutely the handsomest man I have ever seen in my entire life.