Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(145)

“I didn’t call no one a pig or a whore, did I?”

He didn’t have time to answer before the door jerked open again. This time a much older man stood there, a guy in his eighties. Thickset like his son, but balding, with pitted skin and heavy jowls. He peered through horn-rimmed glasses with a scowl that knit his bushy brows.

“Rosa,” he said. “It’s you.”

“Ciao, Gaetano.” Her voice rang out. “Nice to see you looking so fit.”

“You’ve looking well yourself, Rosa.”

An elderly woman, small and stringy thin with a pouffy coif of hair dyed white blond and lots of bling, appeared behind him. “Who on earth is . . . oh. It’s you. My God, Rosa. You got so big.”

“Ciao, Tittina,” Zia Rosa replied. “You shrunk.”

“Nobody calls me Tittina anymore,” the other woman said.

“Not for the last sixty years. I never liked it. I’m called Connie now.”

“Call yourself what you want,” Zia said. “I know who you are.”

“Zia,” Kev hissed. He gave her arm a warning squeeze.

“You haven’t introduced your friends, Rosa,” Don Gaetano said.

Zia Rosa flapped her hand in their direction. “The two blond ones are my nephews,” she said. “The other one is a friend.”

“So.” Michael gave them a smile. “What can we do for you folks?”

Zia Rosa ignored him. “I need to talk to you ’bout something important,” she said to Gaetano. She paused. “You gonna invite us in?”

Don Gaetano stepped back, with ill grace, and gestured for them to enter. Zia Rosa stepped into the towering foyer, which had a three-story ceiling with vast solarium windows and skylights on the top. From an iron brace about fifteen feet up, a huge wrought iron chandelier hung, full of electric candles, all of which blazed in the day’s gloom.

“Ehi.” Zia Rosa stared up at the chandelier. “That’s Nonno’s candeliera. The one from the salone in the country house, back home.”

“It certainly is.” Costantina’s voice was triumphant. “Gaetano and I went to Brancaleone on vacation nine years ago. I brought it back.”

“Who said you could have it?” Zia Rosa demanded.

Costantina bristled. “Who said I couldn’t?”

“Zip it, goddamnit, Zia,” Kev hissed. “Focus!”

“Come into the salone,” Don Gaetano said, waving them into a lavish living room furnished in blazing white with touches of gold, bronze, and beige. Don Gaetano seated Zia Rosa at one end of a couch and looked at the rest of them. “Sit down, all of you,” he said, dropping into the chair nearest Zia Rosa. “Connie, could you get us some coffee? And some of your delicious pitta ’nchiusa?”

Costantina flounced out of the room, muttering to herself. Petrie declined to sit, situating himself behind the couch. Sean stood beside him. Kev checked out Michael Ranieri, who had also stayed on his feet. He stood behind his father, rocking on his heels, hands clasped behind him. No doubt fondling the pistol under his shirt, Kev figured. A fair enough guess, since he himself was doing the same thing.

“This ain’t a social call,>



“Oh, but you have to taste Connie’s pitta ’nchiusa, Rosa,” Don Gaetano said. “They’re unbeatable. Just like Nonna used to make.”

Zia Rosa let out a grunt. “Whatever.” She opened her purse and dug around in it until she pulled out the crumpled envelope, the one that held Tony’s letter. “We’re here to talk about this.”

Don Gaetano stared at it, grimly. “I heard about Tony’s passing.”

“Figured you would,” Zia Rosa said.

“I thought the whole thing was finished,” he said heavily.

“I told you.” Costantina was in the entryway, laden with a tray. “I told you she’d screw you over first chance she got.”

“Mamma, please,” Michael snapped.

Zia Rosa gave Costantina a slit-eyed look, then turned her gaze back to Gaetano. “I thought it was over, too,” she said. “I woulda never done anything with this letter, Gaetano. Not if you left us alone. But that bastard’s got my boy again, hear me? Same son of a bitch as before. You leaned on him twenty years ago, and we got him back. I need you to lean on him again. ’Cause if they hurt him . . .” She slapped the letter against her hand. “This goes out. All the copies, like Tony said.”

Connie marched over to the couch and set the tray down on the glass coffee table with a rattling thump. She poured a dollop of espresso from the pot into each of the seven cups. There was a heap of something that looked like tarts, with gleaming candied fruits and nuts in their centers.

She set the pot on the tray with an angry thud and straightened up. “Well?” she snapped at them all. “Come and get it before it gets cold. Don’t tell me I made the damn coffee for nothing.”

Kev sighed. The last thing he wanted to do with his gun hand was hold an espresso saucer with his pinkie in the air. He snagged a cup from the tray and downed the swallow of throat-scalding brew in one gulp, no sugar, nodded his thanks to the lady of the house, and took up his previous post, social duty fulfilled. No way were they going to make him eat one of the cookies. He had his limits.