The Promise (The 'Burg #5)(16)

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 f**king 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.