Deep (Pagano Family #4)(106)

Nick was ready if they tried. He saw the world as it was, and he saw far; that was his greatest strength. He understood the games men played. And he had learned from his uncle that the way to win was to be the one who owned the field and set the rules.

His uncle had been the most important, most formative influence in his life. He loved him more than he’d loved his own father. He would carry on his legacy. He would honor his memory. And he would keep the Paganos strong. Make them stronger.

The name would end with him, however. None of his cousins was part of this world, and he had married outside the blood. When his time came to name a successor, the organization would likely become known by another name, and the Paganos would fade into history.

Carina fussed a little, fighting the swaddle, and Nick was brought back to the moment. She didn’t like to be rolled up like a cannoli. The other girls had. Elisa could have been left content in a swaddle for hours, as long as her diaper held out. But this one liked to move. So he unwrapped her.

She was wearing only a diaper. Nick was glad; he loved the feel of her skin against his own. He spread the thin blanket she’d been wrapped in over them both and slid his finger against her tiny palm. Immediately, she clutched it in her fist, and he lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it.

Out there, he was the don. In here, he was just a man.



oOo



“You should take this house.”

Nick turned to see his mother leaning her arms on the back of the settee. They were in Uncle Ben’s back yard. His funeral had packed Christ the King and had required most of the Quiet Cove Police Department to manage traffic. This gathering afterward of his family, friends, and associates would mark the last Pagano function here.

“Why would I? He has three daughters and eight grandchildren. And I have a home of my own.”

His mother shrugged and walked around to sit at his side. “This house has always meant the family to me. The head of the family should live in it. None of Ben’s girls or their families want it—they all have lives elsewhere.”

Nick shook his head. “No, Ma. My girls have a home. A good home. Lita, Cella, and Lucie will decide what they want to do with this.”

“They’ll sell it.”

Nick nodded; he assumed as much. None of Ben’s children or grandchildren lived in New England, and none of them would want to. Nick knew the terms of Ben’s will. He had been left all of Ben’s business assets, and Ben’s daughters and their children had been left his personal assets; the sums in both buckets were impressive. Nick was a wealthy man in his own right. If he chose to retire now, at fifty-one, his family would be set for life. But he had no intention of retiring.

His mother looked across the yard, and Nick followed her gaze, returning to the view he’d been enjoying before she’d come up behind him. It was a bright summer day, and all the children were playing happily, attended by their mothers and aunts, who were sitting around the table under the vine-draped pergola in a far corner of the expansive lawn. Sabina, Carmen, Rosa, Manny, and Beverly. Manny was the only one who hadn’t added a child to the Pagano brood. She wasn’t a mothering type. Even now, as the women turned repeatedly to check on the children or jumped up to save one from some childish calamity, Manny simply sat in her chair and listened to the others talk.

He’d come out here to get some distance from the solemn deference inside the house. All week, men had been coming to pay tribute to him as the new don. He understood it, and he expected it. He would have demanded it, in fact, if it had not been forthcoming. But it had become oppressive. He’d needed a moment to recharge his batteries and cleanse his spirit. Beverly was right; his family was his balance. As his power had increased, more and more he needed the antidote that was his home.

In business, he was considered a god. At home, he needed to change diapers and peel sparkly stickers off his ass to remember that he was not.

The children were innocent of the solemnity of the occasion and the changes it meant. Out here, they were simply playing with their cousins, reveling in so many days in a row together. Little Ben, Carlo and Sabina’s youngest, and Teresa, Carmen and Theo’s only, were both six. Teresa, a quiet girl like Elisa, was enjoying the chance to play mentor to Elisa and Lia, and the three of them were tromping around the garden, squatting here and there to study a flower or a bug.

Little Ben was playing cars with Teddy, Rosa and Eli’s tow-headed two-year-old. Trey was inside; he had become a serious-minded young man and had been at his father’s side through much of the vigil. Nick hadn’t spoken much to Carlo this week; his attention had been consumed elsewhere. But he got the impression that Trey had come to the age when he no longer saw himself as a child. Nick was sure Trey’s transition would be smoother than his own had been.

Nick had a thought that they should spend more time socializing with the cousins. They had been closer in the past several years, and their children were so close in age, a whole new generation. They always enjoyed playing together, and, since Carmen and Theo had moved back to the Cove, almost everyone lived within a ten-mile radius of each other. Only Rosa and Eli lived farther than that, in Washington, D.C., now.

And Ben’s daughters—but it had been so very long since they’d lived in the Cove, Nick found it hard to remember them when he thought of family. They only came home for weddings and funerals.

He didn’t want that kind of distance from the rest of his family. He wanted his children to grow up in the bosom, not on the edges as he had.