Thin Lines (Donati Bloodlines Book 2) (6 page)

“How is the doctor appointment going?” Affonso asked.

Calisto balanced the phone between his ear and
shoulder as he punched in the code for the soda he wanted to get out of the
machine. “Fine, as far as I know. The doctor made me leave.”

Affonso chuckled. “Yes, Curtis is particular like
that. He doesn’t like others in the room when he’s got a patient in there.
Thankfully, he handles all of Emma’s medical needs. I prefer it that way.”

Who cared about Affonso’s need to control every little
detail of the lives of the people around him? Calisto didn’t.

“What did you think about the mess this morning?” he
asked, wanting to get his uncle on a different topic.

Affonso hummed under his breath. “I went down and
looked at the body. The police hadn’t found it by then. Good thing.”

Calisto had been woken up at six in the morning by a
phone call from one of the Donati Capos. Apparently, one of his soldiers hadn’t
made it to the warehouse by five. He was supposed to, in order to do a job
later that morning. The Capo, knowing where his man was supposed to be working
the night before, went looking for the seventeen-year-old street kid. The Capo
found him in an alley behind a pizzeria that he owned.

A bullet had been put between the kid’s eyes.

A shamrock had been drawn on his cheek with blood.

It was a very clear message from the O’Neil family. They
were still trying to work their way into Donati territory, and anyone who got
in their way would earn themselves a bullet to the head and nothing more.

Calisto knew his uncle was going to have to sit down
with the boss of the O’Neil family and work something out so that the warring
families could work together. That, or Affonso was going to have to take out the
man altogether.

Something.

Anything other than doing nothing.

Doing nothing would only let the O’Neil family believe
that the Donati Cosa Nostra was weak in protecting their territory. It wouldn’t
lead to anything good.

“You’re going to have to handle that,” Calisto said.

“I’m aware,” Affonso replied dryly. “For now, I will
send out my own message. If they don’t get the point, then I will handle it in
a different way. It’s just a solider, Cal. One boy, nothing more. I can
overlook one dead man that wasn’t even made.”

Calisto’s jaw clenched. “He meant something to
someone,
zio
. His mother, or father. Maybe he had siblings. I know the
Capo he worked under cared for him a great deal because he was one of his best
men. And for that matter, by default, that makes him one of
your
men.”

“Perhaps, but I won’t start a street war with the Irish
simply because one solider met his maker. That seems extreme.”

Calisto didn’t see it the same way, but he wasn’t the
boss.

He didn’t get a say.

“Whatever you want,
zio
,” Calisto settled on
saying.

“You know what I want, Cal. For you to drop the
zio
nonsense.”

Calisto could hear the smile in his uncle’s tone. It
made him sick and furious at the same time. “Are we going to do this again?”

Affonso grumbled. “Not with that attitude.”

“Good.”

He hung up the call without saying goodbye.

A week later, Calisto found a spot in a familiar pew
and let the comforting space of his church surround him. There was nothing like
the house of God to settle his mind, and let him think properly.

Well, that and his priest.

Calisto didn’t pretend to be a good man, or even one
with great morals, but he had his church and his priest. That was enough.

“Calisto, my son, what brings you through these doors
on a beautiful Summer day in the middle of the week?”

The voice of Father Day relaxed Calisto in a way he
couldn’t explain. The man had counseled Calisto from the time he was a young
man, straight into his adult years. When a personal issue came up, his priest
was the best person to talk to. Father Day didn’t judge.

“Stress,” Calisto murmured, watching the rays of
sunlight dance in the stained glass windows. “What else?”

Father Day took a seat beside Calisto in the front
pew. “It’s always about some kind of stress with you. I’ve been telling you for
years to—”

“Let the little things go.”

“Precisely. It’s all the little things piling up on
your shoulders that make one huge weight for you to carry around.”

Silently, the priest handed Calisto his favorite item.
It was a rope of black rosary beads, attached to an ornately designed golden
cross. When he was just a child and following his uncle around, Calisto had
watched Affonso go to the church regularly to confess his sins. To keep him
from becoming bored during the ordeal, Father Day would let Calisto play with
his string of rosary beads as long as he promised to give them back and not
break them.

Calisto never broke them. He always gave them back.

Now, as an adult, the string of beads sometimes helped
to soothe his nerves when he talked. The little things his priest remembered never
failed to amaze him.

“Tell me what’s bothering you,” the priest demanded.
“Let me take the little things, Cal.”

“I learned something this week, and I didn’t react
well to it. I acted horribly, actually. My mother would be ashamed.”

“Shame is a heavy weight to carry.”

“It shocked me; that was all.”

The priest chuckled. “Are you excusing your behavior?”

“No,” Calisto said, frowning. “But I lost something,
and it hit me like a ton of bricks.”

Father Day sat a little straighter in the pew. “What else?”

“Don’t you want to know what I lost, Father?”

“If you want to tell me.”

Calisto didn’t want to explain about the lost child,
the one that never got the chance to see the world, to the man. It seemed
unfair to burden the priest with that knowledge.

But the miscarriage had been plaguing Calisto for the
last week. From the moment he learned it had happened, it had constantly poked
at the back of his mind like a hot fire, charring his nerves at the already
frayed ends.

It hurt him.

He felt like he was missing something.

The guilt quickly followed whenever he thought about
it all. Calisto wasn’t sure he had any right at all to grieve for the
miscarriage that he hadn’t even experienced. It wasn’t his body, it hadn’t been
his blood spilling from his body.

It had been
his
baby.

He couldn’t let that go.

“I think it was the idea of something that I lost more
than the reality of it,” Calisto muttered heavily. “I don’t know how to grieve
for the idea of something when it never had the chance to actually
be
something. Am I making sense?”

“You always make sense, Calisto. Even in your
ramblings.”

“People are supposed to learn from their mistakes.”

“They are,” the priest confirmed.

“So why haven’t I learned from mine?”

Father Day let out a quiet sigh. “Sometimes, there are
men who need to walk the wrong road several times over before they find the
small path that links them to a new one. The right one. As for this … grieving
… you mentioned.”

“Hmm?” Calisto asked. “What about it?”

“No one but you gets to decide how you grieve for
something, be it imaginary or real. If you feel like you lost something, then
maybe you did. There’s nothing wrong with giving yourself the chance to heal
and move on from that.”

“It wasn’t mine to have in the first place,” Calisto
said.

Father Day’s smile evaporated. “You’re still allowed
to grieve.”

“Am I?”

“Of course, my son.”

Father Day stood from the pew and patted a hand on
Calisto’s knee as he straightened fully. Calisto was still rolling the rosary
beads between his fingers, calmer than before and a little more settled in his
mind.

“You can stay and be by yourself for as long as you
need,” Father Day told him.

Calisto shrugged. “I’m good. I have business to do.”

After the incident last week with the Irish leaving one
of Affonso’s Capo’s men dead in an alleyway, the streets were as tense as they
had ever been. Calisto had some collecting to do, money-wise. He didn’t trust
the Irish as far as he could throw them, but Affonso had assured his
famiglia
that the Jersey family had backed off a bit.

Enough for the streets to be safe.

Bullshit.

This life was never safe.

Calisto stared down at the small cross in his hand.
The only safe place was right where he was sitting. He still had a job to do.

“Keep that for a while,” the priest said, bringing
Calisto from his thoughts.

Calisto’s gaze snapped up. “The rosary?”

“Mmhmm. Keep it. It helps you.”

“It’s yours.”

“Consider it a loan.”

Calisto laughed darkly. “In my business, loans never
end well.”

The priest smiled. “Good thing this is my business
then, hmm?”

Who could argue with that?

Calisto

It seemed like in no time at all, June had jumped
straight to July, and then July jumped into August without warning. By the time
September rolled around, Calisto was sure he was just walking around in a
bubble, unaware of the seasons changing around him.

Fall was Calisto’s favorite time of year. He enjoyed
the colors of the leaves
—
burned,
bright, or dulled—and he could spend hours watching them fall from the trees in
the park on a windy day. Fall wasn’t too hot, and it wasn’t too cold.

But he hadn’t even realized it was Fall until he took
a stroll through the back property of his uncle’s home with his oldest cousin.
Reds, yellows, dulled greens, and oranges littered the ground. The fallen
leaves crunched under his shoes.

Calisto finally woke up from the several months’ long
daze he’d been in.

“What’s up with you?” Cynthia asked.

“Nothing,” Calisto replied, offering her a smooth
smile.

His cousin didn’t fall for it.

“Really? Because you’re looking at the leaves like
you’ve never seen them before.”

“They’re bright this year.”

“Mmhmm,” Cynthia muttered. “You missed my whole Summer,
Cal.”

Calisto frowned, knowing that was partly true. “We
went on that trip to Niagara Falls.”

“It’s in the same state.”

“Still a trip, Cynthia.”

Cynthia crossed her arms, but kept walking beside
Calisto. He could practically feel the girl’s irritation wafting from her. He’d
promised both his cousins that he’d make an effort to take them away for a
couple of weeks over the Summer.

Instead, he’d been too busy avoiding Affonso when he
could, and staying the hell away from his uncle’s wife. Calisto didn’t need the
temptation of Emma at his fingertips, demanding his attention. More often than
not, he found himself worried about the woman, and before he knew what he was
doing, Calisto would be asking his uncle how things were going with the
pregnancy, just to have some sense of relief.

It was fucking stupid.

Entirely selfish.

Punishing
.

To make matters worse, Affonso would answer Calisto’s
seemingly normal questions with as much vagueness as he could. Sometimes, it
felt like his uncle was baiting him, like Affonso wanted Calisto to ask more,
or maybe even come around and check for himself. Affonso had even tried, more
than once, to get Calisto involved in things. Driving Emma to more
appointments, dropping things off at the house, or whatever else Affonso could
dream up.

Calisto wouldn’t do it. Affonso posed the offers
innocently enough, but Calisto still wondered if there was more to it. He
didn’t trust his uncle, he didn’t want to be too close to Emma, and he
certainly didn’t want to find himself inserted into Affonso’s day to day life
more than he already was. Calisto would never be friends with his uncle—he couldn’t.

Somehow, Calisto managed to avoid Affonso’s demands by
putting others in his place. An enforcer could take Emma to her appointment
when her own guard was busy. One of the family soldiers, someone Calisto knew
his uncle trusted, could drop things off at the house.

It didn’t have to be him.

Calisto wasn’t going to do what he’d once done again.

No way.

Beside him, Cynthia was still walking with her arms
crossed, sporting an unhappy scowl, and staying quieter than normal. Calisto
let his cousin have her anger. She was warranted it, after all. He had left her
and Michelle to hang out to dry over the Summer in his attempts to stay away
from Affonso and Emma.

“I came today,” Calisto said, knowing it was a weak
statement.

One day was nothing.

“And I fly back to boarding school tomorrow,” Cynthia
replied shortly.

“I’m sorry.”

Cynthia’s straight back softened. “I know.”

“Doesn’t help much, huh?”

“Everyone is always sorry, Cal. Daddy can’t come out
to see us dance, he’s sorry. We can’t take the trip with our classmates out of
the country, he’s sorry. You spend the Summer avoiding him, and we don’t get to
see you, either, you’re sorry.”

“Hey, I wasn’t avoiding—”

Cynthia shot him a burning glare. “Yes, you were. You
don’t like Daddy, Cal. I’m not fucking blind.”

“Your mouth has gotten worse, I see.”

Calisto wondered who his cousin had been spending time
with for her mouth to be so damn dirty. He figured that was another thing he
had to own. He had no one to blame but himself for not knowing what was going
on in Cynthia’s and Michelle’s personal lives.

“Saying you’re sorry is just another excuse,” Cynthia
told him.

Calisto sighed. “You’re right.”

“And do you want to know what’s worse?”

“What?”

Cynthia stopped walking, and let her arms fall to her
sides. Calisto stopped beside her, letting the teenager work through whatever
it was she had going on in her head. At least if she took it out on him, she
was unlikely to go at her father with it. Affonso wouldn’t stand for that, and
while he never laid a hand on his daughters, he wasn’t above making their lives
miserable to punish them.

Wasn’t being sent away from home for the majority of
the year miserable enough?

“What’s worse,” Cynthia said quietly, “is that you
can’t even make this up to me like you used to do.”

Calisto shoved his hands in his pockets. “Sure I can.”

“No. I’m graduating at the end of this year. Then, I’m
off to college. But if I get my way, it won’t be a college in this state. Daddy
will be so busy with the new baby that he won’t give a single fuck about me or
Michelle, especially if he finally gets the son he’s always wanted. He’ll
probably be happy to let me choose whatever college I want, no matter where it
is.”

Cynthia’s tone was sharp enough to cut steel.

It damn well cut through Calisto.

“So, yeah,” she said with a flick of her wrist at
Calisto. “You can’t make this up to me. I won’t be around for you to do it.”

She was right.

Calisto’s guilt climbed higher, shaking his
foundation. He’d always made a conscious effort to spend time with his cousins,
and to be there for them in case they needed him. It wasn’t like they had that
in their father.

Jesus.

He was no better than Affonso.

“I’m sorry,” Calisto repeated.

Cynthia shrugged, but wouldn’t meet his gaze. “What
difference does it make?”

Sadly, she was right again.

“Cynthia, make sure you have everything you need for
tomorrow,” Affonso said as he took the steps two at a time. He fixed the
cufflinks on his suit, and then glared at his watch. “Fucking woman. I am late
already. Did you hear what I said, Cynthia?”

Calisto watched as his cousin walked on past Affonso
on the staircase without a word. She ignored her father, and quickened her
steps.

“Cynthia!”

“She’s pissed at me,
zio
,” Calisto said.

Affonso blew out a heavy breath, glowering over his
shoulder. “Women are God’s way of punishing men. Boys are a far easier creature
to raise, let me say.”

Calisto didn’t think his uncle was only talking about
his daughters being troublesome to him. Usually, Emma would join Affonso as he
came downstairs in the morning, but sometimes she came down right after him,
too. She wasn’t anywhere in sight right then.

“Why is she mad at you?” Affonso asked. “What did you
do?”

“It’s what I didn’t do.”

Affonso cocked a brow. “Oh?”

Calisto didn’t see how it was any of his uncle’s
business, but he’d brought it up first. “She’s mad that I didn’t spend more
time with her over her break. I apologized. She’s still angry.”

“Fickle things. Spoiled things.”

“Who did that to them?” Calisto asked.

Affonso made a face. “Easier to spoil them than to
listen to their complaints. The next man they’re handed off to can deal with
their extravagances. I did my part.”

In Calisto’s humble fucking opinion, Affonso’s part in
his daughters’ lives hadn’t been a very damned big one.

“As for the one upstairs,” Affonso grumbled, still
fumbling with the cufflink on his right arm.

“What about her?”

“She is pulling on every last nerve I have today. I
don’t have time to feed into her whims. I have a meeting to be at.”

Calisto checked his watch. “Breakfast with Carl
Calabrese, I know. That’s why I’m here. To take you. You’ve got another hour
and a half. You’re not late, chill out.”

“
Sì
. But I feel like I’m late.”

Because apparently that made all the difference. 

The Calabrese syndicate was the only other Cosa Nostra
family ruling in New York besides the Donati and Marcello families. Affonso
made an effort to sit down and chat with the boss of the Calabrese family at
least three times a year to discuss business and whatever else. Affonso claimed
it kept his friendship with Carl at a respectable level, while reminding both
Dons’ families that there was no need for any territorial squabbles.

“I’ll have Turner drive me,” Affonso said, glancing at
Calisto. “Make sure that wife of mine is out of the bathroom in the next half
hour, dressed respectably, and at that breakfast no later than a few minutes
after it starts. I can excuse her for that long, surely. Any longer and Carl
might take offence. This is her first sit-down with another family. The least
she can do is follow my goddamn rules.”

Affonso’s fury bounced off Calisto. It wasn’t unusual
for his uncle to throw a temper tantrum.

“I’m supposed to be at the breakfast, too,” Calisto
said. “Why can’t Turner handle Emma this morning while I drive you, like we
originally planned?”

Calisto didn’t think Emma would appreciate him
demanding shit from her first thing in the morning. He certainly didn’t need
the trouble added onto his plate. Hell, he’d managed to stay away from her for
three months.

A little longer wouldn’t hurt. It might even help to
get rid of the last bit of his lingering feelings that kept urging him to seek
her out simply because he couldn’t forget. Calisto was not a weak man. He was
not going to let the memories of one fucking night, the morning after, and his
unshakable guilt ruin him.

Calisto did that once with Emma.

Look at where it got him.

“I don’t have time for this,” Affonso grumbled. “Do as
I said, Cal.”

Damn it.

“Fine,” Calisto agreed.

Affonso headed for the front entryway. Calisto was
already halfway up the staircase when he heard the door open behind him.

What a great day this was turning out to be.