Deep (The Pagano Family Book 4) (2 page)

~ 1 ~

Nick woke and eased a slender arm off his chest. He stood and stretched, then went to his bureau and pulled out a pair of track pants. He stepped into them as he walked out to his kitchen. He could already smell the coffee his coffeemaker had started brewing ten or so minutes before.

As he reached up to get a mug out of the cupboard, he caught a look at his hand and pulled back. He still had blood around the edges of his nail beds. He’d washed, he’d thought thoroughly, several times since he’d been in a situation to get blood on his hands.

Standing there in his kitchen with his hand on the cupboard pull, he thought about his life in the hours since he’d had his hand in a man’s guts. The afternoon with his mother. A family party to send his cousin Carmen off to Maine with her man and their baby girl. And the night with Vanessa.

Nick used gloves when he did wetwork, of course, but yesterday’s work had been particularly wet. The mess had been all over his hands and arms by the time he’d stripped out of his protective gear. It had been years, though, since he left a job like that with any trace of it lingering on him. He fucking hated for one side of his life to cross over into the other. Bringing another man’s blood into his mother’s house? Around his family? Into his own bed?

He closed the cupboard door and went to the sink to scrub his hands until they were red and shiny, digging deep around his cuticles until he was sure he was clean. No longer in the mood for coffee or breakfast, he went around the counter to the living room and grabbed his smokes from the table near the front door. Then he went out onto the balcony.

The day was still young, and so was spring, and the sky was heavy with clouds, so the sea breeze off the water was on the brisk side. Nick took a deep breath, letting the chill and the salt air clean out the gunk in his head. He let it out with a cough; he didn’t smoke nearly enough to hack up a lung every morning the way his father had, but he felt the effects occasionally.

Felt them, and ignored them. He lit a smoke now, needing the calm it brought, and looked out over the beach to watch the morning waves roll up and back. The ocean fascinated Nick—not like it did his cousins, though. They were all of them surfers and sailors and beach bums, constantly throwing some party or another on the sand, always out ‘getting wet,’ as they called it. Nick had never been into any of that. He was active in other ways.

He’d bought this seaside condo not because he wanted quick access to the beach so he could surf or dive or whatever. What he wanted was proximity to the power of the sea—the roar and crash of the surf, the vast miles to the horizon, the blow of storms at his windows. He stood on his balcony on a morning like this, with his head dark and his thoughts snarled, and felt an elemental kinship with the ocean. Maybe that was arrogant, maybe it was delusional; maybe it was just absurd. But it was nonetheless true.

The ocean was a place of darkness and mystery, full of predators and secrets, and infinitely deep.

He didn’t sail, but he had a cabin cruiser he took out frequently, sometimes even recreationally. More often, though, he had business to conduct out in the deep. That was what the ocean was to Nick: a place that swallowed secrets and fed beasts.

Movement on the sand broke his reverie, and he shifted his eyes from the horizon and the overcast sky down to the beach. A group of six—no, seven—people, all women but one, were arrayed on the flat sand near the tideline, standing on long, narrow mats in various colors. He hadn’t noticed them when he’d first come out, but he knew who, or at least what, they were—a yoga class organized by the condo committee. They’d started doing their thing on the beach the week before. A group of granola-eaters doing some kind of tantric voguing didn’t hold much interest for Nick, so he hadn’t done more before today than register their existence. But this morning, his mind was feeling mired and indolent, and he was slow to shift his attention away. He watched them for several minutes, his focus moving from one body to the next. A couple of the women were slender and lithe, moving their bodies with obvious ease and expertise. A couple were heavyset and struggling to follow the leader.

The women all seemed vaguely familiar; Nick was sure he’d seen them in or around the building, though he made a practice of not becoming overly involved or familiar with his neighbors. A civil nod when they passed in the hall or the lobby, that was all. Considering the work that he did, it was better to be mysterious and aloof. His father and Uncle Ben had not been pleased that he’d bought a condo instead of a free-standing house; they thought the privacy in his building insufficient. But Nick wanted a low-maintenance life, and he liked the contained space of the beachfront condo building, built just beyond the Quiet Cove town limit and outside the jurisdiction of the rigid zoning laws that insisted every building in town be three hundred years old or look like it was.

The unfamiliar man flailing on his mat drew Nick’s attention. What an oaf. Probably a new resident; there had been a couple of units on the market recently. Nick read him as there for no reason other than the hookup potential. Considering that he looked like a circus clown parody of yoga, Nick knew that potential was significantly less than the guy probably thought.

His attention finally moved to the leader, and her, Nick placed clearly. She lived across the hall from him, and her name was…Evelyn? Kimberly? Something old-fashioned like that. He only knew that much because she had insisted on introducing herself when she moved in a while back. A year ago, maybe. When they passed in the hall, she smiled brightly, and chirped, “Hi, Nick!” every time, needing, and getting, no encouragement from him.

She had a beautiful smile, though, one of those brilliant, toothpaste-commercial smiles that made her whole face glow and always seemed sincere. He’d grown to enjoy meeting her in the hallway, but they still hadn’t said more than ten distinct words to each other.

Before today, he wouldn’t have been able to describe anything more than her face, but now, with the beach between them, he took her in more completely. Her top was dark pink and low cut; he could see her cleavage clearly, despite the distance. She was heavier than he’d expected—no, heavy was the wrong word. Curvy, maybe that was right. She had hips and tits.

She said something to her group and then turned to face the water. Nick tended to like his women willowy, but something about what’s-her-old-fashioned-name’s ass in her snug black pants caught his interest enough that his cock stirred. Maybe it was the way she was stretched on her yellow mat, with her legs straight out at both sides. The woman was limber, definitely.

The door behind him slid open. “Baby, what are you doing out here?” His
comare
, Vanessa Morgan, stepped out, wearing his shirt from last night. Nick stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the small round table at his side. He didn’t smoke inside his home or his SUV, and he rarely smoked around people.

“Nessa. Don’t call me ‘baby.’” Nick grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled her to him. She came easily and wrapped her long arms around his bare waist. Vanessa was willowy. Tall, blonde, and so slender his hands could meet around her waist, she was a model trying to break beyond the New England market and into the New York big time.

Nick didn’t tap random pussy like most of his guys did. He liked to have a woman. He thought of himself as a serial monogamist, even before he’d been named capo. Since then, though, it was minimum expectation; his uncle believed that members of the administration should be role models for the men who worked for them, and he believed that family stability was a role they should model. That Nick was forty-five and unmarried was cause enough for consternation; he’d damn well better at least have a regular woman on his arm.

The woman he was putting on his arm these days, and for the past few months, leaned her head on his chest. “Coffee’s ready. Do you want me to make you breakfast?”

Nick slid his hand over the soft silk of her long, gold hair. “No. I’ve got an early meeting. I’ll grab a slug of coffee on my way to the shower. You should get going.”

She kissed his nipple, and he closed his eyes, enjoying the sensation, but irritated that she was trying to distract him. “Can I shower with you?”

He set her away, gentle but firm. “Not today, Ness. I need some time to myself this morning.”

She pouted just long enough to strum his nerves, but then she nodded. “Okay. I’ll get moving. I have a call at ten, anyway.”

“I’ll call you later.” He caught her before she turned away, one hand around the back of her neck, and pulled her close again for a kiss. When her arms snaked up over his shoulders, he set her away again. “Have a good day.”

Though she was clearly unhappy with him, she muttered, “You, too,” and went back inside.

Nick stayed on the balcony until he heard the front door open and close. The time might be approaching to end things with Vanessa. He had no interest in more than this with her, or with any woman, and he could smell the need for more coming on her.

~oOo~

On the books and in reality, since his father’s death two months earlier, Nick was Chief Operating Officer at Pagano Brothers Shipping. About thirty hours of each week he spent doing that legitimate work. Off the books, and for most of the rest of his waking hours, his work was different but also the same. Replacing his father as underboss and Uncle Ben’s right hand, he oversaw the daily operations of the shipping company and every other Pagano Brothers interest.

Usually, he, Uncle Ben, and Fred met at lunch for their daily meeting; in the past few years, as he neared eighty, Ben had slowed down in the morning and didn’t, as a rule, get to the office before ten unless there was strong cause to be there earlier. Nick knew that the old man was coping with debilitating arthritis and preferred to keep his morning hours private, until the stiff weakness he felt after waking had eased and he could walk with his back and shoulders straight.

This morning, though, he’d wanted an earlier meeting. The previous day had been too full of blood family obligations for more than a quick ‘job’s done’ update, and he’d put Nick off when he’d said he had good intel. Now, he wanted a full briefing.

When Jimmy Lupo, his driver and bodyguard, knocked on his office door and leaned in to let him know it was time, Nick closed his laptop and went down the hall to Ben’s office.

Fred was already there, sitting in one of the red leather chairs in front of Ben’s desk. He stood when Nick came in.

“Morning, Nick. New suit? Sharp.”

In a habitual gesture that he always noticed himself doing but couldn’t seem to stop, Nick tugged lightly on the French cuff of his white shirt, bringing it out from the sleeve of his Armani suit coat—midnight blue, three button. It wasn’t a new suit, though, and it would have been difficult to tell if it were. All his suits were Armani, all of them midnight blue except his tuxedo. Some, like this one, were pinstriped. Though he didn’t always wear a tie, and wasn’t wearing one now, he dressed for business.

“No, Fred. Not new. But thanks. And good morning.” Before he sat in the other chair in front of the desk, he extended his hand across it and shook with the don. “Good morning, Uncle.”

“Nick. You left the party early last night.”

Nick loved his Uncle Carlo, and his cousins, too. He would certainly do everything he could to keep them safe—and he had. But he didn’t enjoy their company much. He felt a wide distance between him and them, between their family and his. They spoke of the family ‘on the other side of the pews’—meaning the Pagano Brothers—and he heard the word ‘wrong’ when they said ‘other.’ There was judgment in the distinction they made. He’d felt it as a child, and he felt it more keenly as an adult. They knew who he was in the organization, what he did, and they judged him. He didn’t care, but he felt it. So he stayed on the edges and watched.

He’d always felt isolated among his generation of the family. Uncle Ben’s girls, much closer to his own age, had been silly, frilly little princesses as children. They’d each left the Cove as soon as they’d graduated high school, going away to college and then marrying and leaving for good. Carlo Sr.’s children, though substantially younger than Nick, had at least been more fun, until they were old enough to make that distinction and see themselves as the better Paganos. His own siblings, an older sister and a younger brother, had both died in earliest infancy. While his cousins had all grown up in bustling, busy homes, Nick had grown up in a nearly empty house. He didn’t care, but it made him different. So he stayed on the edges.