A Love Most Fatal (Morelli Family #1)

21. Nate

21

NATE

I was under the impression, for some reason, that the mafia was run by very few people.

As it turns out, everyone has a godson, brother, cousin, nephew, or a guy-who-goes-way-back. Everyone in Vanessa’s circle has three men (minimum) for her to consider, and it’s my job to do that considering.

I’ve been at it for two weeks.

They know me now—consigliere for the Morelli family is apparently no title to be trifled with because after an assessing stare, the men usually lean back and talk to me like I’m an equal. The real consigliere is Willa, and if not Willa, then Leo, and if not Leo, then Mary. I am many, many degrees separated from the actual position, but these men don’t need to know this.

I’m starting to get my footing as I get to know the types of men on this list. Vanessa and I sort them into three categories: goon, obedient soldier, or capo material. Goons are most common, they’re stupid or they’re violent or they are stupidly violent. Capos are harder to come by, because they must both recognize power and know how to use it. Middle managers, basically.

Vanessa says she wouldn’t entirely mind a stupid guy so long as I think he could be useful and loyal to her in the long run. He can be stupid but not corruptible, violent but only when he needs to be, a good fighter but not someone that will want to fight her . Arguing is okay, but ultimately his pride cannot be so large that he would undermine her decisions. An underlying tenderness would be appreciated.

“How the fuck am I supposed to know if a man is secretly a sweetheart?” I asked after my first days of interviews.

She shrugged. “Use your judgment.”

So, along with my list of questions, I started giving the men increasingly detailed scenarios and thought experiments to get their minds working. I’ve also considered DNA tests, because now she wants to know if they have good genetics—if their kid would be a fighter.

Leo joins me for every interview, either sitting at the table or standing somewhere nearby. Sometimes, when he knows the man, he shakes his head when they lie about one of the questions. I underestimated how helpful having him with me would be.

“How many men have you killed?” I asked one man (the first Tony of the week) hoping to give him pause, but he just squinted off, puffed on his cigar. He was no less than twenty years older than Vanessa, a small forest of gray nose hairs visible over his mustache.

“How many I’ve killed or how many I’ve had killed?” he asked.

I put a mark in the Capo category and moved on to the next question.

The next day, I started my interviews with the scenarios: “You and Vanessa go to the opera…”

“What is at the opera?” the new, much younger man asked. He was fresh from the motherland which was a mark in his favor. “I would never do that.”

“Yes, well Vanessa asks you to go?—”

“I tell her no,” he said. “We stay home and make love instead.”

“No,” I said, “you’ve got a daughter.”

“Oh, you’re mistaken. I don’t.”

“No, I mean imagine,” I said. “You’ve got a daughter, and she wants to go to the opera. It’s her birthday.”

He considered this more carefully and nodded. “We’ll go for her birthday.”

“But when you leave the opera, a homeless man approaches you?—”

“Is he strong?”

“What?” I asked. Leo turned to me with a tilted head like this was a reasonable inquiry.

“Is the man strong?” the candidate repeated.

I blinked. “Yes, he’s double your size, and he’s got a gun?—”

“I offer him job,” he said before I could get to the part where the homeless man in the situation threatens them with said gun. I took note of this, marking “interrupting” in the cons list, but “enterprising” and “virile” in the pros column.

Later that day, we met a man in his office (a morgue—he is a mortician, to be clear). “Say you’re approached by another woman, not Vanessa,” I began, “and she propositions you.”

He thought before answering, a trait which most of the men do not have.

“Is she Italian?” he asked.

“No?” I looked to Leo for help.

“She’s Polish,” Leo supplied.

The mortician was quiet in his white lab coat, hands held in his lab waiting for me to go on, but that was it, that was the whole scenario.

“Do you sleep with her?” I asked.

His lips drew back over his teeth in some semblance of displeasure, and I was about to pen “loyal” in the pros column when he spoke:

“Of course I have sex with her,” he said and smiled. Oh, because he and I? We were in on a little boy’s club truth, apparently. Most of them act like this, like because I am a man, I must speak their misogynistic crime language.

His face fell serious. “I do wear a condom, of course.”

“Of course,” I agreed, and drew a line directly through his name.

Some of the interviews are short. I get what I need very quickly, no blood work required. The last one of today, for instance; we sat down, and after a few pleasantries I dove right in.

“Imagine that you have a young daughter?—”

“Only sons,” he said, and I crossed his name right off the list.

Overall, the men fail.

“These guys suck,” I say now, and throw the files on Vanessa’s desk. She thumbs through looking over the notes I’d written for each. “Are they all like this?”

“Yes,” Mary says before taking a huge bite out of an apple. “All of them.”

“If they’re not rude, they’ve got this fragile masculinity, and if not both of those things, they seem like bloodthirsty creatures, barely human!” I drop into one of the chairs across from Vanessa’s desk with a huff.

“Oh, don’t be dramatic.” Willa files her nails as she leans against the windowsill. “Ness is much more bloodthirsty than them.”

“Not a single redeeming quality for any of them today? Think hard,” Vanessa asks, and I shake my head, grim.

“Maybe if you were interviewing for an aggressive flag football team, but otherwise no,” I say. “Although multiple wanted you to know that they carry a Colt .45.”

“They’re researching,” Willa says. “How sweet.”

“Our dad’s gun of choice,” Vanessa explains. “How many have you met this week?”

“Thirteen,” I say. I lean further into the chair, my head now lulled onto the seat back. “I’d fire them if I was you, honestly. Don’t get within ten feet of any of them.”

“This isn’t helpful.” Vanessa holds the back of her neck for a moment before shutting the file folder and pushing it away from her. “The moms are antsy. They want me to date these men like I’m the fucking bachelor.”

“Bachelorette,” Willa corrects.

“Does that make Nate your Jesse Palmer?” Leo asks.

Mary and Vanessa speak at the same time: “Who?”

“Maybe Nate’s standards are too high,” Willa says, then points her nail file at me. “You can’t rule them out just because they’ve killed a few men.”

“Vanessa’s the one who told me that a likelihood of hidden tenderness was a requirement! And at what point does the number of men they’ve killed become too many?!”

Everyone in the room gives my question serious thought—though the obvious answer is not much higher than one, right?

“Number doesn’t matter if they have a good reason,” Mary says.

I can only blink in response. She’s just like them. If I was interviewing Mary, I would cross her name off the list right now.

Vanessa pushes up from her desk and takes a moment to straighten her skirt and smooth her already perfect ponytail; the picture of composure. “I don’t have time to think about this today. We have visits to make.”

I don’t know what takes place on their weekly visits, but I hear through the wall that Mary always takes a shower immediately afterwards, probably to wash cold blood off her hands. I might guess visits equals murder, poisonings, torture, etc. but I am open to the idea that it’s something much more civilized.

“Pick two of them and invite them to dinner on Monday. Call it a follow-up,” Vanessa says. “I don’t care who. Rumors will spread that I’m considering and that will appease them.”

I wouldn’t let any two of these men into my home, but I nod anyway and give her a thumbs up. “You got it, captain.”