“I’ll be walking Luciano down the aisle,” Tino says mildly, and it wipes the smile off Fuscone’s face. Tino’s presence will lend this whole thing legitimacy.
Maybe I’ve read him wrong. Maybe this really will be my chance to take the next step. Tino prefers family men in his Family, although he never married himself. “I’ll organize the license with our favorite judge. We don’t want to have to wait. Frank, perhaps your lovely wife would like to arrange a small ceremony, and extend the invitation to the Donovan family? And you boys—” Tino gives me and Finch another glower. “I mean it. This will be until death do you part. If you’re in, you’re in.”
There’s a silence in the room. I nod.
Then from my right: “What if I say no?”
I close my eyes. Finch and his fucking mouth.
Tino gives him a sympathetic look. “Mr. Donovan, let me be clear. I will be extending an invitation to your father. Whether that invitation is to your wedding or your funeral is up to you, but you are of course welcome to decline the offer of marriage.”
I blow out a long breath as quietly as I can while we wait for Finch’s reply.
Finch laughs his dangerous fuck-the-world, death-wish laugh and I want to strangle him myself.
“Do I get to wear a big white dress?”
Chapter Nine
FINCH
I don’t get to wear a big white dress, but I do get to wear a white Dolce & Gabbana tux with a vest the same color as my eyes, or so Brother Frank’s wife Celia squealed when we picked out the material.
Celia D’Amato has been lumbered with organizing the whole shindig, but you’d think it was the only thing she’d ever wanted to do in her whole damn life. She’s had me fitted for the tux after consulting with me on which designer I’d prefer, gone over wedding invitations with me, brought cake after cake for me to test out, and bless her fucking heart, slipped me all the benzos I could handle and then some. She’s worked miracles to get it together in one week: the deadline Augustino Morelli set for the wedding.
It’s a literal deadline. Either Luca and I are married by the end of today, or I’m dead.
Frankly, I think Luca might kill me himself if Tino doesn’t get round to it. The day my bachelorhood died a quiet death, we left Tino’s lush home in a black-windowed car, driven by some guy called Mikey, with Brother Frank in the front with him, and Luca and me in the back, although I still wasn’t used to calling him Luca then. In fact, the first thing I said after he put the privacy window up was, “So it’s Luciano D’Amato, huh? Or can I still take Georgie as my awful wedded husband?”
“Lawful, not awful. For fuck’s sake.”
I just laughed. “Lawful is not a word to describe you, sugar. Are you ever gonna tell me where ‘Georgie’ came from?”
“No. And it’s Luca. Tino’s the only one who calls me Luciano.”
“Suit yourself, Luca. You got a cigarette on you? I’m jonesing.”
“I quit.”
“Damn. Hm. So, where will we go for our honeymoon?”
Celia sorted that out for us, too, even though I was just kidding at the time. Tino Morelli has been serious as hell about the whole thing, and we’re going to spend two weeks in the Bahamas on Tino’s own boat, the Maddalena, once the ceremony’s done.
But first we have to make it through the ceremony.
I barely saw Luca between what I thought of as The Proposal and The Wedding. I was kept tucked away in an apartment in Central Park West, not my preferred side of the Park, and nowhere near Luca as far as I could tell. There were two big muscly guys with guns guarding the door at all times, one inside and one outside. I saw a whole lot of Celia, though, and of my three sisters, who were allowed in to see me, although Pops wasn’t.
Or at least, he didn’t come around.
When I asked how Pops was taking the whole thing, none of my sisters would tell me. “He’s just happy you’re okay,” Maggie, my oldest sister, finally said. Then she started talking floral arrangements with Celia. The two of them are new BFFs, or so it seems.
Maggie’s got ten years on me. She was twenty-three when Mom died, and I guess she handled it better than the rest of us. Better than me, that’s for sure. I was a mess. Pops was a mess, too. Maggie was the one who kept her shit together, pulled the rest of us through. But she’s never been what I’d call warm towards me. No, Maggie’s the ice maiden type.
Thank God for Celia, though, who smuggled in uppers and downers as needed. I’ve never really been one for soccer mom prescriptions, but it was better than facing those four boring walls sober.
And now the big day has arrived.
I’ve been dressed, primped and cooed over by my four attendants: sisters Maggie, Róisín and Tara, and of course Celia. They’ve spent the morning shrieking, drinking, and having their hair and makeup done by a YouTube star Celia hired for the occasion.
I’ve been too out of it to take much in. Maggie comes over to me now and puts her hand on mine, and I think it might be the warmest gesture she’s ever made to me. She looks so much like Mom: pale orange hair, smooth white skin, but Maggie has the deep blue Donovan eyes rather than Mom’s green ones, and she doesn’t have Mom’s warm disposition. Well, it’s not like we ever had much in common. But right now she’s half-tipsy on champagne.
“How are you holding up?” she asks.
“Dandy,” I say, because it’s the only word I can think of. “Where’s Pops?”
“He’ll be in the limo with you,” she says, and when I shudder, she adds, “It’s armor-plated.”
“I wonder what Mom would think of all this.”
“Don’t
