“Could you have?”
He looks at me questioningly.
“What about your family, Nate? Would you have been honest about all of that from the beginning?”
He looks away, his expression pained.
“Are you finally going to come clean about what your family really does?”
“We’re into real estate,” he mutters.
“Right. Real estate. Property and syrup. That’s a great cover for whatever else you have going on. Do you really think claiming to be everyone’s landlord will make me think that’s why you’re treated with such reverence around here? People don’t act like that toward their landlords.”
“What are you implying?” He’s clearly trying to sound nonchalant, but I’m not buying it for a second.
“You’re a gangster.” I all but spit out the words.
“A gangster?” He places his hand on his stomach as he laughs. “Did you really just use that word?”
“You said you were going to be honest with me!” I shout.
“I don’t even own a fedora.”
“Don’t mock me.”
“I’m not, Cherry. I’m sorry. It just…makes me think of guys carrying violin cases, hanging out in speakeasies.”
“It’s accurate though, isn’t it?”
Nate pauses for a long moment before he answers.
“Even after all of this, I don’t want to say it.”
“I figured.” I move to stand, but he grips my hand.
“Please, hear me out!”
I glare at him but remain seated.
“I will tell you, Cherry. I’ll tell you everything, but I don’t…I don’t want you to know all of this. I don’t want to put you in this position. I find myself wanting to lie not for the sake of being deceitful but to protect you. I don’t want to put you in danger.”
“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”
“And it doesn’t matter anymore,” he says softly. “Now that we know you are part of the Ramsay family, it was only a matter of time before it came out anyway. I just didn’t expect to have these feelings for you in the middle of it all. Even if you hadn’t moved to Cascade Falls, no secret can be kept forever.”
Nate goes quiet for a few moments until I finally have to prompt him to go on.
“The Orso family makes most of its money forging documents. The majority of our business is with other mob families, but we serve most anyone from crime lords to rich, underage college students wanting to get into bars. We have control over the licensing bureau, so our forgeries are as good as it gets. We make driver’s licenses, birth certificates, illegal contracts—you name it. We do run completely legitimate businesses like the syrup factory and the real estate, but those are fronts for the rest of it. Money laundering takes a bit of effort, and we have to operate legitimate businesses in order to keep the feds away. Those businesses generate tax revenue, so the government doesn’t complain. The Big O is a general pick-up and drop-off location for the documentation people buy from us.”
I swallow hard. It’s a lot to take in but also not as bad as I had feared.
“I thought organized crime was only in big cities,” I say. “Wouldn’t those places be more profitable locations?”
“Big fish, small pond,” Nate says with a shrug. “We’ve managed to thrive in this environment. Everyone knows who we are and what we do, at least to some degree. They respect our power. In a small town, there is very little police presence, and the feds focus their energies on the big players, not us.”
“Is that all you do?” I ask quietly, not sure I want an answer.
“What do you mean?”
“What about…other stuff?”
“You mean the drug trade?”
“Drugs, murder for hire, human trafficking…I don’t know, Nate. This is totally foreign to me.”
“No, we don’t do those things. Decades ago, we made money off cocaine and heroin, but we haven’t done that in my lifetime. That’s what the Ramsays do.”
“They’re drug lords?”
“I’m not sure I would ever refer to them as ‘lords,’ but they do act as a mid-level supplier to the cartels.”
A shudder runs through me. I’m so out of my element, I don’t even know any of the terminology. All my knowledge comes from television and cheesy novels.
“There’s more to it though,” Nate says. “As I’m sure you can imagine, this isn’t exactly the, uh, safest occupation. Prison is an obvious risk, but there are other threats as well. As far as such things go, and despite the events of the last year, we are in a good position compared to a lot of families.”
“What do you mean?”
“In comparison to the big families in big cities—Chicago, LA, Seattle, New York—we’re small potatoes but also very much in demand. Everyone needs what we have to offer. No one wants to deal with it themselves, and they’re happy to pay us to do it for them. They all want us to stay in business, and that gives us an advantage.”
“But not the Ramsays.”
“No, not them.”
“Why the rivalry? I mean, what exactly are you fighting over?”
“I think we’ve been fighting for so long, we don’t even remember,” Nate says with a humorless chuckle. “It started decades ago when both families were doing forgeries and involved in the drug trade. Territory was an issue as well. That’s why my father and Roland Ramsay came up with the treaty that we currently abide by.”
“What does the treaty say?”
“The obvious,” Nate replies, “would be the division of the town. That way we aren’t constantly arguing over which warehouse belongs to which family or what business can be done in what area. The bigger though less obvious division was the business itself—the Orso family kept the documentation business, and the Ramsays kept the drug trade. For the most part, it keeps us out of each
