“Right.”
“Dad, if you don’t mind, I want to steal Jake from you. Aunt Theresa wants to meet him.”
“He’s all yours,” Mr. Sorrentino said with a sadistic twinkle in his eye aimed in Jake’s direction. With Kate’s father in mind, Jake chalked one up in the “cons column.”
Jake and Kate stepped outside. His uneasiness didn’t go unnoticed. They may not have been dating long, but both were already good at knowing what the other was thinking.
“Kate, we need to talk.”
“Sure, Jake. But first I want you to meet Aunt Theresa.” A quick smile and light handshake later, Aunt Theresa turned to Kate. “Very handsome.”
“I know,” Kate said, pulling Jake away.
Hand-in-hand they turned from Aunt Theresa straight into a human wall. Three broad-shouldered men stood abreast, creating a barrier that would require a less-than-subtle change in direction.
“Hi, Tony,” Kate said, looking upward.
“Introduce us to your new friend,” Tony said, standing between two massive sides of beef known as the Castello brothers.
“Tony, this is Jake. Jake this is Tony. He’s a friend of the family and a business associate of my father.”
“Nice to meet you, Jake,” Tony said, squeezing Jake’s hand until the bones in his knuckles rubbed each other.
“And these other two guys are Eddie and Mike Castello,” Kate said. “People call them brothers, but they are really cousins. My aunt raised both of them.”
“As far as you are concerned, we are brothers,” Mike said, shaking Jake’s hand with a reasonable grip. Eddie stuck out his tree trunk arm and grunted something only Mike understood. They may have been cousins, but they had the mannerisms of two people who were raised under the same roof. A house where the family didn’t speak.
“For what it is worth, you don’t look like brothers,” Jake said.
“That’s because they’re not,” Tony added, as if he had solved a mystery.
“Well, I guess that’s why.”
“Jake, I expect you to treat Kate right. She is like my kid sister.”
“Of course,” Jake answered.
“Don’t worry about Tony,” Kate said. “He is a big teddy bear on the inside.”
And a grizzly on the outside, Jake thought. “Nice meeting you all. We’ll see you around.” God I hope not. At least not when it is dark.
Jake stepped to the side and let the trio-of-trouble walk by. Kate led Jake through the yard by his hand, directing him to the gazebo. She sat him down and looked into his eyes. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure how to tell you this.”
“Just say it. You can tell me anything.”
Jake’s stomach turned with a combination of early relationship infatuation and fear. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but your father is crazy.”
Kate laughed. Jake wasn’t the first boyfriend she had brought home who had voiced concerns over her father. “He is just a little overbearing.”
“Oh, Kate, he’s more than a little overbearing. And Tony… the guy nearly broke my hand.”
“They are just trying to be protective. They are harmless.”
“Harmless?”
“Jake, my mother and father have a saying. ‘Sometimes it takes an insane act by a sane person to prove a point.’ Don’t worry about my father. He gets a little crazy when it comes to his daughter. He is just showing that he loves me.”
“Kate, I understand your father loves you, but let me tell you about our little conversation. Your father said, and I quote, that he would ‘cut off my balls and my tongue if I cheated on you or lied to you.’”
“I’m sure he meant it figuratively,” Kate said, gently rubbing Jake’s thigh.
“How the hell could he mean that figuratively? He said he would cut my balls off and feed them to the dogs.”
“See, there you go,” Kate said with a satisfied look on her face. “I told you he was speaking figuratively.”
“’There you go’ what?” Jake asked.
“We don’t have any dogs.”
Chapter 10
Marilyn walked into the office Monday morning to a full voicemail box. Even when the CEO and president of Winthrop Enterprises wasn’t out of town, Peter Winthrop didn’t answer his own calls unless they came directly to his private cell phone—a number he didn’t give out to just anyone. You had to be royalty, or close enough to royalty that you could arrange a meeting with them. Marilyn was Peter’s assistant and switchboard. She did her job with perfection, trained to perfection over the last twenty plus years. She was very well compensated for standing guard as the final barrier to communication between the outside world and her boss.
The frantic urgency of the messages left on Peter Winthrop’s phone was unusual, and Marilyn wrote down the number with haste. She listened to the messages a second time and decided a return call was in her best interest. Her boss was outside Rio, scoping out a potential factory to sell to a Japanese investor, but she knew he would call. He liked his morning update, the more detail the better. And if she could solve a problem without wasting her boss’s time, that was fine too. That’s what she was paid to do.
With the name and number of an employee from Republic Outfitters scribbled on the paper in her hand, she hit the numbers on her phone. She checked the clock on the wall, and after two rings, was surprised to hear a human voice this early in the morning.
“Good morning. Republic Outfitters, Amy Grant speaking.”
“Good morning. This is Marilyn Ford, personal assistant to Peter Winthrop. I am returning several calls that were left for Mr. Winthrop over the weekend. Is there something I can help you with?”
“Good morning, Marilyn. Thank you for getting back to us. We have a bit of an issue with the rush order of shorts we received from our manufacturer in Asia.”
“Could you please hold for a moment?
“Yes.”
Marilyn opened her desk drawer and pulled out a file on active projects. Republic Outfitters was third from the front. She read the file quickly and returned to the phone. “Twenty thousand pairs of shorts. Rush-ordered. Chang Industries, correct?”
“That’s right,” the unlucky employee from Republic Outfitters answered from the company’s quiet headquarters in Maine.
“Rest assured that if there are problems with the quality of the product, we will handle it immediately at no cost to you.”
Amy Grant, corporate firefighter for the Republic Outfitters’ director of logistics, fumbled for words and went back to her original request. “I really need to speak with Mr. Winthrop directly,” she said forcefully.
“Mr. Winthrop will be out of the office for a few days. I assure you I keep all of his affairs in the strictest of confidence.”
“Still….”
“I understand your concern, but please understand mine. I have worked directly for Mr. Winthrop for over two decades and everything he knows, I know.”
“Well we have a bit of an unusual situation with the rush order of shorts.”
“As you have said.”
“You might have to see this to believe it. Do you have a fax number where you can be reached?”
Marilyn gave her the fax number, again promised to handle the situation, whatever it was, and hung up.
