Mafia Heir Turns Me Gay novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: His Terms, My Terms

In the penthouse Santino offers the deal, Mickey sets his own terms and his sister arrives with a duffel bag, then the bar fund turns out to be gone.

The elevator to the penthouse needed Santino's thumb on a glass plate.

It opened at two in the morning onto a room bigger than Mickey's whole two-flat.

Black floors. White couches nobody had ever sat on. The Loop pressed up against every window.

Santino walked in ahead of him and didn't turn on a single lamp.

"Sit down, Mickey."

He'd been Mickey to Santino for five years, on tabs and receipts.

He'd never heard the man say it out loud.

He didn't sit.

"Is your father alive?"

"For now." Santino poured a glass of water at the kitchen island and set it in front of him. "They're pumping him at Northwestern."

"I didn't make that drink."

"I know you didn't."

"Then why am I up here instead of at home?"

Santino leaned both gloved hands on the marble.

"Because my cousin told six men to put you in the river. And I told them you're mine."

"Those two things can't both be true for very long."

"So tell them you were kidding."

"Nobody at that table thinks I kid."

Mickey laughed, because the alternative was throwing up in a sink that probably cost more than his car.

"Here's the deal," Santino said. "Until we find who poisoned my father, you're my man. In public."

"You live here. You go where I go. Anyone who touches you, touches me."

"And if I say no?"

"Then you walk out that door, and Nunzio's people bury you by Sunday."

Santino said it the way Mickey would say last call.

Mickey drank the water.

His hand only shook a little.

"Okay," he said. "Then I have terms."

One of Santino's eyebrows went up a quarter of an inch.

It was the most expression Mickey had ever seen on him.

"Terms."

"My sister. Mandy. She's twenty-two, she's in nursing school, and she's all I've got. Nobody goes near her. Ever."

"Done."

"I keep working the bar. My bar. I'm not sitting up here in a bathrobe waiting to get murdered."

"Done."

"Separate rooms."

"There are four bedrooms. Pick one."

"And no more kissing me without asking."

Santino looked at Mickey's mouth.

Then he looked back up, slow.

"You didn't pull away."

"I was in shock."

"You kissed me back."

"I was in a lot of shock."

That thing happened at the corner of Santino's mouth again.

"Fine," he said. "I'll ask."

"And you'll take no for an answer."

"I always take no for an answer, Mickey. People just don't say it to me very often."

Mickey picked the bedroom farthest from Santino's.

It had a bathroom with a shower that talked to you.

He was still trying to make it stop telling him the water temperature when his phone buzzed.

Mandy. Six missed calls.

"Are you dead?" she said when he picked up.

"No."

"Kelli's cousin posted that the Don got poisoned and they dragged you out of the bar. Where are you?"

"I'm safe."

"That's not a place, Mick."

He gave her the address, because she'd find it anyway.

At three in the morning the doorman called up.

Santino let her in himself.

Mandy came off the elevator in navy scrubs and a parka, a duffel bag over one shoulder and a notebook in her hand.

She looked at Santino in his black suit and black gloves.

She looked at her brother in his wrinkled waistcoat.

"Okay," Mandy said. "I have questions."

"Mand, it's three a.m. You have an exam at eight."

"I've got an exam in cardiac pharmacology, which is suddenly very relevant." She opened the notebook. "Question one. Are you two actually together?"

"No," Mickey said.

"Yes," Santino said.

She wrote both down.

"Question two. Is anyone trying to kill my brother?"

"Yes," Santino said.

"Okay. Are you going to stop them?"

"Yes."

She looked at him for a long second.

Then she nodded.

"Question three. Mick, did you know you were into guys?"

"Mandy."

"That's not an answer."

"I'm not into guys. It's a deal. It's fake."

She turned to Santino.

"He kissed you back, didn't he?"

"Twice," Santino said.

"It was once."

"It was long enough to count twice."

Mandy closed her notebook with a happy little snap.

"Which room is mine?"

Santino pointed down the hall.

She took the one right next to her brother's and was asleep in four minutes, with her sneakers still on.

Mickey sat down on the end of his bed at 3:40 a.m.

Tuition was due on Monday.

The last installment of Mandy's last year.

He'd been saving it in checking since August so he'd never have to touch the bar fund.

He opened his banking app to send it before he forgot.

Checking looked right.

Then he scrolled down to the joint savings account.

Heffernan's. That was what he'd named it, four years ago, with Kelli laughing over his shoulder.

Sixty-four thousand dollars.

Lease, fit-out, the ice machine, the first case of rye.

The balance said $0.00.

He tapped it.

One withdrawal. The whole amount. Wednesday afternoon, 3:12 p.m.

The name next to it was Kelli Ruane.

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