Dom never knocked, just kicked the door open as if it owed him something.
“Commissioner Klune,” Frankie greeted with a raised brow as he entered, heading straight to sit beside me and take my glass. “I was hoping you’d be done by now, Ales. You know the commissioner is a very busy man.”
I nodded slowly. “True, we were just about rounding up actually. Apparently, the Bologna case isn’t something to worry about.”
Frankie looked up. “Really, that’s good to hear, Commissioner.”
Murray swallowed and tried to smile. “Yeah, uh, well, thank you, Mr. Francesco.” He gave a pathetic chuckle and licked his lips.
He was sweating up a storm now despite the blasting air conditioners.
“But” I added, interrupting Frankie again from filling the glass. “I think our friend was about to point out an issue.”
Frankie had cold eyes. A blueish grey color that could freeze you on the spot. He looked the most like our father, except he was taller and even less inclined to say too many words.
Smiles were my weapons of choice. The silence was his.
The color drained from Murray’s face.
One Sorvino was too much for anybody to handle. Two would have been overkill. Murray fished for the napkin in his suit pocket to wipe his forehead, licking his lips profusely. “We—well, you see. It’s not a big problem, really—”
“No?” Frankie’s voice interrupting.
I got things done easily and quickly, but with Frankie, it was even easier, quicker. Cleaner.
“It’s just that the other party—”
“The other party?”
“Well, yes, they have…uh, substantial claims that might inflame the entire thing if—”
Frankie replaced the glass on the table gently, but the echo must have been the loudest thing I’d heard since I entered the building that morning. “Commissioner Klune, I know you are a very busy man. There must be a million other things you have to do today, aren’t there?”
Murray nodded, wiping his brows again, reaching for his glass with shaky hands before thinking better of it.
I could smell the threat coming. Frankie had been short-tempered since Dom’s outburst because otherwise, I was the one that doled out thinly veiled threats to keep things interesting.
I raised a hand to interrupt him.
“There isn’t any need Frankie. This business is already concluded, right, Mr. Klune?”
I knew who the other party was. They’d bought our property and overturned one of the primary places we used to launder money. You would think they would have known better than to mess with us.
That was another thing I would have to attend to.
My smile was long gone. I’d grown tired of the meeting.
Murray didn’t look like somebody that would agree, but he looked into my eyes for the first time in more than half an hour and nodded.
Unlike Frankie, my eyes were expressive. I’d hated them for that as a kid, before I’d learned how to use them properly. But now I could, and along with my smiles, they were weapons I used very often to get my way.
The most effective threats were not always the most brutal, sometimes they were the ones that reflected clearly in my eyes. Like the ones Murray must have found when he looked.
My smile returned. Who didn’t love it when business was concluded successfully?
“Then have a lovely day, Commissioner,” I said. “And be sure to give my regards to Christine and the girls.”
Chapter 2 - Katya