I thought that was very sweet and it bought Sal and Gina being on my Christmas card list (and birthday card list, and maybe, if I could swing it and not make Benny’s family lose their minds, an invitation for them to our engagement party).

For some reason, Ben didn’t think it was sweet.

I knew this when he demanded, “Explain that to me.”

“Explain what?” Sal asked.

“Why you’re up in Frankie’s shit,” Ben stated. “Vinnie’s gone, Sal. She’s no longer a member of your family.”

That comment made Sal go from looking like he was about to get mad to just looking pissed.

Not good.

I made a move toward them, whispering, “Benny—” but Sal cut me off.

“She’ll always be family.”

“Explain that,” Ben repeated.

“Family never dies,” Sal returned.

“Your kind does,” Ben shot back, and in normal circumstances, this exchange would not be dangerous. This exchange might even be positive in a getting-it-all-out-there (finally), healing sort of way.

That would be if one of the people involved in the exchange wasn’t a mob boss.

“You don’t get this,” Sal clipped, his pissed-off anger sizzling in the air, “because you had what she didn’t when you were growin’ up. And if you don’t find some way to get it, then you aren’t the man for her. The man I thought you would be. She didn’t have a father growin’ up who gave a shit about her and I”—he jerked his thumb to his chest again—“get that.”

At this news—deep, heartbreaking sharing from Sal about something I never knew—my breath caught and I glued eyes to him that were suddenly stinging with tears as he kept talking.

“You had it all growin’ up, Benito Bianchi. When you don’t, you search for it and hope to Christ that search doesn’t last a lifetime, leavin’ you takin’ your last breath and knowin’ you lived a life never havin’ somethin’ you need. I get why you don’t like me. I get why you wouldn’t want me around Frankie. I also don’t give a fuck. If I can, in some way, give her a piece of what she needs, I’m gonna do it. Gina can give her her part of that, she’s gonna do it. You like it or not.”

“Sal,” I whispered, and his eyes sliced to me.

“You’re beautiful, Francesca Concetti. You got a light inside that those parents of yours couldn’t extinguish. It shines bright on Gina and me. We got girls. We understand that light. We know the privilege of havin’ it. We know the kind of person you are, givin’ it to us, even after what happened with Vinnie. You wanna keep givin’ it to us, we’ll take it. You need to take it away, we won’t like it, but we’ll live with it because we love you and that’s what you do.”

I felt a tear slide down my cheek as I stood frozen, staring at Salvatore Giglia, finally understanding after all these years why he and his wife were still on my Christmas list.

After this staring lasted a long time, huskily, I told him, “I love you too.”

“I know,” he replied quietly.

“I think you just got invited to my engagement party,” I blurted.

Sal grinned.

Benny muttered, “Christ.”

“Come here, amata,” Sal ordered.

I went there, and when I got there, the boss of a crime family folded me in his arms.

I folded him right back.

We held on to each other for a while before Ben called, “Babe.”

I kept holding on but turned wet eyes to Benny.

“I want you to have your moment, and you need more, keep takin’ it, but Sal and me gotta get this Nightingale situation straight.”

“Okay,” I replied, and Sal pulled away but not totally. He held me tucked to his side with one arm around me and I kept one arm around him as we turned to Benny.

“Call Nightingale off,” Sal demanded immediately.

“Talked to the man once. Even so, it was pretty clear he’s not the taking-orders-from-a-mob-boss-or-anyone type of guy,” Benny returned.

“Convince him,” Sal ordered.

Ben looked to the ceiling.

I tightened my arm on Sal and he looked at me.

“Maybe we should let him do what he does, seein’ as he does it for a living,” I told Sal.

“And we don’t know this guy. Maybe he’s shit at what he does, and us turnin’ this over to him means you bein’ safe now becomes you bein’ not so safe.”

I didn’t know anything about PIs, but the Nightingale Investigations website was pretty cool. It was attractive. Very male. Extremely professional. It wasn’t wordy. In fact, outside of a one sentence mission statement that was an actual mission statement, not a hokey tagline, everything was bullet points.

Then again, a good website probably didn’t make a good private investigator.

I pressed my lips together and looked to Benny.

Benny sighed before he said, “Right. We get the go-ahead from Frankie’s girl, I’ll call Nightingale. Tell him we’ll do the drop, but we want to meet his man during it so we know who we’re handing this shit over to.”

“And tell him his man will work with my men,” Sal added.

“Sal,” Benny began, “not only does this guy not strike me as a take-orders type of guy, he also doesn’t strike me as a take-on-random-partners-in-an-important-investigation type of guy, those partners being Mafia.”

“He’ll understand a good deed,” Sal replied.

“Even I don’t understand you doin’ a good deed, and I just witnessed you givin’ something to my woman that was straight-up good and clean,” Benny returned, and my heart skipped a beat as I felt Sal’s body tighten beside me.

I felt it loosen and I looked up to see him grinning a shit-eating grin as he remarked, “I think you just said somethin’ nice to me, figlio.”

“Be sure to write it in your diary,” Ben muttered as my phone rang.

I disengaged from Sal and dashed to the kitchen, Gus on my heels, thinking it was a game, and nabbed my phone.

It was Tandy.

I took the call and got confirmation that Roxie and Hank had a Christmas Eve wedding, thus their colors were green and red, something Tandy’s friend’s sister knew since she was invited.

These were the colors Nightingale put in his email.

Nightingale was on the up-and-up.

I thanked Tandy and gave this news to Sal and Ben.

The instant I did, Sal looked to Benny and ordered, “Make the call, figlio.”

Ben stared at Sal for long moments before he looked at me.

“You absolutely sure you don’t wanna work at the pizzeria?” he asked. “Shit like this does not happen at my pizzeria.”

I smiled at him.

He waited.

I kept smiling at him so he’d know that was all the answer he was going to get.

“Shit,” he muttered and reached into his back pocket to get the phone.

Gus licked my foot.

I called, “Sal, you want some coffee and a day-old donut?”

Sal turned and grinned at me.

***

We walked into Frank’s restaurant at two thirty that afternoon, the meeting pushed back so the Luke Stark guy could land at Indianapolis International Airport, get his rental, and meet us. A change in plans I understood, from listening to Benny’s side of the conversation, Lee Nightingale didn’t like all that much. A change in plans we discovered, from the instant we entered the restaurant, Lee Nightingale didn’t inform Herb of.

And Herb brought company.

We knew this when we walked in and heard a woman’s voice call out, “Yoo-hoo! Are you Frankie and Benny?”

I looked to a back table and saw an older woman with her arm up in the air, waving at us. Sitting beside her, staring at her like she was crazy, was an older, red-haired man.

Sal was with us. He had two men stationed outside the restaurant and one in a car across the street. For some reason, he was prepared for an ambush.

I really hoped Lee Nightingale truly was on the up-and-up since I didn’t want an old-fashioned café, which looked like it hadn’t changed since the early ’60s (not to mention its patrons), caught in the crossfire of whatever Sal’s brand of protection would be.

“This doesn’t give me good feelings,” Sal muttered, eyes on the waving woman as we made our way to the back table, Benny leading at the same time hauling me with him since his hand was in mine, Sal following us.

Benny stopped us by the table and declared without greeting, “It was our understanding we were meeting a Luke Stark here.”

“You are,” the red-haired man replied. “Lee told me I was out.” He jerked a thumb at the woman at his side. “But she wanted to come anyway.” He looked to her. “Just sayin’, you’re explainin’ this shit to Lee.”

She turned narrow eyes to him and admonished, “Herb, don’t say ‘shit.’”

“Woman, I’m a grown man. I’ll say ‘shit’ if I wanna say ‘shit,’” he shot back.

“It’s uncouth,” she retorted and swung a hand toward us. “We barely know these people.”

“Barely know them?” Herb returned. “We don’t know them at all.” He then looked to Benny and asked, “Do you say ‘shit?’”

Benny didn’t answer. Instead, he asked, “Where’s Stark?”

Herb didn’t answer that. He looked to Sal and asked, “Do you say ‘shit?’”

“We’re done here,” Sal decreed.

Shit.

I wanted this to work. I wanted professionals to sort all this out so no one else got hurt, and I wanted it done quickly so Benny could go home, I could go with him, and we could start a normal life (or as normal as I could be).

Therefore, I quickly stuck a hand toward the woman. “Hey. I’m Frankie.”

She smiled at me, took my hand, and replied, “I’m Trish. Roxie’s mom. Do you know Roxie?”

“No,” I told her, giving her hand a squeeze.