Could that be true? Maria had said it was a miracle the place had kept going with my father’s mismanagement. Did she know about this loan? Were his “thieving friends” mobsters?
I thought about what a mess everything was and how the bookkeeping made no sense. What the fuck had my father done, and how stupid had I been to walk right into it? “I don’t know anything about the debt my father owed you, but this bakery is mine. His will was clear on that.”
I wondered why he’d bothered to put me in his will when he hadn’t communicated with me since my mother had dragged me off to live with some distant cousin of hers in Indiana. I’d tried to call my father a few times that year. He never answered, and I’d finally given up on him. Now I had an idea why. He wasn’t passing on a family legacy to the son he’d forgotten. He was punishing me for leaving one final time by shoving his debt off on me.
“The will won’t mean shit if you can’t pay my family off,” the stranger insisted.
“What are you going to do if I don’t pay you? Kill me?” Why the fuck was I goading him? Was I that determined to show I wasn’t the meek kid I used to be?
“Killing you would be way too easy.”
I wanted to slap the smirk off his face, but his low, rough voice… I knew this man. “Who are you?”
“You really don’t know, do you?”
“I feel like we’ve met before, but I don’t—”
“Hang around with guys like me? You never did, did you?”
Oh fuck. I did know him. My dad was screwing me over from the grave in the most epic of ways. “You’re Angelo Marchesi.”
“Damn right I am. I knew you’d remember me sooner or later.”
“My father was working for your family?”
Angelo grinned. “He didn’t take quite the same view of our enterprises as you did.”
“He borrowed money from you?” Fuck. If he’d gotten that desperate, what other surprises were in store for me?
If possible, Angelo looked even more smug. “He sure did, though how he thought he was going to raise half a million to pay us back I have no idea.”
“Half a million? You can’t be serious.” What had he done to lose so much money that he’d had to mortgage the place from the Marchesis? Unfortunately, far too many options came to mind: gambling, drugs, stealing from the wrong person to finance his habits.
“I’m very serious.”
“This building is worth far more than that.”
“True, but it’s all your father had of value, and, of course, the interest has to be figured in.”
I’d wondered why my father hadn’t sold the place. He could have bought a hell of a lot of liquor and drugs with the proceeds. Now I knew.
The world began to swim around me, and my vision darkened. Passing out might be a blessing, though. At least then I would have a few moments of peace. I was already at Angelo’s mercy, the man I’d been an asshole to in high school. Was he thinking about how I’d told him his money was dirty and I didn’t want anything to do with it? I knew then that my father was mixed up in plenty of illegal shit, and I’d been fucking determined to distance myself from that.
But the real reason I’d been willing to say anything I could to make Angelo leave me alone back then was because if I spent time with him, he might realize how much I wanted him despite hating him at the same time. I was terrified if he found out, he might kill me, or worse, tell everyone at school. So I’d acted like he disgusted me, even though I occasionally caught glimpses of him that told me there was more to him than the posturing badass he pretended to be.
My knees buckled, and Angelo’s arms closed around me. I felt his strength as he held me. His arms were rock hard, and I was sure he could lift me easily.
“Looks like you need to have a seat and maybe something strong to drink.”
I shook my head. “I don’t have anything.”
He manhandled me to the swinging door that led to the front and lifted a chair off the top of one of the tables. The room still looked as if someone had just closed up for the night. Angelo pushed at my shoulders, encouraging me to sit. When I did, he reached behind himself, and I tensed.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to shoot you. I’ve still got shit to talk to you about.”
Instead of his gun, he pulled out a flask and held it out to me. “Take a sip of this, and I’ll get you some water.”
He moved behind the counter and opened cabinets until he found a plastic cup. I was really glad I’d had the city turn the water back on the day before. As he approached me, I screwed the top off the flask, took a long pull, and nearly choked as the fiery liquid ran down my throat. “What the hell is this?”