It was a bit awkward checking out at the register afterwards.


    The clerk  who I’d seen before on previous trips to the thrift shop  kept looking at me and Adriano out of the side of her eye as she rang us up.


    I was pretty sure she knew we’d had sex in the changing room.


    I noticed her gaze lingered a lot longer on Adriano.


    I was irritated with the bedroom eyes she kept shing him, but he barely seemed to notice her.


    He wasn’t happy with the clothes he was wearing  ripped jeans, wife-beater t-shirt, a short-sleeved clubbing shirt unbuttoned along the front, along with some Doc Martins


    But at least he was pretty mellow after the sex.


    I guess having an orgasm chilled him out.


    We had also grabbed a nylon gym bag that he’d stuffed his suit, shirt, and dress shoes inside.


    Just as the girl was finishing ringing us up, I saw the finishing touch.


    “Add these,” I said, grabbing two pairs of cheap sunsses and two baseball caps from a nearby disy.


    “NO,” Adriano said sternly.


    “Yes,” I whispered, then pecked him on the lips. “Please?”


    He grumbled, but he allowed me to put the shades and ball cap on him.


    “There… now you look like a tourist,” I said happily. “Or a guy trying to make it in a local rock band.”


    “Great,” he muttered.


    The Doc Martins were the biggest expense and pushed the total up to 147 euros.


    Adriano peeled two hundred-euro bills from his bankroll and handed them over. “Keep the change.”


    The checkout girl looked shocked but happy.


    As we walked out of the store, I put on my pair of sunsses and tucked my hair up under the ball cap.


    “These clothes feel fuckin’ weird,” Adriano muttered as we strolled along the sidewalk.


    “Not used to anything besides designer suits, huh?” I teased him.


    “Not really, no,” he admitted. “Although I gotta say, these boots would be great for kicking the shit out of somebody.”


    “Wonderful,” I said sarcastically. “I’m d you like something in your outfit.”


    He chuckled as we reached the Mercedes, which he’d parked in a small lot for the train station. He popped the trunk, threw in the nylon bag, and shut it again.


    “Are we going to use the car?” I asked. “Unless you want people to think you’re a drug dealer, you don’t look like you should be driving a Mercedes worth a hundred grand.”


    “Try 400 grand.”


    I stared at him. “What?!”


    “It’s a Maybach. Plus the bulletproofing costs a lot more.”


    “Um… is bulletproofing something we need to worry about?” I asked nervously.


    “Not if we’re just going to low-end dives. I want to keep the car nearby in case we run into trouble, but we should probably walk.”


    “That’s fine. The first ce is just down the road.”


    Five minutester and we reached the first betting parlor.


    It was off an alleyway  a basement-levelplex at the bottom of a crumbling building. Steps led down to it from the street level, and there was a metal door with a speakeasy slide so they could look out and see who you were.


    I knew about this ce because my father brought me here when I was 11, during one of his most shameful phases. He was so deep into his addiction at one point that he would take me with him if Mama had to workte.


    “Don’t tell your mother,” he would always plead.


    So during my teenage years, I knew exactly where to check when he would disappear for days at a time. My mother had driven us around to all his familiar haunts, and we’d gone in to find him and shame him intoing home.


    He would try to hide from us in the bathroom  but either his fellow gamblers would heckle him until he slunk out with his tail between his legs, or the guys who ran the parlors would kick him out.


    “Hold on,” Adriano cautioned me as I started down the alley towards the door.


    “What?”


    He gestured with his head, and I followed him down the block to another alleyway. We walked until we reached a dumpster about 40 feet from the street.


    He pulled out his pistol from the back of his jeans; the clubbing shirt hid it nicely while he walked.


    Then he pulled three more clips out of his pockets. He wrapped everything in a crumpled piece of newspaper he found on the ground, then hid it behind some broken cinderblocks.


    “Uh… wouldn’t it be a good idea for you to have that on you?” I asked nervously.


    “Yeah, but the first thing they’re gonna do is frisk me when I walk in. There’s probably a couple hundred grand down there, if it’s the kind of ce I think it is, and they don’t want anybody robbing them.”


    “Oh,” I said, looking around to make sure no one was watching us. “Why’d wee over here? Couldn’t you have hidden it in the alley by the door?”


    “They might have security cameras. Better to do it here where I know they’re not watching.”


    We walked out of the alleyway and back to the betting parlor’s entrance. I rapped on the metal door and waited until the rectangr grill opened up.


    A guy’s eyes peered down at me. Even with the limited view, I could tell he was heavyset.


    “What?” he asked gruffly.


    “I’m looking for Fabrizio Lettieri,” I said. “I’m his daughter.”


    “He ain’t here,” the man said.


    “Yeah, that’s what you guys always used to say  until Beppe let us in.”


    ‘Beppe’ was the name of the old codger who’d been running the ce ever since I could remember.


    The guy behind the door narrowed his eyes  and then he burst outughing. “You Bianca? Little B?”


    I took off the ball cap and sunsses so he could get a better look. “That’s me.”


    “Shit, I remember youin’ around here… what was it, six or seven years ago?”


    “Yup.”


    He looked at Adriano. “Who’s he?”


    “My boyfriend. He came with me because my mom’s tired of dealing with my father’s shit.”N?velDrama.Org owns all ? content.


    “Mm,” the guy grunted sympathetically.


    The grill slid shut, and there was a metallic grinding sound as the door opened up.


    I remembered the doorman now that I saw him, though I didn’t know his name. He was about 350 pounds, most of it fat, and was sweating through his maroon-colored bowling shirt.


    “Little B,” he said, then looked me over lecherously. “You sure filled out.”


    “Thanks,” I said sarcastically as I brushed past him. “Where’s Beppe?”


    “He’s in the back. Hold on, tough guy,” the doorman said as he stopped Adriano and patted him down. “What’s this?”


    Adriano pulled out his bankroll. “Just in case we need to pay off his debts.”


    “Or maybe y a few hands, huh?” the doorman chuckled. “Alright, go on in.”


    Adriano followed me through a hallway into the half-lit underworld of Florentine gambling.


    The back room was hazy with cigar smoke. A dozen tables were packed with older and middle-aged men, although there were a couple of guys in their 20s. No women at all. There were also no windows, which kept the room in a perpetual state of twilight.


    There was ckjack, poker, craps, even two roulette wheels.


    Florence had casinos  gambling was legal in the city  but drugs were heavily monitored in them.


    In the betting parlors, you could get just about anything you wanted: uppers, downers, cocaine, heroin, meth.


    Not to mention the back-alley ces would let you run tabs the casinos would never agree to… because the casinos wouldn’t send thugs to break your legs if you couldn’t pay up.


    A man in his 70s with thick white hair and thick eyesses came over. “Hey, is that you, Bianca?”


    “Hey, Beppe.”


    “Holy shit, you sure grew up!”


    “And you look just as young as always.”


    Heughed. “Ah, you charmer.” Then he nced at Adriano. “This your fe?”


    “Yeah. Is my dad here?”


    “Who, ‘Fabio mbeur’? Naw, I ain’t seen him for weeks.”


    I tilted my head to the side yfully, like Come on. “Seriously, Beppe?”


    The old man held up his right hand. “I swear on the Virgin’s left tit. Ain’t seen him since a couple of Saturdays ago.”


    “Alright…”


    Beppe leaned in and whispered. “You should be careful, kid. The Agres got whackedst night.”


    “Whacked?” I said, feigning shock.


    Beppe drew a finger across his neck like a knife shing his throat. “Took ’em out. Word is some assholes from the countryside did it.”


    “Really,” I said as I made my eyes appropriately wide.


    “Yeah. So whoeveres collectin’ his debts might not be as forgiving as Sergio, you know what I’m sayin’?”


    “Gotcha… thanks for the heads-up.”


    “Sure thing, doll. If hees by, I’ll let him know you’re lookin’ for him.”


    “Thanks, Beppe.”


    “No problem.”


    I took Adriano’s arm and walked out with him.


    “Don’t be a stranger,” the fat doorman said on the way out. I was pretty sure he was checking out my ass.


    “That fuckin’ asshole,” Adriano growled as we stepped into the sunlight.


    I smiled. “Is somebody jealous?”


    “No… but he shouldn’t be makin’ his fuckin’ments.”


    “Have you met any Italian mentely?”


    “Ha ha,” he said withoutughing. “What was that about ‘Fabio mbeur’?”


    “Just my dad’s nickname. Fabio is short for Fabrizio  ”


    “I got that part  but ‘mbeur’ isn’t Italian.”


    “No, it’s French. It’s ng for a high-roller or somebody on a hot streak… like mesing off his fingertips when he rolls the dice. It was a joke. Because my dad was such a shitty gambler.”


    “Huh…”


    “They know about the Agres,” I said worriedly.


    “And did you catch the part about the guys from the countryside?” he asked grimly.


    “Yeah?”


    “That would be my family. Our ce is out in Tuscany.”


    I stared at Adriano in rm. “But you said  ”


    “We didn’t do it. But whoever’s behind it is trying to make it look like we did.”


    “But… doesn’t that make you look tough?”


    “Yeah, but it also makes us look bad to the rest of the Cosa Nostra  like we stabbed the Agres in the back. And if somebody’s feeding that lie to the cops, they mighte after us, too.”


    “Oh shit…”


    Adriano reached out and took my hand. “After I get my gun, I need to call my brothers  and we need to go check out the other ces you know.”


    Igged a little behind him as he started walking.


    He looked over his shoulder at me. “What?”


    I looked down at my hand in his.


    He realized that he’d taken it without thinking about it.


    “What, you don’t want to hold my hand?” he said as he let go


    “No  I do,” I said with a big grin on my face, andtched onto his hand and wouldn’t let go. I stepped up on my tip-toes to give him a kiss. “I do.”


    He kissed me back, then smiled and shook his head like I was crazy…


    And we walked down the street, hand in hand.