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Sophia sat
in the same chair that she had yesterday, but this time it felt different.
Everything smelt and seemed different somehow. And yet it seemed right, too. She
smiled at herself with satisfaction and looked around the office as she waited
for her father.
She had
been waiting for a quarter of an hour before she heard the door behind her open
and her father’s familiar footfalls walk around her. She watched his face
carefully as he sat down behind the sparse desk.
Palmero
chewed on his cigar and regarded her. Sophia was silent, watching his eyes - he
had that look. She was going to get
her way. She couldn’t help but smile.
“Okay,
here’s the deal,” Palmero began, “you’ll be a soldier under Benny. A
silent soldier. That means you can’t ever be ‘made’; do you understand
what I mean by that?”
“Soldier
is as far as I’ll ever go.”
“Yes. You
have to understand, Sophia, that this is an unusual situation for us. They might
do it in Italy, but not here. We’re not sure how the other Families are going
to react to this. Not well, I’ll bet. You’ll probably be regarded as a
weakness.” He saw her furrow her brow at the last word. "We don’t know.
Listen, you’ve put me in an awkward situation, okay? You know I’ve never
been able to say no to you, and many times I should have. Especially now. So you
have to show me that you’re serious. This isn’t just any job, you know.”
“I know
that, Dad.”
“Yeah,”
he sighed. He chewed on his cigar some more, then an alarmed look came into his
eyes as he thought of something that he hadn’t yet. “For god’s sake
don’t tell your mother. She’ll burn me alive if she finds out I got you into
this.”
“She
won’t find out.”
“She’d
better not, because you won’t fare too well either. Like we do with everyone
else, we’ll set you up in a front, something that looks like a real job. If
she ever has any doubts, we’ll have to think of something else. And this
doesn’t just go for your mother; it will be everyone. Like I said, you’ll be
a silent soldier. For the time being, no one will know you’re part of the
Family until we can feel out how that’s going to be taken by others. There are
rules; we can’t just do what we want. You’ll be taken in on jobs when we
need to put people off our backs.”
“That’s
what I figured you’d need me for.”
“Yeah
well, we’ll see how it works. Couple of months, we’ll look at it. If it’s
not working, you go. No strings. Any longer than that, there’s a code. You
understand?”
“Yes
Daddy,” she said, and smiled.
“Jesus,”
he cursed, but couldn’t help smiling back. “Benny will be by in a few
minutes; he’ll take you through everything. From now on, you have a problem,
you talk to him, he talks to me. Understand?” Sophia nodded. “Okay.” He
eyed her again, but this time tried to see her as part of his team. He
couldn’t quite do it, but the next two months were going to be as much as a
trial for him as for her, not to mention everyone else involved.
His misgivings
were interrupted by a knock on the door, and Benny entered. Sophia swiveled in
her chair to look at him, and Benny smiled at her, but his face was uneasy.
Palmero twirled the cigar in his mouth until it was pushed to one corner.
“Well
Benny, say hello to your new protégé.”
“My
car’s out front,” Benny tossed her the keys which she caught without
flinching, “I’ll be there in a sec.”
When she
had left the room, Benny turned to Palmero, eyes wide and both arms raised.
“What the …”
“The only
way she’ll know she’s not meant to be here is if she finds out for herself.
I hate to say this, but for the first time in my life,” Palmero took his cigar
out of his mouth and regarded it through a cloud of smoke, “I want to see her
fail. It’s the only way I can protect her now.”
© Cynthia M. Piromalli
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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