Free The Godfather's Revenge by Mark Winegardner

it’s all over, a Secret Service agent pulls me aside and says the meeting is a quote-unquote no-go.
    Tom finished his wine and then reached out and took Theresa’s other hand. He leaned slightly across the table. They stared into each other’s eyes.
    So I come back to the hotel. At about the same time you and Sandra are out shopping for a house behind my back, what I’m doing behind your back is worse. Unforgivable. It’s where I went last night, too, when I said I couldn’t sleep and needed to take a walk. That was a lie, since — unlike Mike with his insomnia and his nightmares — I sleep just fine. Which you know. Yet you didn’t question it, did you? I got up from our bed and got dressed and took the stairs three flights down, and I knocked on a door to a room where I was expected.
    It doesn’t mean anything.
    That’s not exactly true, but I certainly don’t love her. She’s no threat to you or our family. I couldn’t explain it myself if I tried, except that, as you know, men do this sort of thing. You probably already know about her. How could you not? It’s been going on for years. She lives in Vegas. Where I go on business all the time. And, yes, you guessed right: she likes it when I call her doll.
    When I think about how I should feel about this—which is almost never—I know it’s awful. I’m not a stupid man. At every turn of my life, I understand that I should feel all kinds of things that I don’t feel. A person can make himself understand a thing, but how do you make yourself feel? What’s a man supposed to do about that?
    If this were all out in the open, probably our family would be destroyed. I’d be devastated. But as long as you never really know these things, as long as we never talk about it, as long as I’m not found out, I have to be honest: I don’t feel bad.
    I don’t feel anything.
    That’s what I feel bad about.
    I’ve helped plot the deaths of many men and one whore. I’ve stood in rooms where the body was still warm and calmly discussed business. I’ve killed three men myself, Theresa. The first time, I was only a boy, eleven years old, an orphan, living on the streets. I don’t like to think about it. I think about the good that came from it, which was that Sonny brought me home to live with his family. The other two happened last year, right before that Notre Dame–Syracuse game you and I saw with Andrew. On one of the men, I used the belt I’m wearing right now, which seems odd only when I stop to think about it, which I never do. The other man, the one I shot in the head, was Louie Russo, head of the Chicago crime syndicate, and a sick man, in ways I don’t like to think about. The world is a better place without this individual, I can assure you. Here again: self-defense. All three times, it was kill or be killed, and I killed.
    These things do not haunt me.
    Nobody suspects me of anything—nobody except, I suspect, you.
    As you must know, sweetheart, I’m not just Michael’s lawyer and his unofficial brother. I’m also his consigliere, and, lately, his sotto capo as well. His underboss.
    Which I can’t be officially, because, unlike you, my love, I’m not Sicilian, not even Italian.
    You know all this. You must. Right after Pearl Harbor, when your parents got thrown in detention, like a lot of Italian immigrants did, how do you think I got ’em out so fast, huh? When your cousin fell on hard times, didn’t you wonder how a high school gym teacher who’d never set foot in Rhode Island made such a smooth transition into the vending-machine business there?
    How many times have you wanted to buy a painting and done so with an envelope of cash I gave you that you took, no questions asked? You’re a smart woman, Theresa. If—as I never will—I asked you to estimate the amount of money you’ve laundered, not to mention the number of art dealers whose tax fraud you’ve abetted, I’m certain you could tote it up in your head.
    You know things. You keep