Free Prayer by Susan Fanetti

see that Calhoun’s nose was gushing blood and his eye was already swelling shut.
     
    “Jesus fuck, John-O,” Luca snarled at him. “You cool now?”
     
    He took a breath and was about to say yes when Calhoun broke Theo’s hold and stormed over. “I will end you, motherfucker!”
     
    The sound of the threat was impaired by his broken nose, but Luca let go of John and turned on Calhoun. He pushed Calhoun away. “Back off, buddy, or I will get in the middle of this shit, and you will not like that at all.”
     
    Not knowing Luca well enough, Calhoun was undeterred and made another advance. But then Sam, Nick’s driver and bodyguard, was there, with his enormous hand clamped on Calhoun’s neck.
     
    “Enough.” Nick’s voice was deadly quiet.
     
    John looked over and saw his cousin, standing in the rubble they’d made. They’d knocked stacks over, broken a couple of tables, shattered a lamp John knew was an antique, and broken an arm off the armchair that he knew had been Bev’s friend’s favorite. Bev’s dead friend, who’d left her this shop.
     
    Goddammit.
     
    Without another word, without looking at anything but the mess they’d made in his wife’s business, Nick turned. He went to Katrynn, who was still standing in the entrance, her face full of shock. He took her by the elbow and led her out of the room, through the throng of his wife’s scandalized guests.
     
    Luca watched them go, too, and turned back to John. “You are in serious shit, John. Whatever has you so twisted up these days, you better find the end of it.”
     
    John agreed. First he had to figure out what it was.
     
     
    ~oOo~
     
     
    At Mass the next morning, John withstood his stepmother’s hand-wringing fuss about the state of his face, and his father’s censorious comments about how he would have expected such from Luca, or even Junior, but not from him. Pop always managed to scattershot his criticisms and hit multiple brothers at once.
     
    He hadn’t seen Carlo Sr. or Adele, his father’s wife, since before he’d left for Italy. Pop was retired and had had four heart attacks. He and Adele pretty much stayed at their house these days, rarely going farther than next door, to the family house on Caravel Road, which he still owned, and where Carlo Jr. lived with Sabina and their kids. So they hadn’t been present at either of the most recent events of John’s downward spiral.
     
    But they’d gotten the full report. News traveled fast in the Pagano family. Especially juicy news.
     
    Nick, Bev, their daughters, and Nick’s mother, Aunt Betty, sat in the pew across from John and his family. As it had always been, the Paganos took over those two pews and, now, on Carlo Sr.’s side, a bit of a third. Everyone came to Mass at Christ the King every Sunday—except Manny, Luca’s wife, who was quickly bored and bad about hiding it, and Theo, who had some strong opinions about Catholicism.
     
    After Mass, everyone stood outside and waited to talk to Father Mike. The temperature neared sixty degrees on this Sunday in February, and John lifted his head into the breeze and let it soothe his sore face. His eye was swollen shut, too, and his jaw was a mess. Not broken, but Luca had had to shove it back into joint. And he’d still ended up in the ER for stitches. Fucking Calhoun and his fucking rings.
     
    He was off by himself, his eyes closed, feeling the nice weather, when he sensed that he wasn’t alone. He opened his working eye and saw Nick.
     
    “I want you at the office tomorrow morning at eight.”
     
    Nick didn’t wait for an answer, just turned and went back to Bev and his kids.
     
    Bev was now another woman he needed to apologize to. But he wasn’t going to get the chance today.
     
    His bigger concern was that he’d just been summoned to Pagano Brothers Shipping. To Nick’s office. That meant that Nick had decided to deal with the damage John had caused in Cover to Cover not as his cousin but as Don