“I had better days before I met your sister.”
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
“Why are you here?”
“Can a girl get a drink around here?”
“As I remember, that’s what started the trouble the last time—you wanting a beer.” But Saks gestured to John and pointed to his beer bottle and put up two fingers.
John, with a doubtful look in his eye, set the beer bottles down in front of them.
“Want a wing?”
“Sure, thanks.”
“Again, Gloria, why are you here?”
Gloria dipped the wing into the blue cheese sauce, thoughtfully. “I’m worried about Chrissy.”
“You have every right to be.”
“She’s coming home for about a week. I was wondering—”
“No.”
“But—”
“No.”
“Saks, you’re the only one she’ll listen to.”
“You can’t prove that by me, Gloria. She got right on that plane despite what we tried to tell her. Besides, you say she’s coming home, so she must be all right.” Gloria set her jaw.
“Saks, you and I both know the score. People like James Pearson are bad news, even to our families.”
“So? Have your grandfather put a hit on him.”
“Don’t even talk like that,” she hissed.
“Why? Isn’t that what La Familia does? Get rid of a problem?”
“Saks, you know we don’t do stuff like that anymore.”
Saks arched his eyebrow at Gloria. She had to be kidding him. The evidence of what “they” did rested with his torn-up shoulder. A wise guy family took a contract to try to break up the nuptials—the hard way.
Funny thing was, he and Chrissy were a long way from getting to the altar.
“Yeah, right. That’s why I got a slug in my shoulder. Or why our guy Hawk got hit coming out of the pharmacy.”
Gloria bit her lip. “Look, Saks. You’re right. This is one fucked-up situation. And if Grandpa hadn’t pushed her too hard, she wouldn’t have run off.”
Saks scoffed.
“But I’m really, really worried about her. If it wasn’t for my father getting heart surgery, she wouldn’t come home at all.” Her teeth bared in anger. “She’d just keep on with that rat, Pearson. This is the perfect opportunity to convince her to give up that job and stay where she’s safe.”
Suddenly the wings Saks had been excited to eat felt like lead in his gut. “Then good luck to you, because you’ll need it.”
“Saks,” she begged, “please, I just—”