Page 23 of Kingpin

I snickered. “Well, maybe try for me? You know, since I no longer wear a face full of makeup?”

He grinned. “Are you ready to head out? I have to be at the warehouse in thirty minutes.”

I blinked. “I’m going with you to the warehouse?”

“Didn’t you say you wanted to shadow me at work?”

“I thought you said no.”

“Well, today I’m not. You’ve got five minutes.”

I’d never gotten ready so fast in all my life. I met him at the elevator and we walked down to his car, where he promptly opened the door for me. It was a side of Israel I hadn’t seen yet. Three weeks of marriage, and he was just starting to do things that I figured were required of a married man.

As he sat down beside me in the back of the town car, I looked over at him.

“What made you change your mind?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. “Mangello? Take the long way to the warehouse. I want to check in on the shops.”

“Of course, sir.”

I furrowed my brow. “You own shops?”

He shook his head. “No. I don’t.”

I didn’t know what in the world he was talking about, but I accepted it nonetheless. Just to be out and about with him was a treat I relished. He sat beside me with his legs crossed and his hands in his lap. He didn’t touch me, but he sure as hell looked at me.

More like raked his eyes up and down my body.

“Stop,” Israel said.

His driver pulled over to the curb.

“Oh, I used to love shopping in that little boutique,” I said.

“They were my family’s first customer thirty-two years ago.”

I looked over at him. “Customer for what?”

He stared outside. “Protection.”

That answer caught me off guard. “I didn’t know you were in the protection business.”

“No. All your family has ever told you is that my family slaughters others for money. They don’t care to put a contextual frame on it.”

I heard the bitterness in his voice, and it hurt my heart a little.

“See that shop? The baby store?” he asked.

I followed his pointed finger. “Yes. I do. That’s where my mother got—”

“They followed the boutique a few months later. After they were robbed. My family reimbursed them for the lost merchandise so they could restock. In exchange for that, we wrapped a monthly payback total into the protection payment. They’ve been with us ever since.”

“Wow.”

“You can keep driving, Mangello.”

We drove all around Chicago with him, pointing out shops I had spent my life visiting. Eateries and boutiques and baby stores and art galleries. All of them employed Israel and his family for extra protection. It shocked me, humbled me, and it made me feel part of the new family dynamic I had entered.

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