Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80014 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80014 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
He muttered, “I’m too tired to argue,” and tucked into the breakfast.
I sat down with the tablet and started looking through the local furniture wholesaler’s website that he’d pulled up. After a minute, I showed him the screen and said, “These chairs are nice, and they’re similar to the old ones.”
“They’re the ones I liked, too. I suppose I should ask my mom before I order them, though. She’s very particular about this place.”
“She’s done a beautiful job on it,” I said, as I looked around.
The walls were a soothing shade of deep blue, the ceilings were high, and the floor was polished wood. The best part, though, were the clusters of black and white photos on the walls. There were different themes. One set had been taken in the bar, with gorgeous portraits of the customers and a beautiful woman that had to be Adriano’s mom. Another set had probably been taken around the modest neighborhood, and a third consisted of artistic shots of old neon signs in various states of disrepair.
“Thank god those men didn’t get around to smashing the photos,” I said. “They’re really something special.”
“Thanks. I could have reprinted them if they’d gotten damaged, but I’m glad I don’t have to.”
“Wait, did you take those pictures?”
“Yeah, a long time ago. They’re all at least ten to fifteen years old.”
“You have an incredible gift, Reno.”
He shrugged and said, “It’s a fairly useless talent, that and drawing. Though the latter did come in handy recently.” He grinned a little as he pulled what looked like a journal from his laptop case. Then he took a folded sheet of paper from between its pages and handed it to me. It was surprising to come face-to-face with myself when I unfolded it. “That’s how I found you,” he explained. “I left those flyers at every bar in San Francisco.”
“I’m sorry to make you go through that. This drawing is amazing, though. I’m just surprised you drew such a flattering likeness, since you had to be furious with me.”
His grin got a little wider. “What was I going to do, add a pair of horns? That’s exactly what you look like.”
“On my best day and in very flattering lighting, maybe.” I glanced at him and asked, “Is it weird that I want to keep this?”
“Go ahead. I don’t need it anymore.”
“Thanks.” I put down the flyer and ended up knocking the journal off the small table. It had fallen open to a page with a list of names and addresses, and I picked it up and asked, “Who are these people with your last name? Dante, Vincent, Gianni, Michael—”
“They’re my half-brothers.”
“I thought you just had one brother named Romy.”
“He’s the only one I grew up with. Technically, he’s a half-brother, too. Mom dated Romy’s dad for about a year, but then he took off when she told him she was pregnant. Needless to say, she has pretty terrible taste in men.” Reno took a sip of coffee before continuing, “Anyway, they’re my half-brothers on my dad’s side. He was with his wife before and after the few months he spent with my mom, so two of them are younger than me, and two are older.”
“Are you close?”
“I don’t know them at all,” he said.
“Most of these addresses are in San Francisco. Were you planning to go see them while you were in town?”
“Actually, I hoped to avoid them. Remember when I gave the valet a fake name, the night we met? There are a lot of Dombrusos in San Francisco in addition to my half-brothers, so I thought it was a good idea to lay low.”
“Have you ever actually met any of them?”
Adriano paused before saying, “Don’t repeat this to my mom when you meet her, because she’d probably be upset. The summer after my high school graduation, I told her I was going on a road trip and drove to San Francisco. I wanted to meet the other side of my family, and I didn’t tell her because I didn’t know how it would make her feel. I didn’t want her to think she and Romy weren’t enough for me, you know?
“Anyway, I managed to track down my oldest brother, Dante. I used a fake ID to get into some club where he was holding court in the VIP section. He seemed like a real big shot, even though he would have only been about twenty-one at the time. I’d had this whole speech prepared, and I went up to him and said something like, ‘Paulie Dombruso was my dad. He met my mom in Las Vegas nineteen years ago.’ That was as far as I got before Dante leapt up and shoved me.
“He caught me off guard, so I lost my footing and fell on my ass. Before I could get up, he leaned over me and said I was full of shit. He told me his parents adored each other, and that his dad would never cheat on his mom with some whore in Vegas. Before he stormed off, he lifted his lapel to show me the gun in his shoulder holster and told me he better never see me again, or I’d regret it. And that was the end of that.”