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Sal exhaled a defeated exhale and then nodded his head. He understood. “Yeh, you do. I know you do. I do too.”

Gemma looked at him. “How are you going to make it happen?”

“How do you suggest?”

“Take some time off. Spend more time with your family. We need you, Sal. Lucky needs you. Maybe that’ll help.”

Sal actually agreed with her. “I’ll do that. I’ll take some time off. I’ll break away for a while.”

“What’s a while?” Gemma asked, suspicious of workaholic Sal ever meaning it.

“Some time off.”

“What’s some, Sal?” Gemma asked him.

“A week maybe.”

A disappointed look came over Gemma’s face. What was a week going to do?

“Or two or three,” Sal added. “Okay, a month. I’ll take a month off. That better?”

Gemma smiled. “If you’re stick to it, yes. That’s better.”

“I’ll stick to it, don’t you worry about that. You and those kids mean more to me than anything else. That goes without saying.”

Gemma wanted to say that sometimes it needed to be said, but she held her tongue. He had a fiery temper if you came at him wrong.

“I’ll let Robby run my day-to-day and I’ll spend time with you and the children.”

“Beginning when?” Gemma asked. She wanted specifics. She was tired of his vague promises to slow down.

Sal knew it too. “Beginning today, how’s that?”

“That’s great, Daddy!” Lucky yelled out from the kitchen before Gemma could say a word. “We can go to Foot Locker. I need a new pair of Jordans!”

“Your ass better get your ass out of this conversation,” Sal said angrily. “That’s what you need.”

“Yes sir,” Lucky said, and they could hear Marie laughing.

But Gemma still looked distressed. Sal stood her up and then pulled her into his arms. “We’re alright, baby. We’re fine.” Then he frowned. “Or at least we will be.”

“I actually thought it was over with Alice and that man. But what is this new stuff?” They stopped embracing. “It’s like somebody desperately wants me to believe you don’t give a damn about me.”

“Which you know is not true.”

Gemma stared into Sal’s eyes.

Now Sal looked distressed. “Tell me you know it, Gemma. Tell me.”

Gemma finally found a way to smile. “I know it, idiot.” Then her look turned serious again. “Yes, Sal Luca, I know it.”

It was an unsteady admittance considering the barrage of text messages they’d just endured, but at least it was something.

And they made their way back into the kitchen.

Sal placed Gemma’s phone in his bathrobe pocket.

He was going to find out who sent those messages if it was the last thing he did.

“Which brings me to you, Mister Foot Locker,” said Gemma as they entered the kitchen. She went back behind the island to finish making herself a cup of coffee. Sal pulled out her phone and began reading those messages in more detail.

“What’s on your docket for today?” Gemma asked Lucky.

“Since our school is on winter break, I thought I was going to just chill and play video games. But it looks like I’m going to Foot Locker,” he said with the biggest grin on his face. “That is if Dad don’t mind me hanging out with him.”

Although Marie knew that wasn’t going to fly, Gemma instantly thought it was a good idea. “Sal, why not?”

Sal looked up from those text messages. “Why not what?”

“I want you to let Lucky hang with you today. You two haven’t done that in years. Since you’re going to be off work for a full month.”

Lucky just knew he was going to say another day, not today. But he didn’t.

Because Sal knew he owed it to Lucky and to Gemma too. He exhaled. “You’re right. Although this letting Lucky hang with me sounds more like him chaperoning me than hanging with me. But you’re right.”

“Nothing wrong with having a chaperone every once in a while,” said Gemma. “He can be my eyes and ears. And I mean it, Sal. Where you go, he goes.”

Lucky just knew his father wasn’t going to agree to that. Marie knew it too.

“Why can’t he go with you?” Sal asked her.

Gemma gave Sal a hurt look. He was already backtracking. “He’s been to work with me many times. You’re his father. He needs his father too.”

Sal realized in that moment that his old habits were creeping right back into the equation. He’d literally just gotten out of the doghouse, and was already inching his way back in.

But a kid around him all day when his businesses were a mix of legit and not so legit? What was Gemma thinking? He didn’t have to be at work to be at work and she knew it.

But Sal knew what she was after. Even though Alice’s scheme proved to be a load of malarky, and those text messages sounded too wild to be true, she still wasn’t convinced he was as pure as the driven snow.

She wanted eyes on him. She was afraid that he could ruin their marriage just as easily as his death notification to Zam’s widow almost derailed them.

She’d never admit it, but Sal knew he was right. She wanted Lucky to be his chaperone.

Sal looked at Lucky. He could tell he really wanted to hang with his old man. He really wanted them to be connected again like they used to be. And Sal realized, in that moment, that he wanted it too.

Besides, he was supposed to be off work for an entire month.

He didn’t know how that was going to be possible, but at least he could spend one of those days with Lucci.

Why not the very first day? “Looks like I’m going to have myself a chaperone today,” Sal said, although he wasn’t shy calling it what it was. And he looked at Gemma.

Although Gemma and Lucky and Marie too were happy, Gemma could see the apprehension in Sal’s eyes. “Just don’t go there,” she said to him in a code they both understood. “You’ve got plenty of other things you can do. They need your attention too.”

Sal nodded. “Yeah I know,” he said, but what she didn’t understand was that his business wasn’t on a clock like hers. Things happened. Shit went down. You had to make a move when you had to make a move. But then he exhaled.

“Nothing will go wrong,” Gemma assured Sal.

“What are you talking?” Sal responded, offended. “He’ll be hanging with his old man. What could possibly go wrong?”

Everything, as it turned out.

Sal and Lucky went to the Foot Locker store at the mall to purchase Lucky a pair of Jordans, but Robby showed up.

Big Dan Testa was in town and ready to meet about a merger.

Robby wanted Sal to get to Danny before one of their rivals could.

The window of opportunity was right then and there and that was why Sal took his son along to wait in the SUV. It wouldn’t be long, he told him.

But Lucky, being Lucky, had to go inside to see for himself.

Besides, his father was meeting with Uncle Dan.

Lucky had known Danny Testa since the day he was born.

He just wanted to say hello. The driver couldn’t stop him: He was Sal Gabrini’s son.

Neither could the capos at the door, although they got permission from Sal to let him in. Sal let him in.

When gunfire erupted and all hell broke loose, all of Sal’s capos would be dead except for three of them. Robby Yale would be injured. Lucky would save Sal’s life. But Lucky himself, Sal’s only son, would end up fighting for his own young life.

Everything went wrong that day.