Sal Gabrini leaned back as his limousine drove away from the foggy airstrip.  He and Robby Yale, who sat on the backseat with him, were back in Vegas, and were heading home.  Robby was quiet as a mouse, which was fine by Sal, so he pulled out his cellphone.

When Sal saw that he had two hundred new emails awaiting his perusal, he shook his head.  Two hundred emails?  He never bothered to check his phone when he was on assignment, but gotdamn, he thought.  He’d only been gone for a few days, not a few months.  And he had two hundred waiting on him?

“Fuck it!” Sal said out loud, and tossed his phone aside.  It was almost eleven at night, he was tired, and he was doing everything in his power to avoid thinking about what happened in Chicago.

Although Sal rarely allowed his men to travel with him in his family limo: there were usually SUVs waiting to transport them home, and the rest of his men piled in those SUVs tonight.  But he decided, given the circumstances, to drop Robby Yale off himself.  Not because they’d never had a trip gone wrong in the past: they had many trips that went terribly wrong.  But they lost a man on this trip in the most gruesome of ways, and they lost that man because of their own negligence.

He looked at his second-in-command as they rode, side by side, in the back of the limo.  Robby had been with him for a long time, but he never really felt as if he knew him like that.

“I know it’s still tough,” Sal said.

“I still can’t get over his screams,” Robby said.  “I mean, one minute he was Hawk standing there, and then the next minute he was . . .”

“It happens, Rob.  It was a freak accident.  It happens.”

“Not to me it doesn’t,” Robby said defiantly.  “I should have checked that place out myself.  You were coming in there.  It was my job to make sure it was safe.  But no!  I delegated!  And now Hawk’s gone.  That shit’s on me.”

Sal knew Robby couldn’t be reasoned with.  He was a big, muscular man with prison-yard muscles: a man who was not going to be persuaded to believe anything but his own reality.  A man who had to suffer this through, in all of its’ gory details, before he could move on.  Sal knew that quality well because he had it just as bad.

“You don’t have to worry about that, you know,” he said.

“What are you talking, Boss?” Robby asked.  “I can’t stop worrying about it!  Every time I try to think about something else, anything else, I have to deal with that all over again.  I have to worry about it.  I can’t stop worrying about it!”

“I’m talking about your job,” Sal said.

Robby looked at him.  “My job?”

Sal was looking out of his side window instead of at his underboss, but his words didn’t sound at all distracting to Robby.  “I know what’s going on,” Sal said.

Robby’s heart sank.  How could he know?  He was careful.  Curtis was careful.  How would he know???

But before he leaped to any conclusions, he knew he had to calm down.  “What do you mean?” Robby asked.

“I know I have more than a few men aiming to replace you as my underboss.  They want the job.  They feel they can do the job better than you could ever do it.  I know that.  But that shit don’t mean shit to me.”

Sal looked at his underboss.  “You’re my second-in-command,” he said.  “And it’s going to stay that way.”

Robby was surprised to hear it.  He thought he was giving him this lift home to demote him.  “Even after I killed Hawk?” he asked.

“You didn’t kill Hawk!” Sal said with a flash of anger.  “What are you deaf?  How many times do I have to tell you it was a fucking accident, Robby?  We’re all torn up about it.”

But by that faraway look that was still in Robby’s eyes, Sal knew Robby couldn’t hear him.  He knew he was just hitting his head against a brick wall.  “Just know the job is still yours,” he said.

“Even after I failed to recognize that Gunner Leach was missing for days after he went missing?” Robby asked, looking at Sal.  “They tried to tell me, you know.  Nails, Hawk, Joe, all of them tried to tell me.  But I wouldn’t listen.  Even after that?”

Sal nodded.  “Even after that,” he said.  “Your ass had better listen next time,” he warned.  “But yeah.  Even after that you’re still my number two.  You don’t have to impress anybody but me.  You’ve already done that in spades.”

Robby did feel better.  Sal’s confidence in him was exactly what he needed.  He was still in his funk, and probably would remain in it until the flashbacks ended, but at least his job was secure.  At least he didn’t have to worry which capo was breathing down his neck, waiting for him to mess up again, so that they could swoop down and take over.  “Thanks, Boss,” he said.  “I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

“Just do your job,” he said, “and you’ll have no problems with me.”

Robby smiled.  “Yes, sir,” he said.  And Robby did feel better.

But when they arrived at Robby’s house, a house he recently purchased, his mood shifted again when he saw Curtis Kane’s car parked on his driveway.  And just like that, his heart fell through his shoe.  He had text Curtis and told him he’d had a terrible trip, but he never dreamed Curtis would show up at his house to greet him.  He needed Curtis tonight.  He needed the greeting.  But Sal was with him.  And Sal had no clue.  Sal, he felt, would either kill him if he found out, or fire him.  Either way, it was going to be bad.

When Sal stepped out of the limo so that Robby could get out, he was shocked to see Curtis Kane step out of the car in the driveway.  Curtis was Sal’s wife’s secretary.  Curtis worked at Gemma’s law firm.  What in the world was he doing at Robby’s house, and at this time of night?

Curtis, an attractive black man, wanted to get back into his car and hightail it away from there when he saw Sal Gabrini step out of that limousine.  He thought Robby would be alone!  He never dreamed Robby’s boss, who also happened to be Curtis’s boss’s husband, would have given him a ride from the airport.  It never happened in the past!

But Curtis also knew that Robby had been living as a gay man in the closet for so long that he’d figure out a way to ignore and obfuscate and do whatever he had to do to keep his lie a secret.  Curtis didn’t like it: he was an openly gay black man, even though many black men frowned at his lifestyle.  Robby, by contrast, was not an openly gay Italian man, mainly because many Italian men would frown at his lifestyle.  It was getting old and tired and infuriating to Curtis.  But he guarded Robby’s secret with his life.

But now, in one unthinking, loving move, he had managed to give his partner what could amount to a potentially fatal exposure.

And Sal, being that flaming racist Curtis took him for, frowned when he saw who was standing there.  “What the fuck is he doing here?” he asked out loud.

Robby had only just gotten out of the limo behind Sal.  His heart had already dropped.  His heart was already pounding and hammering and about to explode.  But when Robby saw Curtis standing there, looking as if he’d just been caught in the cookie jar, a different feeling came over him.  He loved Curtis.  There was no getting around that truth.  Curtis was the only lover he’d ever had that loved him back, and treated him with respect, and was always there for him in his deepest, darkest hours.  Like tonight.

Normally, Robby would play the game.  He would pretend he had no clue why Curtis Kane would be parked on his driveway either.  But Hawk was dead.  Gunner Leach had gone missing and was later killed because of his slow response.  And Curtis was waiting to comfort him.  He couldn’t play that game tonight if his life depended on it.

But seeing Curtis there was strange to Sal.  All he knew about Curtis were two things: Curtis worked for his wife as her secretary, and Curtis was girlie gay to the extreme, and without apology.  Sal looked at his underboss with a baffled look on his face.  “What’s this about, Robby?” he asked.

“That’s Curtis Kane,” Robby said.  He and Sal were within two inches of each other.

“I know who it is, motherfucker.  Don’t play that shit with me.  What’s he doing here?”

Here goes, Robby thought, as he swallowed really hard.  “He didn’t want me to be alone tonight,” he said.

Sal stared at him.  There was no misinterpreting what Robby had just said.  There was no couching the words and reinterpreting them into something innocent and innocuous.  His underboss was telling him that he was gay.  Sal Gabrini’s underboss was gay!  If the truth came out, it would send shockwaves throughout the underworld.  Sal knew, because he knew that world better than he knew the real world, and he knew that he and his entire crime family would be tarnished with the same brush.  This shit was big!

Robby would have loved it if Sal would have said something.  He was good at giving words of encouragement when his men needed them.  But Sal was silent on this.  His face looked disgusted and angry and sad and hurt, all at once.  Robby had never seen so many contrasting emotions on his boss’s face.  And he knew this was going to take time.  Sal was old school Italian.  He grew up a racist, sexist, homophobic prick.  To think a man like him would be enlightened that easily, as soon as he found out he had to be enlightened, was unrealistic.

And Robby knew it.  That was why he didn’t say another word.  He left Sal’s side, walked over to Curtis Kane, and pulled Curtis into his arms.  Robby allowed his actions to speak for him.

But that didn’t mean his heart wasn’t still hammering when he looked over and saw Sal get back into his limousine.  That didn’t mean he wasn’t upset when Sal’s limo drove off.  He looked at Curtis instead.  Truth sometimes had to trump what other people thought.  “Thanks for coming,” he said to him.

Curtis smiled.  “You know you’re welcomed,” he replied.  “Now let’s get you out of them clothes, honey, so I can comfort you right!”

Robby managed to smile, as they made their way into his house.  But another part of him looked back, at the contrail that was Sal’s limousine, with grave concern.