Page 2 of Effortless

It wasn’t his place as only a secondary Capo.

He’d fucking hoped that by twenty-one years old—essentially the same or close to the same age as those guys out on the main warehouse floor—they would have at least tried to make room for him. They didn’t have to like him. He didn’t ask for anything except a little bit of respect and peace to himself.

Tom let out a heavy sigh, and scrubbed a hand down his unshaved jaw. Mostly, he made a conscious effort to rid his mind of the useless feelings. They wouldn’t do him any good.

A few minutes later, Adriano strolled into the office. The older man—and father of three girls—barely acknowledged Tom at all as he ended a phone call.

“Yeah, Lissa, I’ll grab you some Chinese tonight … yeah, that, too. Bye.”

Alessa—or Lissa, to only a select few in Adriano’s family—was Tom’s aunt. His mother’s only sister. Actually, Alessa was his mother’s only living family besides her kids and in-laws.

They didn’t talk a lot about it. Nobody did.

Everybody that grew up in the Chicago Outfit had come to a silent understand over the years that The Chicago War between the four families within the organization had done enough damage. It had taken enough people. There was no reason to pay it lip service, too.

“You look like shit,” Adriano said.

The guy didn’t even look at Tom when he said it. Tall, broad-shouldered, and built in a way that spoke of his football years, Adriano Conti was not a man to be messed with. He also didn’t indulge whine-fests from any-fucking-body.

Tom included.

“It’s nothing,” Tom said.

“You sure?”

“You wanted me to handle something today, didn’t you? Here I am. Let’s get to that, Adriano.”

“No uncle for me today?”

Tom scoffed “Like that would help my fucking case, right.”

Adriano lifted a brow, and then his gaze drifted to the closed door. “The guys were quiet when I came in.”

“As they should be for their Capo.”

“But not for you.”

Tom clenched his teeth in an effort to stay quiet. All it did was make his jaw tight, and his uncle didn’t miss it.

“Just … don’t bother,” Tom told him with a subtle shake of his head. “It’s like high school with those idiots out there. People all say the same things to me about it. Ignore them. Don’t let them bother you. If somebody says something to them, it only makes it worse.”

“You’re usually better at brushing them off, Tom.”

He didn’t need Adriano pointing that out to him. He was quite aware that his irritation levels were climbing higher by the day.

It brought him back to his biggest enemies.

Boredom.

Patience.

Tom didn’t know what he was bored with—work, Chicago, the same old shit every day, or what. He didn’t know what would fix his boredom. It should have been simple. If he wanted something, he went out and got it. He just didn’t know what it was he wanted.

His lack of give-a-damn was seriously starting to mess with his patience, though. It showed every single time he had to force himself not to put his fist through one of those idiots’ heads.

Tom’s father had the patience of a saint.

His mother? An angel.