Chapter Text
Tony woke up in the semi-dark and took a moment to get his bearings. A quick look around confirmed that he was still in the private hospital room, and a gentle shift of his leg proved that he was still shackled to the bed. The burn in his side had been healing nicely, according to his doctor, and his concussion was mild; a product of his head hitting the step when the taser dropped him. He had dealt with the worst of the side effects and the regular checks in the first two days, and was now simply recovering. Fortunately, his status as a prisoner had kept everyone out of his room during that period, save for the nurses and Mama, so he hadn't needed to pretend much while his head tried to split open.
Though Mama had rapped him on his knuckles and told him that if he taught his sisters any of the curse words he favored when hurt she'd make him sorry.
He'd known he was going to get in trouble for that habit. Of course, he also wasn't intending to get beaten and concussed near his sisters any time soon, so it hopefully wouldn't be an issue. Today, if Tony's reckoning was right, the Family lawyers would be coming in to question him. Mama had already contacted Russ Giudice back home, and had also passed the word from Dimitri Todorov Senior that Boris Abramov would be coming for him. Todorov had been extremely put out that he had been barred from Antonio's room, but according to Mama, Tony's neighbor girls had commiserated with him in the hall, as they too were kept out. Mama was the only one who had gotten inside, and only for a few minutes a day. Tony had no idea what she had said to either the doctors or the guards to get in, but he had no intention of questioning it too hard.
But today, the doctor would declare him 'in his right mind', so the lawyers and the cops would descend. Tony had a vague memory of speaking to an officer the first night to give a statement. He had been in pain, the ambulance ride irritating both his aural and light sensitivities, on painkillers, trying to pretend he was loopy from them, and also trying to keep track of what information went to who. He was deep in Tonio at that point, and even now had only vague memories of what he had told the cops. He had enough faith in Max to know that whoever was sent could be trusted, but no idea what they had gained from the exercise.
Today would be different, Tony knew. He just hoped that someone would be in to see him before the lawyers and baby detectives, to tell him how much, exactly, Doyle had told Michail about his real identity, and what angle they were taking with this whole thing.
Tony wasn't surprised when, about fifteen minutes later, the night nurse came in to check on him. "You're awake?" she asked, quietly. Tony wasn't sure who she was keeping quiet for, but he nodded.
"Yeah."
"Are you feeling up to a little conversation?" she asked.
Crap. This could be a good thing — Max finally getting him up to speed — or a bad thing — Todorov getting to him first — and Tony had no way to judge which was which. He stared at the nurse, as though he could figure it out from reading something in her expression. To his shock, it seemed to work, as she suddenly started.
"Oh, I screwed it up." the nurse bit her lip. She clearly had no experience in this kind of covert action. "He said 'conversation and pie.' Are you feeling up to a little conversation and pie?"
Tony felt himself relax into the scratchy pillows as he sighed. Max. Only Max would offer him pie. "Yeah, I'm up for a brief conversation and some pie," he replied softly.
The nurse finished checking his IV and then patted his leg on the way out. Early concussed Tony had been a charmer, flirting with everyone as usual. The two night nurses got less of the brunt of that, but it was enough for them to still treat him much better than he imagined most prisoner patients were.
A few minutes after she left, a man in similar scrubs entered, and Tony had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. "Turquoise is not your color, Max," he whispered, once he could breathe without giggling.
"Laugh it up," Max shot back with a grimace for the bright scrubs he'd been forced to wear. "You keep that up and I'll eat this all myself," he gestured at the small messenger bag on his shoulder.
"You actually brought me pie?" Tony squirmed into a more upright position. "I thought that was just the code."
"House double chocolate, fresh from Estelle's," Max confirmed, plunking the bag down on Tony's legs and then pulling out a plastic fork and a small Styrofoam container.
"Gimmie!" Tony said softly, making grabby motions with his fingers. He hadn't had real food — let alone sugary goodness — since before his kidnapping. He was starting to go into chocolate withdrawal.
Smirking, Max handed him the fork and pie and then pulled his notepad out of the bag. "Okay, first things first," he said, flipping through it. "Your first interview was a mess, but it sounded like the Doyle's didn't know who you really were?"
Tony shook his head around the mouthful of utter bliss he was enjoying. "Yes and no. The one in jail, Glen, told them that the DiNozzo who arrested them had hooked up with Michail's brother, and was presumably a dirty cop. They came after me to convince me to recant and get him out of jail. They had no idea how important I was to Dimitri, or about any of my Macaluso connections. It was pretty easy to convince them it was a case of mistaken identity, and I called in a favor with Keith Ryan to let them know just how scared they should be. They were releasing me when Dimitri snuck in."
"That explains a lot of your concussed muttering," Max said, still smirking. "Glen Doyle was in solitary and we got him talking. He basically told his brothers what they told you. If we believe him — and our interview with Michail backs this up — then all he told Michail was that he hated you and wanted to make you pay for putting him in jail. Michail recognized him as Irish mob and thought he meant through some beef with the Macalusos. Basically he convinced Michail that you were the source of his woes: he never would have been arrested before you hooked up with Dimitri, you weren't really part of the family because you weren't Russian, how could Dimitri trust you over him, etc."
Tony stared at him in disbelief.
"Yeah, I know. None of it makes any sense, because you've been together for three years, and as far as he knows things only went bad the last few months, but I got the impression that Michail is unhappy with daddy for letting him stay in jail. He's trying to make a name for himself as a prison kingpin, and hitting you on the outside was his first big play. It's about as brash and ill-conceived as we might expect from him, and it's just bad luck that he ran into Doyle, who had an axe to grind with you."
"With DiNozzo," Tony pointed out. It didn't matter how crazy Michail's plan was if they couldn't explain Doyle's reasoning.
"We took care of that already," Max assured him. "DiNozzo's photos on file in Baltimore and Peoria got facelifts, and when he left Maryland he went down to Houston, Texas, to work for Lieutenant Charles — who'd love to catch up with you once you're free, by the way."
"Aww, he finally got away from the snow," Tony teased, easily remembering Charles from Philadelphia, and the man's almost pathological frustration with cold, Northeastern winters.
"That he did," Max laughed back.
"But it still falls apart if Doyle testifies, doesn't it?" Tony sobered up.
Max frowned, his gaze shooting down to Tony's toes. "That won't be an issue," he said tightly.
"Max?" Tony prodded.
"Drop it for now," Max said.
Tony crossed his arms and stared him down. He had never done well with limited information. They had established that long ago, back in Philly when Tony had almost revealed a second undercover officer because they thought he couldn't handle the secret and kept him in the dark, while he thought the man's suspicious actions were because he worked for a rival Family.
"We had him in solitary, under lock-down," Max scowled. "And somehow, during his required half-hour in the yard yesterday, there was a 'mix up' and another prisoner was allowed into the same court. Zitto Gallo."
"Oh." Tony didn't need to ask anything further. Zitto Gallo — the silent rooster — was one of Macaluso's most brutal enforcers. They had put him away during the Philly bust only because he was caught in the act. He never betrayed his employer, because an accident as a child had damaged his vocal cords and rendered him mute. They'd sent him to Maryland when they'd incarcerated Mike, purely to separate them. If Gallo had gone after Doyle, then Tony knew without a shadow of a doubt that a) Mike had arranged it, and b) Doyle was now dead. Hell, the entirety of Maryland Correctional would know those two truths by the end of the day, and most of the criminal population of the Eastern Seaboard would be aware by the end of the week.
"Fuck," Tony mumbled, rubbing his hand over his eyes. He had mostly come to terms with the other two Doyle men dying because they had kidnapped him. He was not prepared to deal with Glen Doyle being taken out on his behalf.
"I know you'll need time to wrap your head around that," Max soothed, managing not to voice his 'I told you so' for trying to hold the information back, "but in the meantime just know that there's no one left to contradict you and Michail. Michail thinks this is about a Macaluso family issue, and Mike sending Gallo after Doyle reinforces that idea. So, you spoke to them the most: how do you want to play this?"
Tony viciously scrubbed his hand over his face and then let it trail through his hair. "Okay, I had to call in Ryan — I told you that, right?" Max nodded, so Tony continued. "Since I've been in DC, I've done business with him a few times on Mike's behalf." He was not calling him Papa right now — not when he'd had a man killed in cold blood. "I think he got the impression that the Doyles were freelancing. If Glen had reached out to Mike before he went to jail, and Mike had rejected him for aiming above his station, then that would give him an axe to grind with our family. He got arrested, and it had nothing to do with us, but in his twisted head, he associated the rejection and the arrest and decided that we'd set him up, though he's too small of a fish for us to care about. He again aimed above his station by arranging for my kidnapping for some insane reason."
"We think the kidnapping came in part from Michail," Max corrected.
"What?" Tony stared blankly at him. That made no sense.
"The place you were held? It was a Bratva restaurant before it went under. Doyle only could have found out about it from Michail. He knew that if Dimitri and the others figured out who the Doyles were, they'd be looking in Irish territory. Keeping you there was basically hiding you in Dimitri's own backyard."
"And my family would assume that the Todorovs were behind it, if they found me first," Tony realized. "Was he trying to start a war between the Families? Fuck!"
"He might have been," Max admitted. "We've always known that he was hotheaded and impulsive, but arrogant. He might very well think that starting a three-way Family war outside while he sits cozy behind bars is a brilliant plan."
"I doubt he feels so cozy now," Tony growled, thinking of Zitto Gallo.
"I think it had escaped his notice that your father has even more contacts than he does, and not just in Pennsylvania," Max agreed, his mind clearly having gone to the same place.
"Okay, Todorov Senior is going to be here later today," Tony said, trying to drag them back on track. "What do I tell him the Doyle brothers told me? Do we implicate Michail or not?"
Max leaned back and tapped his chin. "I think our best bet is to point him in that direction while you can still claim ignorance. You don't know that Doyle is dead, officially, so as far as you know he can back up whatever his brothers told you."
"Plausible believably," Tony nodded. "I think I have a witness, so I have no reason to lie. And I'm fond of his family, so I don't want Michail to cause trouble for them. I don't know where I was held, though, unless they bragged about it?"
"I don't think you did. Let him make that leap himself," Max decided.
"So which one masterminded it?" Tony pressed. "Or were they working together?"
"Hmmm," Max considered that. "Set Doyle up as a wannabe kingpin? Looking to make his own alliances? It fits with what he might have tried with Mike, though if he was that serious, why wouldn't Mike have mentioned him to the O'Connells before now?"
"Mike would have known he was blowing smoke, and didn't take him seriously," Tony said quickly. "Anyone who did take him seriously enough to try to turn on his leader would be too stupid to maintain his position, in Papa's eyes."
"Which I'm sure you can imply about Michail," Max grinned.
"I'm sure," Tony agreed. "I know this has shifted all our timetables out of whack again," he decided to approach the elephant in the room. "Are we going to run with it for the grande finale now?"
"We are," Max nodded, then looked seriously at Tony. "But we've got two ways to play this, and we've got to make some decisions about which path to take."
Despite his concussion and the stressful few days he'd had, Tony was not stupid. "You have to decide whether to lock up Dimitri, or convince Senior to fall on his sword for him to keep at least one of his sons out of jail," he said quietly.
"We do," Max nodded. "And I want to know if you want to be a part of those discussions, or if you want them to happen over your head."
Tony slumped back against his pillows, closing his eyes so he wouldn't see Max's reactions. "I'm not going to ask you to keep Dimitri out of jail for me," he said quietly. "I couldn't stay with him even if you did."
"When we made the original plans to lock Senior up, you had a script for that," Max said.
"He needs to make an heir, now that he's in charge. I can't give him that. Plus trouble seems to follow me. Maybe I'm just destined to be alone. Be free without me," Tony recited by rote without opening his eyes.
"But if we arrest Dimitri instead…"
"I don't have to go through with all that; I know." Tony said tiredly. "Much easier to break up with his father than with him."
Max sat silently, letting Tony struggle through his emotions. On the one hand, arresting Dimitri had always been one of their goals. If Tony had done his job properly, and hadn't actually fallen in love with him, then it wouldn't matter. He was a police officer, and it was his job to put criminals behind bars. Dimitri was a criminal — he'd murdered two people in cold blood right in front of Tony less than a week ago! Ergo, he belonged in jail, and it was Tony's job to put him there. Tony's own feelings on the matter were irrelevant, and he shouldn't be having them anyways. In the long run, it came down to who was the more useful to the Family.
Dimitri was young, virile, and had a head for both sides of the business. He would do well in his father's absence, and keep the family business running firmly. The loss of Senior would have an impact, but he would eventually pick up the nuances after a year or two and keep everything on an even keel. Someday, he would become the focus of another undercover operative, as the police tried yet again to chase the Bratva out of the District. And someday he would end up in jail anyways — or dead.
On the other hand, they could change the plan, and instead of letting Senior take the fall, arrest Dimitri. If he was in the same prison as Michail, there would be a bit of a power struggle, but they would eventually consolidate their grasp. On the outside, Senior would continue on as usual, but he would be facing a tough choice about an heir. Depending on Dimitri's sentence, he might decide to wait. Or he might decide it was time to bring Katya into the fold. Either way, he would be on his own way out in another twenty years or so. At that point, if both boys were still in jail, there would be a bit of a power vacuum. The Bratva would be unstable for a while, and Metro could capitalize on that.
There was a third option, however, and one that Tony both did and did not want to think about. If they let Senior take the fall, he could choose to stay with Dimitri. Tonio could cling to him and comfort him in his time of need. Tonio could assure his lover that he would never desert him, and that the sacrifice his family had made on his behalf was worth something. Tonio could continue the undercover operation, waiting until Dimitri slipped up again, without his father to step in and take the heat. Tony could take down the entire Bratva hierarchy. But in the meantime, he could keep his lover.
Fuck! Tony couldn't afford to go down that path. He couldn't hope to keep his morals and his heart from breaking. That he had managed it the first time was some kind of miracle that he was quite sure he still didn't deserve. There was no chance that he could do it a second time. Tony tried to think it through logically.
They wanted to keep the DiMarco alias open at the end of this all. If he stayed with Dimitri and then later put him in jail, DiMarco would either have to step in and lead the Bratva — which Tony would never do — or let it fall. At that point, either his cover would be blown, or it would appear that he had been a long-term plant from Mike, determined to bring them down from the inside. It could mean a new generation of war between the Italian and Russian families. In the long run, it could lead to a lot more violence and bloodshed. And while it might eventually decimate the Families to a point that made the police happy, the collateral damage in the meantime wasn't something Tony thought he could live with.
As nice a dream as it might be, Tony had to be a realist, or the next thing he knew, he'd be dreaming that Dimitri might reform, and they could live together in morally uncomplicated bliss forever. Tony had to be stronger than that.
If he asked them to spare Dimitri now, he was only asking for more heartache. Better to spare them both from making the hard decisions. Dimitri was already going to feel betrayed by his brother; better he not feel betrayed by Tonio too. And there were those who were at more danger from him than his father, like Cassie undercover, and Gibbs — Gibbs was a good excuse. Gibbs was a good reason to make the choices that Tony didn't want to have to make.
"Gibbs," Tony said quietly. "If we send Senior to prison in Dimitri's place, then Gibbs and his NCIS cohorts are still in danger. If we send Dimitri to prison, Senior is likely to ignore them, provided they don't get in the way of his drug operation again."
Max stared at him for several minutes, and Tony didn't want to imagine how closely his internal monologue might be echoing Tony's from before. Finally, Max sighed. "If that's the reasoning you want to use…" he said, sounding far too knowledgeable for Tony's comfort.
"It tips the scales," Tony said firmly. "All other things being equal, we can pro and con the merits of who to charge, but whether we pick Senior or Junior, things are going to work out pretty near even. NCIS tips the scales. If Dimitri is free, and he's already been denied the chance to finish off the Doyles, he'll go after anyone else on his shit list. Especially anyone who hurt me. That's Gibbs and his two agents. And if he decides to take it a step further and declare a feud on NCIS as a whole, or the Marines because Gibbs was one, or whatever, you're looking at a lot more innocent casualties. Senior doesn't have the axe to grind with them, so he'll go back to business as usual."
"Alright," Max accepted his reasoning, though his tone made it clear that Tony was not done sharing his feelings on this matter. "Those are good points, and I'm sure the DA will agree. We'll play it that way."
Tony nodded, but didn't reply. He didn't have a lot else he wanted to say at the moment. Max stared for a few minutes more, then gathered his notebook and Tony's trash into his bag. With a fond pat and a squeeze to Tony's shin, he let himself back out of the room. Tony closed his eyes against the dim glow from the nurses' night light and the false dawn out the window, and tried to take deep, meditative breaths.
He had to get back into Tonio's headspace, but right now he couldn't do it without mourning his relationship with Dimitri. God, he wished Max had waited and had this conversation after he had met with Todorov and the lawyers! He needed his best Tonio today, not a heartbroken one! Though his eyes were closed, Tony again scrubbed his hand across them and then through his hair. He knew it would be spiked up crazily, but without Dimitri there to tease him about it, he didn't care. He had to get his head on straight, and he had maybe as little as an hour to do it. He had to be Tonio; wounded, confused, even mad and betrayed, but not heartbroken and grieving. He had to be perfect.
Tony sighed and sunk deeply into himself, searching for the strength he needed to pull this off.
oOo
The next night, after a long day with the lawyers, Max snuck back into Tony's hospital room. Alessia had gone to her hotel room to get some sleep, and Max had hinted at Judy to take a walk around the floor while he checked in with Tony. Max was officially on the list of night nurses now, so that he could come in and out with no one the wiser.
He had just closed the door when Tony quietly joked, "that color hasn't gotten better on you, you know?"
"Yuck it up," Max threatened without heat. "Would you rather Joe was the one in here, holding your hand?"
Tony scowled and stuck his tongue out as though he had tasted something rotten; he and Joe had completely opposite senses of humor and did not seem to understand each other at all. "That's what I thought," Max chuckled.
He settled down beside Tony and handed him a candy bar and a bottle of soda that he had smuggled in. Then Max pulled out his laptop to get to work. "I need your full report from your last check in," he prompted.
Tony took a deep gulp of his soda, then started in on his report, falling into the familiar camaraderie they had always shared when doing this. At least this time Tony's arm wasn't in a sling, Max thought gratefully.
"You know we talked about having kids?" Tony said abruptly, breaking the companionable silence as Max finished his medical report.
"You did?"
"Yeah. I didn't need to have any, to carry on the family name, cause I was adopted anyway, you know? The girls would need to have kids and give them the Macaluso name, so it didn't matter if I was gay. But for him, it was a big deal. He'd talked to his dad years ago, when he came out, and apparently Senior made him a deal that if he felt that deeply about it, he could marry a man, and have a baby with a woman on the side — a mistress, basically. Unless Michail had already had two sons at that point. But if anything happened to Michail, then he'd need to get with the baby making."
"I guess a little while after we started… Dimitri went to his dad and said he needed to change the deal. Said he'd use a surrogate with whatever woman his dad picked to offer the eggs, but he wouldn't take her as a mistress. He didn't want to do that to me. He loved me too much. So we talked about having a couple of kids, and the pros and cons of raising them in the life or out of it like Katya."
"Because that's the kind of fucked up conversations you have when you're two gay male first-born heirs in a hierarchical society. You talk about surrogates, and giving them hyphenated last names, and about whether they'd learn Italian after Russian or at the same time!" Tony all but shouted the last, and then suddenly he flung his pillow across the room.
Max almost dropped his laptop in his haste to put it down, but he ignored it in favor of Tony, who was curled up in a ball on the bed, crying silently into his pillow. Max still didn't know much about his partner's younger years, but he knew that the ability to cry that silently was neither a good sign, nor something that one picked up as an adult. But, having raised three kids of his own, Max knew the correct response, which was to slip from his chair onto the edge of the bed, and gently tug Tony until he was curled into Max's side. Then he quietly stroked his hand through his hair and down his neck.
He had suspected — no, he had known — that this would break Tony: losing Dimitri. He had known it, to a certain extent, before they'd even sent Tony undercover with the Todorovs. And he'd done it anyway, because he believed that taking that family down was the right thing to do, and that Tony was the right man to do it. And he'd been right, on both counts. But that didn't make this moment any easier for either of them.
Finally, quietly, Tony whispered into his leg, "I can't do this anymore."
"Go undercover? Be a cop? Be a Macaluso? What?" Max prodded.
"Any of it," Tony said softly. "It didn't even hurt this badly when Wendy—"
Max knew that was the name of his almost fiance from Baltimore, and he wasn't surprised to hear that. From what he knew, they'd been together about six months, and the proposal had been more about what he should do than how Tony felt. But he and Dimitri had been together for three years, and the passion and love between them had been obvious even to Max. Not for the first time he wished they could have sent Tony in to fall in love with someone who he wasn't expected to put in jail at the end.
"I'm just so tired," Tony finally mumbled.
"It sounds like you need a break, kid," Max suggested, continuing to run his fingers through Tony's hair. He let his voice take on the quiet, lilting quality that had always knocked his kids out. "A real vacation; that's what you need. Somewhere warm and sunny and beautiful. Somewhere with sandy beaches, and crashing waves, beautiful flowers, shady greenery. Somewhere that you can relax. As soon as this op is over, you'll take a vacation there," he promised. Thankfully, Tony drifted off before Max had to figure out how to keep that promise.
oOo
In the end, everything went exactly according to plan. Tony thought it was strangely ironic, following several months of blown ops, scrambling, and hasty substitutions. But now, as they reached the finish line, no Wolverines showed up with a blitz in the back, and they sailed smoothly into the end zone.
Tony thought he might have been spending a little too much time as Tonio, recently, if his sports metaphors had gotten that bad.
Still, the end of the operation was about as smooth as they could have hoped. The evidence against Dimitri was rock solid on the Doyle case: his knife and gun, both with his fingerprints on them, cordite on his hand, blood spatter lines matching, and his bodyguards at the scene, beginning cleanup, at his command. The blood spatter had exonerated Tony, placing him in the chair and still bound by his feet for both murders. Not to mention his injuries, which easily told the story of his restraint. The DA didn't even try to pin a conspiracy charge on him after seeing his bruises and the tape of his abduction, and that was without knowing that he was an undercover cop.
Tonio had kept his mouth clamped shut in front of the police, but had told the lawyers and Todorov Senior the entire story: including the Doyle boys' arrogance and incompetence in trying to work around their Clan. Tonio had phrased his confusion very carefully, as he related what the Doyles had told him, but it was clear that Michail was involved somehow.
Despite Tonio's refusal to comply with the investigation, the police had a rock solid case against Dimitri, and the same two officers spoke to him, his father, and the lawyers. They offered to knock the two Murder One charges down to a single of Manslaughter if he did the maximum 30 years. It was better than life in prison, and once again the family took the deal. Dimitri would be his father's age when he got out — if he got out.
Like his brother, Dimitri wasn't allowed out on bail, so he and Tonio were forced to have their final meeting in the prison visitors' room. It wasn't as romantic or satisfying as either might have wished, though the guard had been bribed to keep from interrupting their kiss. Dimitri made Tonio promise to look for love again someday, while Tonio countered that he was cursed and doomed to be alone forever. Their final kiss almost made Tony want to change his mind and go with option three, but it was far too late for that.
Tonio and Todorov Senior parted on good terms as well, though that was one of the parts that worried Max the most. Senior seemed to have no idea that Tonio was anything but what he said, and his grief was real enough. It was a short trip, where Tonio gathered up a few things he had left in Dimitri's suite, and returned those that had been left in his apartment. There were a few bits of business, like Tony leaving instructions for resetting the passwords on their security system — he still had his secret backdoor access, but it would look suspicious if he continued to openly access their security. Tonio had even printed some photos of the family on his printer and handed them over. Then, with a promise of assistance if he needed it, and a vow to meet Katya for lunch every few months, Tonio left the Bratva family compound for what he hoped was the last time.
For Tony, however, this operation was ending strangely. Instead of holing up at Max's until the DA had crossed every T and dotted every I, then sneaking out of town and into a new precinct, like before, Tony still had responsibilities. The Bratva task force was scaling back operations, but not shuttering completely, as Senior was still out there. That affected Max more than Tony, but the latter was still recording all of the information he could think of and hadn't yet had the need or time to go over.
More importantly, though Tony DiNozzo's job was done, Antonio DiMarco's job wasn't. He still had responsibilities to the Macaluso family to carry out, so he couldn't just drop out of sight to his handler's guest room. He went back to his apartment, where the girls were also staying until the end of the semester, and engaged in his usual heartbreak coping strategies. The only problem was that those usually involved throwing himself into work, and he couldn't do that right now.
oOo
Finally, Tony found himself back on Max's couch for a quick weekend to decompress before he was expected back home in Philly for a month. "At least one good thing about working undercover: I have literally all of my vacation and sick days saved up," Tony joked as he dug into his pizza with relish.
"Unfortunately, so do I," Max teased right back. Things had certainly been less hairy this time around, compared to Philly, but he still hadn't felt comfortable taking more than a long weekend off while Tony was so deep undercover.
"Well, Betty's off all summer, you gonna take a month away, too?" Tony asked.
"Not all at once," Max admitted, "but we'll probably take two weeks. Joe, Juan, and Laurie are due time too, so we'll probably switch out; make sure at least two of us are at home to keep an eye on things."
Officially, Tony wasn't on the task force, so it wasn't his place to ask what they were doing now. And part of him didn't want to know; hearing those familiar names was a brand of torture he didn't feel like engaging in today. "Where's Betty dragging you?" he asked instead.
"One of those Mediterranean cruises," Max said with feigned grumpiness.
"Well that'll be a different use of your Italian skills," Tony teased.
"Maybe your Nona can give us a tour," Max shot back.
Tony barely flinched before reaching for another slice of pizza, but Max knew him too well. "Ah hell, sorry kid."
"You're fine," Tony assured him, before taking a bite large enough that he couldn't talk around it.
"You gonna see any of the extended family in Philly, or just your folks and sisters?" Max asked cautiously. They had tried to avoid the duality of Tony's position as much as possible, but with the operation ending, it had become the elephant in the room.
Tony finished chewing and then sighed. "It depends on what I want to do with my life."
There was a veritable minefield surrounding that comment, but Max waded in. "Midlife crisis? Aren't you a little young for that?"
Tony snorted. "You'd think."
"Well, what are your options? I know you finished that computer degree already…" Tony had gone with a Masters in Computer Science, instead of a PhD, so it had only taken him eighteen months to complete, instead of the original four years.
"The big one is actually tied to you," Tony admitted. "As in, I don't trust anyone else to be my handler for this kind of thing and understand all the nuances of my situation with Papa. So are we going to sail off to the next port of call, bringing Typhoid Tonio along to sink whoever's boat we dock at, or do we retire him from a life of undercover work? If you chose the former, then you'd probably go ahead and do the set up, while I stay here and wrap up Tonio's work with Esposito. Then when you're ready for me, Papa would send me off to ply the family trade wherever you were. If not, then Tony needs to find a job that he can live with, while Tonio decides how involved he's going to be in the family side hustle."
Well, there was a lot to unpack there — more than just the question of whether Tony was going to go undercover again. The disgust with which he spoke his own name spoke volumes, and no matter what else they decided, Max knew that he couldn't send Tony in deep undercover again. It had been risky sending him in to seduce Dimitri, and Max had known that from the start. Now even making friends with people under false pretenses risked shaking Tony's foundations. He couldn't work deep cover, but Max didn't think he could be a regular cop again either. And worse, Tony seemed to realize it too. "What kinds of jobs would Tony want to do?" he asked cautiously.
That prompted a large sigh. "I still want to help people," he admitted, "but I can't do it the same way I have been. I don't— I barely even know how to be a regular cop anymore, you know? Back before… all this… I thought maybe a federal agent. Join the FBI or something. I'm a little too old to run away and join the Army, not that I'd have a clue how to explain my past to them, you know. I suppose I could teach: I've got all these fancy degrees now. I toyed with the idea of teaching at the academy too, but I'm afraid that would be a little too high profile…" Tony leaned forward to snag another slice from the box and then collapsed back sideways against the arm of the couch. "No matter what I think of, I've got this voice in the back of my head saying 'but Tonio would never do something like that. How would you explain that to Katya and Nona and Coletta?' They're inherently at odds with each other…" he trailed off, staring at a distant spot on the wall and half-heartedly nibbling on his pizza.
It was Max's turn to sigh as he turned over the problem in his mind. Finally, he ventured, "It's true that when you say you want to help people, most of the time that means on the front lines, or as a first responder. I know it wouldn't make sense for you to go into medicine, either," he added as Tony's nose wrinkled at the thought. After how many concussions he'd had, he was beginning to develop a bit of an aversion to hospitals. "But I think teaching is a good way to help that isn't completely incompatible with the other aspects of your life. Not that I can see you surrounded by children, like my Betty—" Tony snorted again at the thought. "But college students? If Tonio wasn't so clueless about sports, coaching would be a great way to give back to the community, and not incompatible with Tonio. Coletta's old enough to play some kind of sport, isn't she?" he prodded.
"Field hockey at school, and she still plays league soccer," Tony replied, almost on autopilot. "Ilaria does soccer too, but Valentina likes gymnastics and dance."
And I'm sure that all three of them would love it if their big brother helped coach their team," Max said.
"Yes, but as you just pointed out, Tonio doesn't play sports! He doesn't have a kinesiology degree!" Tony shot back hotly. "He's fucking useless in that instance!"
Most people who coach their child or sibling in a sport don't have a degree in it," Max pointed out gently. "They go into it enthusiastically but cluelessly. You don't have to be an expert to spend time with them and also give back to the community. That said, you are perfectly able to teach about your computers, and I'd imagine psychology or criminology at the high school or junior college level. If you wanted to help people, that would also be a good plan."
Tony rolled his eyes, but didn't protest, so Max decided to try a different tack. "Put yourself into Tonio's mind for a minute. The family man, the criminal, the one with the broken heart, the intelligence, the bravery… be Tonio."
He watched Tony sink into the other mindset, his body language shifting as he literally became the other man. When he opened his eyes again, they were sharp, wary, and he eyed Max with masked suspicion. "Now what?" he all but purred. Tonio's voice was always teasing, coy, or seductive, when he wasn't furious or bored — and even sometimes when he was.
"Tonio, you want to help your family but also your community. How would you do that?" Max asked bluntly. "You know money and time are not objects to your family."
"I want to move back home," Tonio replied promptly. "The girls are getting older, and without Papa at home, I worry about them."
"Okay, so you're talking about returning to Philly. What could you do there to help people?" Max prodded. "Or, if you used your wonderful computer skills, what could you do elsewhere that would be based there?"
Tonio frowned, and Max saw Tony pushing at the edges.
"Tonio, you're in a lucky position, being adopted by Mike and Alessia. What could someone have done to help you before then?"
Tony's eyes widened and like a switch was thrown, the detective was back. "I survived by getting a scholarship to OSU. Lots of kids don't have that chance," he said quietly, but intently. "The Families always say they're helping the communities, but what if we actually did? More education opportunities, scholarships… things to give kids a better life that don't require obedience to La Famiglia afterwards. No strings community improvement."
"I think that would require someone with experience in computers, psychology, criminal justice, and maybe even sports and health, don't you?" Max asked, doing his best to suppress his smugness. "If only there was someone the community would accept who had that exact background?"
"I don't know how Betty puts up with you," Tony huffed, but he leaned forward and snagged a bag of MnMs, ripping it open and cheerfully guzzling them all. And with that sign, Max knew that Tony would be okay.