Running the Captain

Frankie Rinaldo is going to get out of this neighborhood if she has to work every closing shift her uncle Gio offers. She has a plan, a GPA, and no patience for boys who think a jacket and a corner booth makes them a king. Then Vito Moretti's father is shot, and Vito — who has been buying the same slice from her counter since he was twelve — becomes the captain of a crew he never asked for. He asks her for a favor. She says no. He asks again. She says yes. The deliveries become a habit. The habit becomes something neither of them names. And then his father comes home, and the life Frankie and Vito have been quietly imagining is suddenly in the way of the family he was born into. A high school capo romance about a girl who isn't going to beg, and a boy who has to learn to ask.