Dom fidgeted, but said nothing.
“My father was furious with my brother for doing that,” Sergei said. “He knew damn well Corrado would kill us all, so he got all of us in the car, and we headed out of town.” Sergei hugged himself, shivering away a chill as that night played over and over in his mind in horrific detail. “We got out on the 103 somewhere. A car blocked us. Then another came up behind us. My father told my brothers to cover me with blankets, had me hide down on the floorboards. They all said no matter what happened, I had to stay there, not move or make a sound.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, icicles forming along his spine.
Dom took his hand, and he kissed it gently but didn’t speak.
“I heard the shouting and the gunshots,” Sergei said. “I heard my mother scream. Then there were squealing tires, and the two cars left. I waited a few minutes, until I was sure they were gone, and got out of the car.”
In almost twenty years, Sergei hadn’t gone a day without thinking about the scene that had awaited him when he’d stepped out of that car. In the milky beams of the station wagon’s headlights, his father and both of his brothers were sprawled on the pavement, writhing and whimpering in pain as enormous pools of blood expanded beside their midsections. Mama was on her knees, holding Vasily’s limp form against her and screaming. Just… screaming.
One by one, right before Sergei’s eyes, his brothers had stilled. Then his father.
And Mama still screamed. Even as she let Vasily down onto the asphalt, her shirt and face and arms covered in blood, she’d screamed.
“Mama?”
“Seryozha?” She’d looked up at him, eyes wide and glittering in the headlights. “Sergei? Are you…” She reached up and frantically ran her bloody fingers all over his face and through his hair. “Are you real, Seryozha?”
“I’m real, Mama.”
She’d thrown her arms around him, and they sat there until almost daylight, both crying, both rocking back and forth in the darkness until another car finally came by. When the driver had gotten out and found them, Mama had screamed and pleaded, “Please don’t hurt my son!”
Then the cops had come, and there’d been a hospital, and social workers, and relatives suddenly sending him to live with relatives. He saw Mama once more—briefly— before his aunt took him away. To his knowledge, that was the last time she’d known who he was.
In the present, he cleared his throat. “I went to live with some family in San Diego. I didn’t have any contact with my mother, and no one would tell me anything, so I ran away when I was fifteen and came back to Cape Swan to find her.” He exhaled hard. “No one’s ever been able to tell me exactly what happened, but what I’ve gathered is that she fell into this horrible depression. She thought I was dead. Overdosed a few times on meds, tried to drink herself to death a few times, and then she just kind of… lost it, I guess. So now she’s in a home, and barely even knows who she is half the time.” His voice wavered a bit as he added, “She doesn’t know who I am.”
“My God,” Dom whispered.
Sergei exhaled, then took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders. “After that, I got my hands on my uncle’s pistol, and I found the men who’d threatened my father to start with. And I shot them.”
Dom blinked. “Wait, you killed them when you were fifteen?”
Sergei nodded. “My cousins had taught me to shoot, and I decided to put that to use. Once I took those assholes down, I realized I could do it, and I decided I was going to kill everyone who’d been involved in what happened to my family.” He met Dom’s gaze. “At first, I didn’t want to take down the entire Mafia.” Sergei laughed dryly. “I mean, I don’t think God Himself could bring them all down and keep them down—another family just pops up to take the last one’s place. But I did realize I couldn’t stop until I’d destroyed the Maisanos and the Cusimanos. And once I saw that the Passantinos were fucked up, I put them on my list too. Whoever comes in to fill the void, well, not much I can do about that. But those three? Done.” Sergei exhaled, shaking his head. “I just don’t know what to do now. If you’re not dead soon, then I will be.”
“Then take the money I gave you,” Dom said. “And get the hell out of this place.”
“I don’t need the money. I actually have a bit of an insurance policy. I’ve got a place out of the country. And money squirreled away in about a dozen offshore accounts.”
Dom nodded. “Go, then. Blow town and get the fuck out of here.”
“Dom.” Sergei exhaled. “I’m in love with you. I want you to stay alive, and I want to stay alive myself, but I didn’t come this far to walk away and leave the Maisanos standing.”
For a long time, Dom didn’t speak. Finally, though, he held Sergei a little tighter and said, “Look, I don’t know what our next move should be. I say we sleep on it for now, and in the morning… we’ll figure something out.”
“Do you think you can sleep?”
“It’s worth trying.”
*