He clicks around on the laptop for a second, searching for something. Then a video begins to play.
Gianni is tied to a chair in the middle of an empty room. His eyes are closed. His head lolls to one side. His face is bruised and bloody. More blood stains the front of his white dress shirt and the floor beneath the chair.
I lift my hand to my mouth, inhaling sharply.
Declan says, “I won’t show you the worst of it. Alessandro sent this over after he told me about the vote.”
A man walks into the frame. It’s Massimo, smoking a cigarette as he circles Gianni. He says, “So you stole money from us. Your own family.”
Gianni mumbles something incoherent. Massimo kicks the chair, and Gianni jumps.
“Yes. I did. But you have to believe me, I—”
Massimo kicks the chair again. Gianni falls silent.
“Don’t bother with excuses. We know about the money. We know about the stolen product. We know about the bribes you paid to try to keep everybody’s mouth shut. But somebody always talks, Gianni. You should know that by now. Somebody always talks.”
Massimo paces, shaking his head in disbelief. “And your own daughter? Ma dai! You set up your own daughter to get kidnapped? That’s just fucking sick. Who does that? I’ll tell you who. A big piece of shit.”
He kicks the chair again. Gianni moans, babbling apologies. Then Massimo looks right into the camera.
“Hey, shitbag. Tell your sister what you had in mind for her, eh? Tell her how you were gonna let a bunch of cowboys mess around with her before they slit her throat. How you promised them they could use her.”
A low, dangerous rumble goes through Quinn’s chest, but other than a deep sense of unreality, I feel nothing at all.
Massimo turns away from the camera, smoking and circling again. “We got that driver, by the way. Made him talk same way we did you. Mannaggia a te! Hope you didn’t pay them too much money. What a fucked up job that was. Ah, well. Any last words?”
From beneath his jacket, Massimo pulls out a pistol.
Gianni starts shrieking. “My daughter ran away with a Mexican! She’s useless! Nobody cares what happens to her! And my sister’s a bloodthirsty whore!”
I say softly, “Oh, Gianni. You always were a sad little prick.”
I reach over and stop the video. It cuts off just as Massimo is raising his gun.
I sit with my eyes closed for a while, listening to the silence in the room and thinking of my brother. Trying to remember a time when we were close.
The memory doesn’t come. Gianni and I were related by blood, but no other ties of friendship or love ever bound us.
As with Enzo, I was nothing more to him than a thing to be used for personal gain.
I feel Quinn’s touch on my arm and open my eyes.
He murmurs, “You okay?”
I’m not sure how to answer that, so I don’t. I look at Declan instead.
“My mother?”
“She’s on a plane home to New York.”
I nod, thinking. “So the bottom line, if I understand it correctly, is that my brother betrayed the Cosa Nostra and his own blood and was shot because of it.”
“Aye.”
I nod again. “And there was a vote for the new capo this morning.”
“Aye.”
“And you’re asking me to believe a male-dominated institution hundreds of years old just decided out of the blue they should have a woman as their leader for the first time.”
“The vote was split. Not everyone was on board.”
“Let me guess. Massimo.”
Declan lifts a shoulder. “Some lads still aren’t living in the twenty-first century.”
“Why didn’t they just elect someone else? Alessandro, for instance?”
“They can explain better themselves, lass, but you’re the one who stood up in front of four hundred witnesses and God himself and vowed to love and obey this nutty bugger here so you could save your niece from getting shot. You’re the one who also spared Juan Pablo from getting shot, and guess whose uncle Alvaro now only wants to make an accord with the woman who saved his dear nephew’s life?”
My lips curve upward. “That would be me, I take it.”
“That would be you.” His voice grows quieter. “You’re also the lass who withstood fourteen years of brutality without complaint—”
“As if anyone would have listened.”
“—and managed to pull the wool over every law enforcement official’s eyes when she surgically disposed of her abuser.”
I say automatically, “I didn’t kill my husband.”
Declan smiles. “And is a mighty fine liar, to boot. Why wouldn’t they want you in charge?”
“Oh, I don’t know. My vagina?”
He chuckles at that. “I did tell them I wouldn’t renew the contract with anyone else, so there’s that.”
My feeling of unreality grows bigger. I’m disconnected from my body, as if I’m seeing this all unfold from somewhere overhead. “But I haven’t signed the contract. Gianni did.”
Quinn and Declan just sit there and look at me.
“And you knew when I walked into this room that Gianni was dead. You only gave me the concession about Stavros and told me to send over the other changes because you already knew I’d been named capo. You even knew back at that meeting at the warehouse with Alessandro and the others that they were testing my loyalties. You knew the night we came for supper that the woman who agreed to marry this man next to me was a potential candidate for the most powerful position in the Cosa Nostra. You’ve known an awful lot all along, Mr. O’Donnell.”
He says evenly, “You can’t blame a leopard for its spots, lass.”
“Or a tiger for its stripes.”
Quinn’s tension is rising again. Even without breaking Declan’s gaze, I can feel him growing more agitated, and I know the reason why.
He just realized that if I’m capo, there’s no need for me to legally marry him at all.
We don’t need a marriage license to make the contract valid. If I’m the head of the Caruso crime family now, I’m free to negotiate my own contracts without selling my body as an asset to anyone.
I’m free to walk away from this non-marriage and still get everything I want.
I’m just…free.
I look at Quinn. He looks back at me, all of it written all over his face as plain as day.
In a gruff voice, he says, “I’ll have your things sent anywhere you like.”
He rises from his chair and stiffly walks out of the room.
39
Spider
I stand outside with my face upturned to the sky and my eyes closed, feeling the warmth of the sun on my skin and the freezing coldness inside my heart.
I should have known it was too good to be true.
I should have known.
Footsteps approach. I don’t turn or open my eyes.
I want to remember this moment. I want to brand every thought and feeling into my memory, so if I ever think things might have changed for me, if I ever make the mistake of having hope again, I’ll look back and feel myself burning to the ground and turn away from that hope because it’s a lie.
It’s always been a lie.
There’s no hope for me.
There’s only misery.
Declan says gently, “What are you doing, lad?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Feeling sorry for yourself.”
“With all due respect, boss, piss off.”
He chuckles and claps a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t tell me you’re falling in love with your wife.”
“Fallen, past tense. It already happened. And she’s not my wife.”
“Everything’s so black and white with you. Try looking at the shades of gray once in a while. It’ll do you a bit of good.”
I open my eyes to glare at him. Standing next to me in the garden, he’s smiling. Looking at me like I didn’t just get kicked off the bliss train I’d been riding since the wedding.
“That’s your advice for me right now? Look at shades of gray?”
“Aye. Also maybe stick around for the end of a conversation before you go storming out in a dramatic teenage huff.”
“I didn’t storm! And I’m not dramatic!”
He takes a moment to let the hair settle back around his face before saying, “Oh no. Not you. You’re as calm as a bloody buddha.”
Muttering, I look away and cross my arms over my chest.
“So what’s your plan, lover boy? Stand out here in the garden glaring at the poor flowers until it gets dark?”
“I don’t have a plan.”
“Then maybe you could come back inside. The girls are having champagne.”
I snap my head around and stare at him. “Champagne?”
He smiles. “Sloane thought a toast was in order. Considering your wife is the first female head of the Cosa Nostra.”
My heart starting to beat faster, I say, “She’s not my wife.”
He shrugs and slides his hands into his pockets. “If you say so.” He turns and strolls back toward the house, whistling “Here Comes the Bride.”
My hands start to shake. I break out in a cold sweat. My heart decides now would be a good time to test its limits to see how fast it can beat in a ten-second span.
Don’t do it. Don’t even think it. Don’t get your hopes up, you bloody wanker.