antonio
didn’t realize how crazy I was until I came out of it. It was like being on a descending airplane with compressed ears that whooshed until I yawned or swallowed. Then everything cleared up. I didn’t even think I was foggy and deaf until the pressure equalized.
Daniel saying she was alive was that pop. I didn’t know what I’d been feeling or doing. I only knew what I couldn’t do, which was kill Lorenzo. I’d promised her I wouldn’t. Not being able to take him out meant I didn’t have a distraction. A little shiny violent thing to experience or a problem to solve. I had to lose her and feel it without diversion. I didn’t think I could live through actually feeling that level of pain.
I was a child. I’d been na?ve and inexperienced. I thought I’d grieved before, but no—I hadn’t allowed it. In the seven or so minutes that I lost Theresa, all I saw was a long descent into oblivion. I despaired for myself as much as I did for her. I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t have the tools to comprehend a part of myself getting ripped away. I couldn’t even finish a sentence in my head. I was half a man. Half a human. Immobilized by a promise and sucked dry by the only death that mattered.
That all came to me after the pop.
She was alive and broken. She could still die, but what I’d been missing in those minutes filled me. Hope. It was the nature of clarity. It set off everything against it. In that tension between what I hoped for and everything else, the world was in focus. I came to myself. I had something to do.
I put my hand over Daniel’s phone.
“Who are you calling?” I asked.
“Nine one one. We can’t move her.”
“Trust me.”
I made the call crouched over her, noticing the signs of life I’d missed in my despair. The team from Marymount who had taken shrapnel out of Bruno’s hand were coming. They were discreet and expensive. I prayed while I told them where we were. I prayed they’d be quick, that I hadn’t delayed too long.
Enzo came to me when I got off the phone. “Zo wants—”
“Keep him out of my sight.”
“Are you taking charge? Is it you?”
I pulled Enzo away from Daniel. “Did I kill Donna Maria?”
“How should I answer that?” he asked.
“The truth. Who killed her?”
He pointed at Theresa timidly, as if afraid to say.
“There’s your capo. Now back up. I said I wouldn’t kill anyone. I made no promises about shooting your legs out from under you.”
***
In the minutes before the ambulance arrived, Zo, Simone, and Enzo whispered. Two of Donna Maria’s men showed up. I heard a car in the driveway, and my three crew, the three betrayers who now officially worked for Theresa, subdued Donna Maria’s men. Daniel fidgeted. We were both holding back a panic that Theresa’s life was pouring out of her and we couldn’t do anything.
“You should go,” I said, bending over her, afraid to touch her for fear of something broken inside her.
“Fuck you.”
“No, fuck you. Get Valentina out of here.”
He nodded. “This won’t stay under the radar. Too big. It’s too big.”
The sound of the siren reached us.
“Go,” I said.
He took one last glance at Theresa then jogged into the house, passing a cluster of mob soldiers as if we were all commuters on the same train.
fifty-four.
theresa
ain. I remember pain. My insides. My bones. The place where the needles were. And the itching. The itching was so intense, I thought I’d go mad. But I couldn’t move, or talk, or even control my own breathing. I was half conscious, immobilized, in a fog as thick as peanut butter.
I knew I was moved. I knew I was cut open and sewn up. I smelled alcohol and latex, so I knew I was in some kind of hospital. But none of that was important. My body became the responsibility of other people, and my job was to stay still and endure it.