“She” was Valentina. The gutting was assumed to be literal. Donna Maria had used the word sbudellarlo, which had a particular Sicilian connotation. It was used for the most disloyal offenders. The ones who broke omertà and gave information to the police, who stole, or who married outside the business.
And if you don’t come to us by tomorrow night, we will open her up. Don’t think I won’t for this shame you visited twice on my family now. My granddaughter still has no husband. It will not go unanswered. You have twenty-four hours to present yourself, or she’s dead.
I wasn’t afraid of that or anything, but Theresa would go after anyone who hurt me, and she would get herself killed by less talented and more experienced hands.
I held out my hand for Theresa. “We’re taking care of this, Mister Brower.”
“What are you going to do?”
“We’re going to find her first,” I said. “Then we’re going to send her home.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Keep the police off us,” Theresa interjected. “I don’t care how.”
Daniel nodded. “Today. No problem. I can’t guarantee tomorrow.”
I held out my hand, and he took it. “Take care of that head,” I said.
“Sure, sure.” He still looked a little red in the face. “Don’t let this asshole get you killed.”
She hugged him. “Go to the fundraiser if you can.”
When she hugged her ex, and he rubbed her back, I had a sudden sense of wholeness with her. I’d changed. What a fool I’d been. Not a fool but a man in a box. A box I’d been raised in but had had every opportunity to break out of. A man nailed to the ground by tradition and conformity.
When I’d first seen her on the news, next to him, I admired her purity because that was what I thought one admired in a woman. It never occurred to me that she could be more. Though I’d come to respect her ability to do what needed to be done when the air was on fire with bullets, my mind didn’t truly expand until I saw her inside her old life and knew she didn’t fit. My world unfolded and laid itself before me. I’d loved the wrong reasons inside the right woman and made excuses for the love. But I’d known it the whole time, hadn’t I? The way she aligned herself with Daniel. The way you could tell she meant more to him than a docile little wife. She was the power behind him. The fearless, intelligent, fierce lioness.
I didn’t know what to do with her or myself. Now, today, she fit with me and I with her. But tomorrow? I’d been a man without a nation for a long time, and now I was a man without friends. She was mine, and she fit me where it counted, but not where it counted with everyone around me. They’d turn on us. As soon as there was a moment’s peace, we would be targets, and she wouldn’t let me stand in front of her. I’d tried handcuffing her, leaving her, diverting her, yet she bent herself toward death.
I had no answer. I only knew if she died, I was going with her. It was the only way.
thirty-four.
theresa
could never predict his moods. He was businesslike and managerial while figuring out the whens and wherefores of the coming twenty-four hours. He called Otto and got us a car. Half an hour later, we were in a nondescript lot in Silver Lake, walking up to a white Porsche. Otto leaned on it, holding up the keys.
“Did you talk to your daughter?” Antonio asked, snapping the keys away.
“She needs time.”
“We’ll be in Paseo. If she can’t, you need to call me.” He opened the passenger side of the Porsche, staring at me as if he wanted to eat me alive.
“Does Otto know how you feel about Porsches?”
“His idea of a joke. And the sooner you get in this shit car, the sooner you’re out.” He pulled out of the lot and threaded through the back alley and out onto Sunset.
“Where are we going?”
“We own a building on Paseo Del Mar. Not a luxury, but I’ll be fucking you so hard, you won’t even notice.” He glanced over with a gaze like a starving cat.
“Before that, I need to know we have a plan,” I said as he made a left, using his signal, keeping it under the speed limit. No sharp moves.
“A plan? We’re going to find out what hospital she’s at and grab her.”