theresa
ven with the crazy circumstances, I had expectations. I thought the head of a mafia family would have a house made of dark wood and fat moldings with crystal and doilies. What I got was a squeaky wooden gate leading to a house with worn furniture and the smell of food deep in the fabrics. I touched Antonio’s arm and pointed at a corner piled full of bright plastic and googly eyes. He nodded. There were kids around. I didn’t have to say a word.
He leaned down and spoke in my ear. “House in the back. I’m going to take her out.”
I didn’t know who the men were outside. I only knew they shouted, and their voices got closer. The sound waves bounced off the wetness left in the air, making them seem to be everywhere all at once.
Antonio and I, as if pulled by the same strings, looked back through the open door to see them coming. They were going to follow us to the back and pick us off. We’d be dead before we started.
We didn’t have to speak. I didn’t have time to process the feeling of connection between us, only to react, skipping the niceties.
“I’ll go upstairs.” I was already leaning toward the stairway.
He grabbed my arm. “No.”
“Let me draw the fire. Split them up.”
“No!”
“We’re together. I swear it. Dead or alive, you’re with me. But we, both of us, won’t get out unless I draw fire and you take care of business.”
Time compressed again, and he spent minutes, hours even, considering.
He grabbed the back of my head and smashed his lips to mine, then jerked away. “Go, before I change my mind.”
I stepped back with the sound of approaching hell through the squeaky gate, getting one last look at Antonio in his shirtless wonder. A warrior. A king. My capo, always always always.
I turned and ran up the stairs to a long dark hallway lined with open doors. I got my bearings. I needed to go left in order to face the back. I went through a door halfway down the hall.
It was a nursery. A girl’s. Fluffy things. White crib. Soft colors made grey in the darkness. Across from the hall door, French doors to a balcony overlooking the back. I went out and leaned on the railing. The sky turned blueish with morning, and I saw a field lined with animal hutches. They scratched and wailed in nocturnal frustration.
To the left, a house with the lights on. That must be where Donna Maria was. I had to make sure he got in there.
Antonio ran out. I was ready. I held up the gun, waiting for whoever followed him. I was to distract them and draw fire to myself so Antonio could end this by killing an old woman. I was all right with that. We were both going to hell anyway.
I heard them clamor. Antonio looked back into the house before continuing into the yard.
“You’re going to hurt yourself with that thing.”
I spun back toward the nursery, gun out. Donna Maria stood there holding a baby. It was sleeping. I lowered my weapon when I saw the child.
Donna Maria Carloni smiled.
fifty.
antonio
here were no shots from above. Either she was dead or she’d changed her mind, and there was no way she’d changed her mind. I glanced up along a veranda and saw her with her back to the railing. Someone was with her. I couldn’t make them out, but in the moment before Domenico ran out into the yard and I had to react, I regretted leaving her alone. Deeply regretted it.
But regret was a luxury for later. Domenico was followed closely by Zo, who had Enzo and Simone huffing and puffing at his heels. It had been a tough night for those guys, and it was about to get tougher. They were my crew, and to prove their new loyalty, they’d beaten the hell out of me.
I didn’t blame them, and I didn’t hold it against them. It was business.
I shot Domenico. He fell like a bag of rice.
Then I took aim at Zo, who I’d loved and trusted and who had sold me out at every turn. He stopped long enough to get a clean shot at me.
fifty-one.