Head of an organization nicknamed the Black Hand Mob, Vincenzo Marino was widely referred to as the ‘Iron Hand’ due to the successful steel business he owned and operated with his brothers. Gangland rivalry is suspected to be involved in the killing, with a source close to the FBI pointing to the rival Falcone crime family as having carried out the double hit.
The Marino deaths are the latest in a series of Mafia-related killings and disappearances over the last year. The suspected blood feud has claimed the lives of eleven Falcones and sixteen Marinos since its eruption. The investigation continues.
Beneath the article, there was a grainy photograph of Vincenzo Marino and his wife, Linda Harris. My grandparents. They were dressed formally and smiling at something off camera. She was beautiful. He looked just like my father. In all my life, I had only ever seen one picture of them – a holiday snap from when my father was a child. He said the other pictures were too painful for him to look at. But now they were spread out below me, tens of Polaroids of the Marino boss and his wife, of Jack and my father, smiling and laughing, wearing silly hats and blowing out candles and doing all the normal things that normal happy families do. These were not deadbeat parents, the way I’d always been told.
‘Where were Dad and Jack?’ I asked, sifting through the photographs. ‘The article says they weren’t in the house when they were killed.’
I was all too aware of my mother hovering behind me, her heavy breathing filling up the silence. She was panicking and trying not to show it; I was trying not to scream at her. It was a delicate dance.
‘Linda’s family hid them. They were already in Milwaukee before the murders. Your grandfather suspected there was a hit out on him and he didn’t want to take any chances. Linda wouldn’t leave her husband’s side.’
‘And she died for it.’
‘She did.’
She died for love.
For stupidity.
‘Do you call Dad “Vince” or “Michael”?’
‘He’s only ever been Michael to me.’
I laughed, but there was no amusement in it.
‘Sophie …’
‘Why did Dad come back to Chicago?’ I cut in. ‘Did he have a death wish or something?’
She sighed. ‘I was in college here when we met. I wanted to stay and raise a family, and by the time I found out about his past, he said the danger was over. The Falcones would never find out who he was.’
‘Still, why risk it?’
‘I don’t know, sweetheart.’ She sat down on the bed, disturbing a group of photographs. I picked up the key underneath. It was heavy and brass, with a thick loop at the end, where the metal broke away into connecting swirls. ‘He wanted to be Michael Gracewell. He believed we’d get away with it.’
‘Well, we haven’t,’ I said, bitterness twisting my voice as I twisted the key in my hand. It was fancy, important-looking. It opened the safe in the diner – I’d bet my life on it. Something lurched inside me. What the hell was it doing in my father’s closet?
‘Just because Donata told you doesn’t mean the other families will find out.’
I lifted my gaze. ‘Donata didn’t tell me.’
She screwed her face up. ‘What?’
I stood up, still clutching the key. ‘The Falcones did.’
I don’t know why I revelled in the surprise on my mother’s face in that split second, why it made me feel good to know that there were secrets she didn’t know either. It was petty and small, but that’s how I felt. Stupid. Untethered from my own identity.
She shot to her feet. ‘No.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘But how?’
I crushed the key in my fist and threw the rest of the photos off the bed. Anger surged in me now that I had seen it all, now that I knew for sure. ‘Because I went to them,’ I said, hot tears welling in my eyes. ‘Because I thought they were our only hope! Because I thought we had to be protected from the Marinos! I went to them thinking they would help us, and I left with Felice Falcone screaming “Marino” at me.’ The sobs came thick and fast, choking me.
‘No,’ my mother half-shrieked. ‘They can’t know.’
‘Everybody knows!’ I yelled. ‘Everybody knows and we’re stuck here like rats, waiting to be killed or used in this stupid blood war! You should have told me!’
‘I wanted to protect you!’ She was shouting too. Panic had seized us both. We saw our fate mirrored back at us – hopeless, inevitable. We had burnt all our bridges. The secrets had cut us down. ‘I’ve been tearing my hair out thinking about it. How could I risk telling you? After the warehouse … after how close they got to us, and you were so brave and so good. The Falcones weren’t looking at you any more – they owed you. I thought we could walk away. I thought our secret was still safe. How could I tell my baby girl the family she comes from is sick and twisted, after everything we’ve come through? How could I break your heart like that?’ She was crying harder than me.
‘I never had a choice,’ I said, a violent sob rattling my shoulders. ‘All this time I was living a lie. I never had a way out, and you all knew it!’