The choir stopped singing.
Nic and Dom jumped over the pew and barrelled down the middle aisle, shouting as they pulled their guns out. A lone figure crashed through the doors, just a shadow at the end of the church, her laughter rising up like a chorus. Laughter I had heard for the first time recently, trapped inside a darkened hallway in my school.
Elena’s scream echoed down the aisles of the church, reverberated around us as she folded in on herself, her face pressed to the pew as she gasped and heaved. Luca stumbled past me, past Felice, and out into the aisle. He sank to his knees in front of Valentino, his arms encircling his middle, his head slumped forward, touching against Valentino’s knee – his position a mirror image of his twin brother’s. When the sound gurgled in his throat, it was a scraping, primal thing, carved from pure, soul-shattering grief, and I could feel it, this sharp, twisting wound, right down in my own heart.
Valentino was gone.
The boss was dead.
PART IV
‘Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand,
Blood and revenge are hammering in my head.’
William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
WINTER
The weeks passed slowly. Every day was a trickle of time, of renewed pain and loaded silence. A thick blanket of snow draped itself over Evelina, and with it came the ice. It made spectres of us all, roaming the halls, looking for something to say, and knowing there were no words left.
There was no laughter, no joy.
Just rage.
Intent.
My father remained elusive – no sightings, no word of him anywhere. I started to wonder if he had been there that day, too, hiding somewhere with Jack, laughing behind a church missal as Elena’s screams filled up the church like an aria.
Over twenty witnesses at Holy Name Cathedral on All Souls’ Day pointed to Zola Marino as Valentino’s assailant. They had seen her in the communion procession, hooded and in plain clothes, as she approached Valentino in the aisle and leant over him from behind. They had passed it off as a friendly greeting at first, a hug that lasted just a little too long. By the time they understood what had happened, Elena was screaming the walls down and Nic and Dom were already charging out of the church.
The boys never caught up to Zola.
They never even fired their guns.
The incident made every single local paper, and most of the national ones, too. News of the escalating blood war between the Falcones and the Marinos was now public knowledge. They rehashed old murders – details of my paternal grandparents, Vince Marino and Linda Harris, splashed across the pages, photographs of Angelo Falcone, of Felice, and even Luca – the ‘striking blue-eyed twin’ of the latest Falcone victim.
Zola had been discovered hiding in the back of a well-known Marino-friendly restaurant eighteen blocks from the church and was taken away in handcuffs by the police. On her second day in jail, she was found hanging by the neck. The newspapers called it suicide. The Falcones called it retribution. They had people everywhere. Prison wasn’t good enough for Zola, so death would have to do.
The war had truly begun.
In the blink of an eye, everything had changed, and we all did too – morphed by the weight of our guilt, of how close we had been to Valentino and how drastically we had failed him. It was the hardest blow they could have dealt, and they had done it because we had underestimated them. Because we had dared to ask for peace when they were thirsting for war. Because we had dared to believe in the possibility of a truce. Nothing was off limits any more.
The rules had changed.
Luca’s desires now were singular, the sharp edge of his grief directed outwards, like a weapon, at all those Marinos who still walked free. He talked a little crisper, walked a little faster, drew his gun a lot quicker. He didn’t lie out on the roof any more, looking at the stars. He didn’t read poetry or spar with his brothers. He didn’t talk about the what-ifs. He didn’t talk to me, either. Not the way he used to. The old Luca was gone, replaced by a harder, darker version. The Falcone he was always supposed to be. The Falcone who would avenge all that was taken from us.
No one else talked about the what-ifs, either. The idea of possibility was gone. Luca had finally let it go. He had finally succumbed to the family, and without him trying to block me from it, I did too. We were united at last in our purpose, but instead of bringing us closer together, it pushed us apart. We stood on opposite ends of a dark cloud, our ever-present grief licking the happiness from our skin.
On November 10th, Valentino was interred next to his father in the family mausoleum.
That evening, Luca was sworn in by the family elders as the new Falcone boss.
He made Paulie his underboss.
Security measures at Evelina were tightened.
Shoot-on-sight orders were distributed.
Luca swore revenge on every living, breathing Marino in the state of Illinois while Felice stood by and watched, a quiet smile painted across his face.
And I kept wondering, as the weeks dragged by, how exactly the Falcone consigliere had failed to notice Valentino’s murder, when he was sitting shoulder to shoulder with him when it happened.
I played his reaction over and over in my head – the wide eyes, the gasp, the slow turn of his head, as though the scene had been written and it was time for Felice to play his part. The more time passed, the less I believed in his shock. His grief. The less I believed in his loyalty at all.
Felice spent his time watching Luca, and I spent my time watching him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
DECEMBER 23RD
In the Council room at Evelina, Luca stood at the head of the table with his back to us. His black hair brushed against the base of his neck, his head tilted to the side as he faced the photographs on the wall. The others were looking at them, but I was looking at Luca, the way his shoulders tensed, how his voice arced. I could hear the exhaustion in it. He swept a hand through his hair, then gestured towards the photo on the far right.
Uncle Jack. A recent photo of him coming out of Eden and ducking into a car. His grey hair was buzzed short, his right eye still scarred and pink around the edges. My handiwork.
It was two days before Christmas, and I had never felt so joyless. We were planning our final, full-force strike, and every active Falcone member in the state had been called in to prepare for it. D-Day was approaching and I was right smack in the middle of it, finally about to get my revenge.