by CD Reiss
It could be a submachine gun. A bomb. A body. And all I can do is lower the gun from my shoulder and aim it at the end of my extended arms. I suck at this. If I have to shoot them, I have a better chance of hitting them if I aim at the sky. I can’t hit a soda bottle, and I’m just a girl who wanted to spend her summer on the beach.
I’ve never been so terrified in my life.
From the back, the driver lifts a box the size of a six-pack cooler.
Could be a bomb.
Could be a body part.
Could be a trick to get us all killed.
Turning around, I see Celia and Loretta holding hands on the dining room patio, hanging back as if negotiating a battle between fear and curiosity.
No one’s going to die for me today.
I rush down the ladder and reach the bottom, behind the locked gate, just as the strangers approach the place where the gate opens.
“Get back,” I hiss to the men who encroach out of a sense of propriety over my safety.
The old man is stooped and slow, bent at the waist in a summer hat and a suit cut for bad posture. His metal-tipped cane is unsure on the ragged ground. The driver does not rush the old man, but walks reverently beside him, holding the box by a handle on either side. No one is rushing them. Especially not me. I don’t want to see what’s in that box.
They stop at the gate, a few feet away, separated by wrought-iron bars spaced far enough apart to get an arm or a bullet through.
“Speak,” I bark with a confidence I don’t feel. “Before I let them shoot you.”
The driver answers in a boom. “We’ve come for the daughter of Camilla Cavallo.”
I’m the wife of Santino DiLustro and the sister of Rosetta Moretti. But I am also my mother’s daughter, and I don’t know why that’s important.
Il Blocco’s face is blotted with a patchwork of brown age spots, and the long, gray hairs of his eyebrows cover dark indents where the floodlights cover his eyes in shadow. His bottom lip sags, but one edge of his mouth turns up in a smirk.
“I am Nazario Coraggio.” He speaks Italian. “I was your mother’s consigliere.”
Mamma? She worked the register at my father’s grocery store. She was a wife and a mother. A daughter to my bossy and controlling Nonna. She loved my father, who probably had a consigliere—long ago, when this man was just beginning to be old.
He must have advised my father, and now his brain is addled with age. The secrets he’s kept all these years are breaking his brain. He may be powerful or rich, but he is also elderly and confused.
“You’re mistaken,” I say. “My mother didn’t need a consigliere’s advice.”
“Probably not,” he says, rocking his cane back and forth. “But she got it anyway.”
Carmine and his men approach the consigliere from behind, ready to turn this violent with half a word from me. I should have them grab these two before Il Blocco’s dementia gets someone killed.
Except this old man isn’t confused.
He hasn’t been confused a day in his life.
I take a step back and issue a command.
“Open the gate.”
24
VIOLETTA
My mother’s name.
It echoes as the gate creaks open.
It’s a pretty lemon sour on the tongue. Ice water hitting a sensitive tooth on a hot day. The itch of a healing wound. It’s unbearable, and I don’t know why.
Turning, I pace to the house and stop in the kitchen. I don’t know why I stop here because everyone’s going to follow. The men who are doing what I ask of them, and the two invaders at the gate. I should go upstairs to Santino’s office. Whatever is in that box should be opened in the place of power, where the tributes to the throne are made.
Celia rushes in. “They’re coming.”
“Make coffee.”
She grabs the pot and turns on the water.
They’re coming through the dining room. Box and cane. I should go up to Santino’s office now, but his throne is too big for me.
“In here,” I say.
The cane clicks on the marble floor five times before the visitors stand on the other side of the kitchen island.
“Bring a chair,” I say, eyes on the old man.
“No,” he says, inspecting me in the light for the first time. “I stand for Camilla’s daughter.”
The driver puts the box on the counter. His gloves are still on. They have a silvery shine in this light and an unexpected thickness. Utilitarian. Not fussy. The top of the box is a mosaic of tiny tiles arranged into a mermaid, framed with vines and seashells.
When I turn back to the consigliere, he’s still looking at me carefully.
“I know,” I say. “I look like my father.”
He tsks the same way Santino does when he wants to dismiss something.
“You are a Cavallo.” He regards me coldly, with an unveiled interest, which is enough to make me uncomfortable. But more than that, there’s something deeply unnerving about how he’s speaking to me.
“What do you want?” I ask. “We’re a little busy having a war here.”
Nazario laughs, but it sounds more like a series of heavy breaths accompanied by bouncing shoulders. “You are like your mother.”
Am I? In what way? My words? My voice? My carriage? There are moments when I feel as if I never knew her, and this is one of them.
“This a family reunion?” a man says from behind me.
It’s Dario. Fuck. Someone let him out—probably Carmine—and I can’t scream about it, or I’ll look like a loser to everyone lining the room.
“Don’t rush me, Mr. Lucari,” the old man says. “Half of New York wants you dead. The other half thinks you’re already in your grave. I can tell one where you are or prove the other right. That’s up to you.”
What would Santino do?
I have to admit I don’t know. But I know what I’d want him to do, and that’s good enough. Dario isn’t my favorite person in the world, but at this moment, he’s on my team, in my care, and I don’t like him being threatened.
“He’s with me,” I say.
“Is he?” Nazario asks.
What is it about the way he’s speaking to me that seems so disconcerting?
“He is.” I cross my arms.
“As am I,” Nazario says. “Before you laid a foot in America, I was with you.”
When he smiles, his teeth are a wall of white caps sitting too far in front of his shrinking jaw. Under bushy eyebrows, his glassed-over eyes may be green or brown. He is capable of lies, but right now, he’s sincere. He sees himself as an ally. Whether or not he actually is remains to be seen.
“You believe him,” Dario says from behind.
I turn to face him. “Do you?”
“I don’t believe anyone. Least of all the consigliere of a dead man.”
The lawyer leans on his cane at his center with both hands, a smile playing on his spotted lips. “When the box is opened,” he says to me, “step away from this man. Respectfully.” He nods slightly. “In case he’s struck down where he stands.”
This old Italian person is speaking directly to me, as if I’m the authority here, not the nearest man. That’s what’s so disconcerting. His respectfully paternal, yet playful manner is straight out of the old country. But I’ve never seen a guy from the other side direct deference to a woman under the age of eighty.
“Let’s open it and see,” I say.
“Bene.” He nods to the driver, who reaches for the box’s metal latch.
“Let me just warn you,” I say, putting my hand on the driver’s to still it. “If this box has a hair of my husband’s head in it, I’m going to rip both your hearts out, put them in here while they’re still beating, and send it back where it came from.”
“Americans.” Il Blocco scoffs, then stands up straighter, his chin high. “Violetta Cavallo, I have brought you your inheritance.”
Without saying the words to myself, I knew that had
to be what is in the box, and yet—when he says it—I’m still surprised.
The driver reaches to the front of the box and opens it.
I expect a few pieces of a broken crown. But it’s not that at all.
“What is this?” I whisper.
This thing… It’s not a few sections of holy junk. It’s not even broken.
And it’s not quite a crown either.
“Yours,” the consigliere says. “It’s yours. Take it.”
I don’t know if I can trust him. The hammered silver circle on the threadbare red velvet bed could be a trap. A bomb with points at the front and a thin band around the back. A trick to get me to claim what belongs to someone else. It could be a decoy sent to distract us from the pillar of smoke coming from the bridge.
Santino already told me what to do.
NO RULES
Love rules without rules. But maybe Santino meant to tell me that the lines drawn around my actions and experience really aren’t there. I can step over them and take what’s mine. Or that could be what I want it all to mean.
I wish he was here with me. He should be…after everything we’ve been through over this box.
What would Santino want me to do?
L’amore governa senza regole.
He’d say there’s no worn path here. This hasn’t been done before.
He’d say that the only rule is our love. We write the rest of history.
I touch the metal. It’s warm, but it’s also August. Everything’s hot.
I lift it out. It’s heavy, but it’s also iron. Iron’s a heavy thing.
The crown doesn’t shine or glitter. It’s a dull gray with an uneven texture, as if ripped from the earth by ancient gods and twisted into shape by hand. Three points spread across the front, with the center one being tallest. The circle completes around the back, where it’s held together with a long, sideways T that’s covered in rust.
The nail from the One True Cross.
It’s real.
It’s really real.
I decide right there that I will never touch that part of the crown. I am too mortal. Too fucked up. Too broken to come into contact with that kind of power. So when I put my thumbs on the front to lift it, my fingertips don’t go all the way around the back, which is when the size of it becomes clear.
Though the metal is rough hewn, the crown itself is feminine and small.
This does not go on the head of a king.
The Corona Ferrea is a diadem. It is meant to be worn by a woman.
I lift it from the shadow of the box so I can see it in the light, and everyone around me shifts. Arms up, I take my focus off the crown to see what has changed.
In a circle around me. Everyone—even Nazario Corragio, leaning on his cane—is kneeling with heads bowed in reverence to a twenty-year-old woman holding up an ancient inheritance.
Santino, I wish you were here.
I need you here.
I’m not ready for whatever this is.
A square of butter sits in an oily puddle at the center of my pastina, and it’s melting so fast I know it’s too hot.
I am five. I asked Zia Saveria for the pastina. Now I have to eat it, but she’s ignoring me to whisper to some other women I don’t know. There are a lot of people in Nonna’s kitchen.
Rosetta sits cross-armed in front of the grown-up cappuccino she asked for because Nonna would let her have it.
Last night, I went to bed, and now I am awake at Nonna’s house. Mamma’s mother. There are so many people. The grown-ups are upset. I don’t have my Raggedy Ann, so I am upset too.
“Eat,” Nonna says after she blows on the pastina a couple of times.
It works like magic. The porridge is cool enough. I should save some for Raggedy Ann. I want to ask for her, but there are too many people to focus. Nonna with the kerchief and scapular and Nonno with the swagger and beedi smell are here too. They are Papino’s parents. It’s not Sunday. It’s not a holiday or birthday.
“When are we going home?” I ask.
“Never.” Rosetta’s crabby. She’s been like that lately. But she’s never seemed so sad and angry at the same time. She’s scaring me.
“Is it true?” I ask Nonna from Mamma’s side. She’s not as free with the candy as Papà’s mother, but she’s gentle with us.
“Hush, Rosetta,” Nonna answers, looking out the window. She sees something—a bird maybe—and whispers to an older cousin.
“I will not hush!” Rosetta slams her hand on the table so hard the spoon rattles.
“You’re scaring your sister.” Nonna turns toward us with the expression of a wild animal.
“She should be scared.” Rosetta spins in her seat to face me. “Mamma and Papà are dead! They were killed. Papà’s brother and Mamma—!”
“Basta!” Nonna’s arm is made of lightning, grabbing my sister by the hair on top of her head.
“Ow!”
“Say only what you know!”
“But—”
“Never, ever, ever say those lies again.”
“Siena Orolio told me—”
Nonna slaps Rosetta. I don’t know why. It’s loud. I cry before Rosetta does, but we’re both sobbing now, holding each other under Nonna’s kitchen table. I can’t make words.
What does Rosetta not know?
That Mamma and Papà are dead?
Or that they were killed by Papino’s brother?
We don’t have an uncle on that side.
My brother will kill for it no matter where it is.
Our father has two sisters. So if she’s got that wrong, then all of it must be a bad dream she had. A bad, upsetting nightmare. So no brother. No murder. Our parents are fine.
There’s a secret uncle if they’re dead, and I can’t let them be dead.
I am five. I collect data and store it in places so dark, I’ll never find it.
Nonna and the rest of the adults get called into another room on some serious and probably boring matter.
Red-faced, Rosetta sobs into my collar, a nest of hair on top of her head. I place a chubby hand on her shoulder.
“It was just a bad dream, Rosie.”
“It’s not.” She snaps her hand back, eyes scanning the room at floor level to see if we’re really alone. “It’s real. The sooner you learn that, the better.”
“Well, but Daddy doesn’t have a brother.”
She makes her hands into fists on the linoleum. “Half brother.”
I never heard of that. Is he cut in half? Long ways or across the middle? Does it hurt?
My two Nonnas come back in. I see their shoes first, then my father’s mother lifts the table cloth to find us. I can ask them, but they sit in the chairs and wait for us to come out. When we do, every question I have about my father’s family is washed away with the news they deliver.
Rosetta never tells me what she meant by half a brother, and so much changes that I never ask.
This crown I’m holding up was not meant for me. It was my mother’s. It is Rosetta’s.
I drop it back into the box and slap the lid shut.
The circle rises. They’re standing. Things will be said. I am not ready. All I can think about is Santino suffering.
With a quick turn and a lowered head, I walk away, up the stairs, and—without asking myself why—I go up another flight to the cupola. Knowing I’m trapped by mountains and men, I want to get far away from what just happened.
The glass is spotted with water-diamonds reflecting the floodlights and the moon—cold and damp against my palms. The rain should blind me to the city below, but it encloses us like a cocoon, fights the fire on the bridge in my stead, and falls on everyone equally. Me. Il Bocco. Damiano. Santino.
I need to scan this city like a hawk. I need to put my hands on the window and listen for his voice.
“Violetta,” Loretta says from the stairway.
“Leave me alone.”
When I open my eyes, I’m trapped in a room of glass, looking
over my world in three hundred sixty degrees. The rain, the burning bridge, and the country beyond it. My home city in the valley. The lawn and the people scurrying around it. The gate that opened to let the limousine inside.
“Violetta.” Loretta’s disembodied head breaches the floor, then the rest of her rises.
Santino left me with her when I was a blood-covered American girl who tried to run, but was nearly captured instead. She fed me and gave me a place to rest. She tried to tell me things I ignored.
“What happened out there?” I demand. “Why did you kneel?”
“I don’t know.” She sits on one of the benches that line the room. “I had to.”
“Santino told me about this. It’s a mass delusion. That’s all it is, and it’s distracting. Now everyone’s dusting off their pants when we should be getting the hell out of here and finding him. We need to take this entire city apart brick by fucking brick. I’m sick of waiting here—eating, sleeping, pretending everything’s okay—while my husband is somewhere getting his fingers cut off. I can’t bear it!”
My fists are white-cap tight, shaking in front of my chest, ready to punch through any stone wall that separates us before they pulverize whoever built it.
“I wish he was here,” I say, dropping my hands.
“I know.”
“I can’t…Whatever this is…with the crown…I can’t do it without him.”
“You have to. You’re the queen now, and everyone knows it.”
Overwhelmed, I sit on a bench on the opposite side of the room from her. “I’m not. I’m just a regular girl, and I’m scared.”
“Sure, you are.” Loretta sighs and leans back on the uncomfortable seat. “When I met you, right…” She gets up and points out the window to a house on the side of our mountain. “Right there.” She taps the glass twice. “You had blood all over you and a little bit of maybe brain in your hair, and I said right away…pfft. ‘She is nothing. Poor Santino, with this…nothing. She doesn’t even have the sense to be frightened.’”
