by CD Reiss
“We have about five minutes before they get here, and we start shooting at each other. If we wait, more than half of you are going to die. I don’t want that. Santino’s not here, but if he was, he wouldn’t find that acceptable either. You will not die to protect this crown.”
“If you give it to them,” Carmine shouts, “they’re gonna shoot us all anyway.”
Maybe. Probably. I don’t know the codes or traditions of this kind of confrontation, and I don’t care. They’re all changing if I survive this, and if I don’t, there’s nothing I can do about it.
“There won’t be a trade,” I agree with a voice that echoes from the mountains and over the sounds of the night. “Once Damiano has it, he has no reason to let Santino live to challenge him.”
The Alfa approaches from behind me, casting the line of men in unforgiving light. They’re scared. I don’t blame them because this plan puts them in front of a rain of bullets with nothing more than a woman with a piece of metal on her head to protect them.
“We cannot trade for what was always ours. Tonight, we’re not going to make any concessions. We will save our king.”
Then I explain to the soldiers of the Cavallo family exactly how I’m going to lead them.
Four cars quickly line up behind me. They’ll follow us to Lasertopia while anyone left in Torre Cavallo will take care of the Tabonas if—and only if—the first part of this plan works. If the first part bombs, we’re fucked.
Outside of their own mothers, I’ve never seen the men of Secondo Vasto do a woman’s bidding unless she made it sound like his idea. If the influence of the Corona Ferrea is a mass hallucination, it’s more powerful than any documented case.
When I’m done, there are no questions. They line up as I explained. The plan must be so simple a child could understand it because all I can see are the list of things that can go wrong.
Remo gets out of the car, and Loretta gets behind the wheel.
“We’ll be right behind you,” Vito says, leaning down to speak to me through the open back door. “And the guns above.” He flashes a look toward the ridge overhead.
“Just hold until we know if Santino’s with them. There’s no point to this if we end up killing him. For me, at least.”
“For any of us.” Vito taps his phone. There’s rarely any signal up here, but he doesn’t need it.
“Good.” The gate creaks open.
“I’ll be on the speakers.” He shows me his phone. Bluetooth connected to the Alfa.
He closes the door, and I’m left with Loretta and Celia looking back at me from the front seat. The reality of three women in the lead car hits me.
“This is nuts,” I say, trusting they know exactly what I mean.
“Is it?” Loretta asks. “We come from a land of abundance, and it always comes down to the women. Always.”
Celia makes the sign of the cross again and passes through the gate as soon as it’s open wide enough. When she makes the first turn, cutting off the view of the gate and Torre Cavallo, I breathe for the first time in days.
I am free, but I have a purpose that’s as forceful as saving my own life.
Santino. His life. Our life together.
“Okay, Loretta,” I say, holding the box in both hands.
She presses a button on the left armrest. The sunroof slides open.
“Around the next turn,” Vito’s voice says from the speakers.
I take the crown out of the box and stand, putting my head and arms through the sunroof. The tight curve is up ahead, so I hold tight as the car makes the turn and nearly smacks into a black Chevy Suburban driving too close to the center line. Five more are in the opposite lane behind it, screeching to a halt in quick succession. The last car stops gently but across most of our lane.
Through the sunroof to my waist, I hold the crown so tightly the edges hurt, but I stay still.
I don’t have long to wait. In the hard light of headlamps, the car doors swing open. Men get out with guns. I press the fear to the bottom of my heart. So many men. Twenty. Thirty. More gun barrels than I can count are pointed at me. Each is an endlessly deep void.
This is it. We didn’t count on this many. The cars behind need to stay behind or it’ll be a slaughter.
How did I get human adults to go along with this ridiculous idea?
Santino would never have approved. He would have laughed at me. Kissed me. Called me Forzetta.
I hold up the crown—then put it on my head.
Counting on another mass hysteria event is the dumbest part of a dumb plan.
I love you, Santino.
Thank you for teaching me how to be brave.
I spread my arms. “Bring me Santino, or shoot me and take it.”
I wish I could have been smarter for you.
Crowned like a homecoming queen, I wait to find out that whatever power this thing has doesn’t work under a waxing moon, or extend past the Torre Cavallo gate, or influence men who pledge loyalty to another family.
I’m sorry, my king. I am so sorry.
A barrel jerks, then another, and I’m sure my time before death is splitting and splitting infinitely, and I’m going to see bullets fly through the air in slow motion, unable to move before they shatter through me.
But that moment doesn’t come. The bullets stay cold in their chambers. The guns are lowered, and the men holding them look at the ground before bending their knees.
“They’re doing it,” I say to Loretta and Celia in the seats below, not expecting them to actually hear me past the roof of the car or even the thrilling heart thrum of the enemy’s mass submission. “Go!”
I smack the roof. I don’t know how long the impulse to show fealty to a piece of metal actually lasts. There’s no time to enjoy it or understand it. We need to go. But though Loretta drives forward, we don’t get far. The last Suburban has left little room for us to get by, and no one’s kneeling near its closed doors.
We stop. If we try to pass, we could get rammed into a cliff face. As it is, I’m still a sitting duck to get shot from behind a tinted window or from behind when the guys we passed snap out of whatever trance they’re in.
And Santino might be in that car in front of us.
I take out the gun he gave me, holding it in two hands as he taught me.
I couldn’t hit a bottle this way, and now I don’t even know what I’m aiming at.
Until the passenger door opens and a man gets out. He has a thick black moustache and dark widow’s peak on a low forehead. No one is in the driver’s seat. He was alone in the front. His hands are up and he’s blindfolded himself with a long black scarf, as if he’s been prepped for his execution.
“No!” Loretta shouts.
“What?”
“Violetta DiLustro?” The blindfolded man’s knees bend, but he manages to keep upright.
“Carlo!” Loretta screams from below me.
“What is it?” I ask.
There’s a scuffle up front, making me shake a little against the edges of the sunroof.
“I have something to deliver to Violetta DiLustro,” he says.
“If it’s another body part, you can keep it.”
“Turn over the crown and we—”
The rest is lost in the rev of the engine beneath me. Inertia that bends me in two as the Alfa thrusts forward, hitting the man, then pinning him against the Suburban and pushing it so hard it tips onto two wheels.
“What the fuck?” I cry.
The car stops. The Suburban rocks back into place.
Carlo is practically torn in two.
I slide down into the back seat. Loretta’s bawling against the steering wheel with Celia resting her hand on Loretta’s back as she stares at the bloodied windshield.
“What just happened?”
“He killed Elio,” Loretta roars into her hands.
To think I was worried that she still loved Santino.
Now is the moment we’re supposed to drive down to Lasertopia with four
cars behind me, but the road’s blocked, and there are so many people. They all need me, and there’s one man I need.
I get out of the Alfa and run to the Suburban, then I open the back door.
No Santino. There was no trade. We planned for that, but there are too many people. I keep saying it to myself because I don’t know what to do about it, and I don’t know how long their delusion will cow them. If they all wake up at once, we’re fucked.
Loretta’s crying because she just killed a man, and that changes a person. Celia’s staring at the carnage. I crouch by Carlo Tabona’s mangled body. An internship in the ER did not prepare me for this many compound fractures or a dying man’s screams. People shouting. No gunshots. Not yet. And I don’t need Santino any less.
Without apology, I reach into Carlo’s front pocket, praying it’s the only one I’ll have to search. My prayers are answered when my fingers find the car’s fob.
Leaning into the driver’s seat of the Alfa, I use the Bluetooth to ping Vito. “I’m going alone. Take care of Loretta.”
I rush around the Suburban. The driver’s door opens with the glow of the dome light, and the standard monotone dings…as if the passenger door isn’t pushed into the seat like a freeze frame of a train wreck.
I get behind the wheel, and with some back and forth, I separate it from the Alfa. Carlo flops to the road, and I head down the mountain alone. This is what it should have been from the beginning. Just me, speeding to him.
“Hold on, Re Santino. I’m coming for you. Finally.”
Finally, finally. I’m going to apologize to him for taking so long. For letting myself get stuck up in a tower. If he’s alive, I’ll beg for his forgiveness.
At the bottom, where the street is more level, a rain-drenched man appears, straddling the centerline. The light washes out his features. He is upright, tall, and utterly still. There’s no room to pass without wrecking the car, and when I consider stopping, I realize that at this speed, on a rain-slick road, I won’t.
I hit the brakes, swerve, and let God decide his fate.
The man raises his arms in front of him. By the time I see the gun he’s aiming at me, it’s too late to duck.
God will decide both our fates.
28
SANTINO
Science lab. Ninth grade. Sal Renzi shook the test tube over a burner. He wasn’t supposed to, and I don’t remember what was in the tube, but I remember il professor Campi grabbing his wrist and saying, “A little science is more dangerous than complete ignorance.”
I should have stayed in school, but I failed more than il professor Campi’s biology class. Over Zia Paola’s objections, I stopped going. Complete ignorance seemed like a reasonable choice for me. Gia and Tavie finished school. Tavie’s dead. Gia will be soon.
But not today.
The rusty hacksaw blade she found in the back of an otherwise empty drawer wouldn’t cut all the way through the pipes, but it would open one just enough.
After stamping out the cigarette, I told her which pipe to cut on her side. I said the fumes would kill her if she didn’t leave as soon as she smelled it.
She thought I was trying to end it all by gas inhalation instead of a bullet, so she did it, and she ran away when it started to smell.
“Goodbye, Santi,” she said at the steps as the pipe hissed. “I’ll see you on the other side.”
“Sure, you will.”
She ran up. I lit a cigarette, took a drag, and after a minute of guesswork, I threw it through the hole in the wall.
The explosion knocked out a section of the exterior wall, and the debris protected me from the flames that would have killed me.
Stumbling on the street, I barely remember what happened next. I have a brick in my right hand, and when I drop it, spots of burned skin stick to it. The cool night air brushes over my body where my shirt’s been singed away.
The gun is in my back pocket, and my ears are ringing like a scream.
There’s no traffic on the streets, so the sirens from the volunteer fire station pass quickly, a block away. That has something to do with me, but I can’t find the will to care.
If we’re convincing enough, she’ll have it.
In all this pain and confusion, the map of the town has been erased from my memory, but I walk toward the mountain, toward Torre Cavallo, toward her. When rain clouds my view, I follow streets that slope upward.
If she don’t fight, we’ll let her live.
At a point I can’t define, my ears stop ringing, and the rain turns to mist. Still walking, I take stock of the situation. My shirt is made of a back and sleeves. My right palm has a splatter pattern of raw skin. The pain where my finger was removed is like an old friend. My head hurts. The headache is the worst because it blinds me, and I’m afraid that when I get to her, I won’t be able to see well enough to protect her.
It’s taking candy from a baby.
In front of St. Paul’s church—the one I burned down so no other man would try to marry Violetta in it—is a makeshift shrine with candles and flowers. A concerned citizen of Secondo Vasto left a bowl for offerings to rebuild the church. I scoop the money out onto the ground and drink the rainwater. The headache stalls. My mind clears. The rain slows to a fog.
I’ve been making my way to her like a sleepwalker, but now that I’m awake, I run.
The streets I’ve lived on all these years reveal their secrets, sloping upward at increased grades with every block. I know where to go, and I won’t stop until I get there. The turn up the mountain is right ahead. The slope will increase, and there’s not enough energy in my bones to get me to her, but I don’t stop running on the empty avenue, following the yellow centerline as if it’s an electrified track, and I’m on metal wheels.
The lights ahead are tiny. Then bigger. It’s a car, and unlike the ones parked all over town, this one’s already running. I need it to get up the mountain.
29
VIOLETTA
A web of cracks explodes across the windshield. A hard little breeze—warm as a man blowing in my ear—whooshes against the side of my head. A part of me says I need to take my foot off the brake and just mow him down, but my body’s been driving without the help of my mind for too long, and I stop. My head bops against the steering wheel, hard enough to throw the crown onto the dashboard but light enough to keep my wits about me.
Someone is on the road. He shot at me. That’s all I know. Could be one of my guys trying to stop a Tabona, or a straggling enemy who knows I’m behind the wheel.
With my right hand, I reach for my holster while the left pulls the door handle. It’s wrenched from me, and I tumble onto the pavement with enough presence of mind to hold the gun at the man standing over me.
In a millisecond, I make a decision not to shoot him until I know who he is.
He pushes my hands aside. The gun goes off, releasing a bullet into the bushes. He falls on me, putting his weight on my throat and wrists.
“We gonna do this easy?” he asks with a voice I’ll never forget. “Or we gonna do this hard?”
“Easy,” I say, knowing that’s the only answer that’ll shift Damiano Orolio’s weight.
“Where is it?”
The stupid crown. It gets men to kneel before you. He can have it.
“Car.”
He wrenches my gun away and stands, looking at me with his barrel leveled at my chest.
“Better be.” He tilts his head slightly, as if he’s seeing something new about me as I lie in the street. “Has anyone ever told you that you look just like my father?”
“Where’s Santino?”
“Starving. Dead.” He throws my gun to the side of the road, where the SUV that must have brought him sits in the shadows. “No one’s gonna find him.” He looks in the Suburban, but the crown isn’t in the seat where he must expect. “It better be in here.”
With his next movement, I’m sure he’s going to shoot me. Instead, a slight jerk of his shoulders turns into a full spin,
and it’s only then that I hear the humidity-muffled pop of a gunshot. My eyes have frozen mid-blink, squeezed shut against the news of my own death. My singular failure. My complicity in the murder of the only man I’ve ever loved, and who loved me in a way no one had before or will again.
At least I had that, even as I die now.
A thud and grunty umph happen instead. I still feel the drizzle on my face and the hard earth against the curve of my head, but there’s no pain from a bullet.
A voice I know and love reaches through the rush in my ears. Something I’ve lost twice and not had a moment to grieve for either time is found again.
“Forzetta!”
My heart is struck by lightning.
Had it even been beating since he left? No. It had turned to frozen meat in my chest.
I twist into a crouch. He’s leaning over me, and the relief on his face mirrors my reprieve from despair. I was dead without him, but now I live again.
“Santi,” I whisper. “You’re…”
You’re here. You’re alive. You’re mine. All of them swirl up my throat and get caught on the sob squeezing its way out of my lungs.
“So are you,” he says.
So am I. We are here. Together. Only now do I realize that I’d assumed he was dead and I’d never see him again.
He grips my arm and pulls me upright until I’m standing face to face with my husband—my heart pumping and my eyes finally open. He looks like shit with dark circles and sunken cheeks, and he is the most beautiful sight in the world.
Forgetting where I am and the danger we’re in, I kiss him. Rain drips off his cheeks and hair into the seam between our lips. It rests on our tongues and I taste the sky, the earth, the salt of the sea. Barbed wire stubble scratches my mouth, but we press each other closer because we’re never separating again. We promise it with that kiss. Never.
The scrape of metal on the pavement breaks the lock we have on each other. We are standing on a street in front of a man trying to kill us.
Santino wraps one arm tightly around me and looks past me at the man on the ground. I turn inside my husband’s protection. Damiano’s trying to raise an arm attached to a shattered shoulder, but the gun only scrapes the asphalt.
