The way you had my back at dinner with Ma and Totino. That name! Do you think his parents wanted him to be a seventies pimp or the owner of a pizzeria?
I laughed. This was the Bones I knew and loved. Things had turned to shit between us, and I missed this Bones so much it physically hurt. A sob ripped through me. Would I ever see him again? I reached for his blanket and wrapped it around me. The smell of him enveloped me, both soothing and torturous. Tears slid down my cheeks. I brushed them away and reached for another paper, my hand trembling.
The way you squint when you’re about to call me out on something.
“Ari?” Markie said, emerging from Angel’s room. “What’s wrong? What is that?”
“I found it in the closet,” I blurted out, feeling guilty. If Bones wanted me to have this gift, he would have given it to me. Still, I couldn’t make myself stop reading the papers. “It’s my birthday present. But he never gave it to me.”
Her face softened. She sat beside me and started reading some of the papers scattered over the floor. “Oh honey, this is… wow.” She bit her lip and her eyes filled with tears.
Unable to speak, I nodded and unfolded another paper.
The way you look at me.
The way you say my name, almost like you’re singing it.
Paper after paper held compliments about me. I kept reading, anticipating the giant “but” to come. Was Bones blind to all of the many bad things about me? If he noticed the way I stare at the ceiling when I think, why couldn’t he see what a hot mess I was inside? Maybe he could. Maybe that’s why he pushed me away. Maybe he knew all the horrible things I was capable of… all the repulsive things I’d done.
“It’s like he sees you, Ari. He sees who you really are inside.” Markie smiled up at me, wiping tears from her cheeks. “We’ll find him. It’ll all work out. You’ll see.”
Only it wouldn’t, because Bones hadn’t given me this present. He was gone now, and we had no plan for getting him back. And none of these papers told the truth about me. I suddenly needed her to know how wrong she was.
“I slept with Trent.” The words bubbled out of me like carbonation from shaken soda, ruining everything in sight with the sticky truth no amount of sugar could hide.
Markie’s brow furrowed. “What? Trent?”
“Trent Rodgers. Your boyfriend. I slept with him while you were away at college.”
Markie shook her head, growling in frustration. “Trent? While I was in college? Ari, you were sixteen.” She stiffened. “Did he—”
“He didn’t drug me, if that’s what you’re about to ask. He didn’t force me either. I was drunk, but it was all me. I slept with your boyfriend.”
Her eyes flashed with pain, then anger. “You were underage. He was an adult.”
The words broke some sort of dam, releasing an emotional tidal wave that crashed into me. I was worried about Bones, frustrated he hadn’t given me this birthday present, confused about us, but most of all I was angry everyone refused to see me for the monster I was.
“I knew what I was doing. I was pissed at you and Trent was hot. I couldn’t believe it when he kissed me. I wanted to be with him, Markie. I wanted to hurt you the way you’d hurt me by leaving.”
“He was twenty, Ari. I don’t care how willing you were, there are laws—”
“Laws that I broke to be with him. Because I wanted to hurt you. That’s what kind of sister I am. That’s the real me, Markie. Not all this shit.” I gestured at the papers.
She winced. “You were a minor. He should be in jail for taking advantage of you.”
I laughed and stood, tears still rolling down my cheeks. “Taking advantage of me? Get it through your head. I screwed your boyfriend and I loved every minute of it. Yeah, Trent used me, but I used him, too. He made me feel sexy and wanted. I used Matt for the same reason, and I would have used Bones if he’d have let me. But apparently he figured me out, because he never…”
My voice cracked at the lie. Bones was different. I knew he was different, because even now I couldn’t get his face or his voice out of my mind. It was like they were etched in there permanently, taunting me with memories of the man I’d never be good enough to be with. The man who was probably dead by now while Angel made phone calls.
“Ari—”
“Ohmigod, Markie, get it through your brain. You know what I tried to do last night? I called Matt, because I wanted him to pick me up and get me so high I’d never come down. Does that sound like the person Bones is talking about in these?” I kicked over the glass jar. It thudded against the carpet but didn’t break.
She reached for me.
“Don’t touch me.” I jumped back, barely avoiding her.
Angel came rushing out of his room. He froze in the doorway, taking in the scene.
“I need to get out of here.” Seconds away from imploding and turning my sister into collateral damage, I grabbed my purse and headed for the door.
“Ari, please don’t go,” Markie said. “You’re my sister and I love you. I don’t care what you and Trent did. It’s in the past. It doesn’t define you. Stay. Please.”
I couldn’t. My chest hurt and I couldn’t even handle myself anymore. I paused long enough to tell her good-bye, before slipping out.
“Ari, please—”
I shut the door before she could finish, escaped out the garage entrance, and hopped on the first bus that arrived. I had no clue where it was going, but I didn’t care. I needed to get as far away from that jar as I could. Tears kept rolling down my face as I thought of Bones. He’d written all those things about me. Yet he didn’t know me at all. Not the real me. If he did, he sure wouldn’t have given himself up to save me.
There was no saving me, and I needed to get away from the people I loved before I hurt them even more than I already had. The bus merged into traffic. Bones needed me, and I was running away. That’s the kind of person I was. They’d be better off without me.
Landmarks passed, blurring together through a sheen of tears which refused to stop. People were staring, but I didn’t care. Memories of Bones assaulted me, each one more painful than the last. He’d written down all those things about me—like I was his freaking world—then pushed me away before giving it to me. Why?
How could I leave him? He didn’t leave me.
The bus passed a park I recognized. I wiped back tears and squinted at street signs until I confirmed we were on West Lake Mead Boulevard. I suddenly knew exactly what to do. Two stops later, I got off and sprinted the block-and-a-half left, feeling hopeful for the first time since Natalia had taken Bones. By the time I reached the complex I was out of breath and overwhelmed by emotion. I dragged myself to the door and knocked.
No answer.
So close. I was so close and…
Unwilling to give up, I knocked again. Movement on the other side of the door brought another wave of tears to my eyes.
Nonna answered. She took one look at my face and ushered me into her apartment.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Bones
I AWOKE TO darkness. My head throbbed in time to some dub-step beat in the distance while I sat on a hard surface with my arms pulled uncomfortably behind me. My own stale breath was recycled through the fibers of the dark cloth over my head. I tried to move but hard plastic restraints bit into my wrists and ankles.
The cloth was ripped from my head, creating a small static charge. Bright light blinded me, bouncing from eye to eye. I squinted, pulling against my restraints. The light clicked off, leaving me in the faint glow of overhead bulbs. I blinked to clear the glare spots from my eyes and breathed deeply through my nose. I could smell engine oil, rubber, something floral and feminine. As my vision cleared, the globs in front of me separated into two vehicles: the white van they’d brought me in and the black Camry that had been tailing me.
Before I could absorb more clues about where the hell I was, the metal barrel of a gun pressed against my temple. “Hello, Franco.”
“Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you,” she said.
“Because you want to talk to me. Almost as much as I want to talk to you.”
She laughed. “Oh yeah? What gives you that idea?”
I thought back to the times I’d seen the black Camry trailing me. She’d known how to find me, and I wasn’t deluded enough to believe I could dodge a sniper’s bullet. “You could have killed me, but instead you went through a lot of trouble to get me here. The question is, why?” I turned so I could see her expression.
Natalia looked to be maybe eighteen and wore a blue sweater and slim-fit jeans stuffed into black knee-high boots. Her long dark hair was loose and messy, and her high cheekbones, plump lips, and dark eyes bore a striking resemblance to a picture Pops had shown me years ago—a picture of his mom. Natalia looked a hell of a lot like family.
“Don’t look at me,” she said. Her eyes glistened with tears as she shoved the pistol harder into my head, forcing my gaze off her. “You’d be dead already if you didn’t look so much like him.”
Apparently I resembled family, too. I had a pretty good idea who she was talking about, but needed the verbal confirmation. “Like who?”
“My dad. Our dad.” She sniffed. “You look just like I remember.”
That shocked me. “You remember his face?” I did the math in my head. “You couldn’t have been more than four or five when he disappeared.”
Her shoulders dropped.
This time she let me look at her. I couldn’t help but compare her to the photo of my grandmother. Same eyebrows, same dark, haunted eyes, same stubborn jaw, the resemblance was uncanny. “I had no idea you even existed until recently. And I wasn’t certain who you were until I saw you. You really remember Pops?”
She nodded.
I’d been ten when the old man split and I could barely remember what he looked like. “I don’t believe you.”
Her jaw jutted out and anger flashed in her eyes. “I remember everything. He used to bounce me on his knee and call me principessa. He had the greatest smile, and he always smelled like gun oil and tobacco. He used to kiss my forehead and tuck me in.” She angrily brushed a tear away.
“Sounds like a great guy, but doesn’t sound like Pops at all. Well, maybe the gun oil and tobacco smell, but that’s the standard wiseguy cologne.”
“Gino Leone was a good father,” she said.
I snorted. “I’ll have to take your word for it. I rarely saw the bastard.”
Her expression hardened. “Don’t you dare talk about him like that!”
Natalia’s tone and posture grated on my nerves. After being robbed of a childhood with my old man, I felt entitled to a little anger. “No matter what you remember, Pops wasn’t some stand-up guy. He was a liar who cheated on his wife, abandoned his kids, and informed on the Durante family. He was almost solely responsible for your mother’s family’s demise. You should hate him even more than I do.”
“And you should hate the asshole who killed him, but your nose is so far up Carlo Mariani’s ass you can’t even—”
“Carlo?” I asked. “You think Carlo killed Pops?”
“I don’t think. I know he did.”
I shook my head, exasperated by how stupid she had to be to believe that. Sure, I had my own questions for Carlo… questions about why he hadn’t told me anything about Pops. Clearly he and my old man had been working together, and I couldn’t figure out why he’d kept the details of their arrangement from me. Sure, he’d sent me to Martin, who’d pretty much filled me in, but not telling me himself was kind of a dick move. Regardless of what he’d kept from me, I still couldn’t see Carlo’s motivation for taking out Pops.
“I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but you’re wrong,” I said. “Pops was a spy inside the Durante family. He was feeding information to the Mariani family. Why would Carlo kill him?”
“Listen, bro,” she said. “The Durantes were gone. Dad had outlived his usefulness. Carlo gave him one last task… ordered him to kill Joey. Joey was six at the time and my mom was taking care of him.”
As she spoke, the scene played out in my mind. Pops had been a lot of things, but he wasn’t a child-killer. Especially not if the woman he loved enough to leave his family for asked him to spare the kid. Carlo wouldn’t take that well. Would he kill Pops over it? Possibly.
My stomach sank at the thought. Carlo was a ruthless son-of-a-bitch, but he’d taken me under his wing.
“You don’t know, do you?”
Natalia’s tone had softened, making her question sound a lot like pity, which just pissed me off. Carlo had trained me, taught me, hell, he’d basically raised me. I knew in my head he’d done these things to benefit the family, but somewhere deep down I thought we’d connected. He’d been more like a father to me than Pops had. All this time, was he just keeping an eye on his loose ends? Keeping me reined in and making sure I didn’t find out the truth and turn on him?
Pissed, I fired back with, “I remember very little about Pops, probably because he was so damn busy with his other family. While he was sitting you on his lap and calling you princess, he was bailing on my school conferences and missing family dinners. I was ten years old when he disappeared. One day, he just didn’t bother coming home anymore. He left us with nothing. If Carlo wouldn’t have stepped in and offered me a job, we would have starved. I was a kid and had to provide for the family Pops bailed on. So no, I’m not ready to jump on your bandwagon yet. Hell, I don’t even know for sure the old man’s dead. He could be off with a third family somewhere.”
I glared up at Natalia, challenging, and she glared back. After a few moments, the pressure of the gun against my head eased, and then disappeared. She walked behind me, and I wondered if she planned to shoot me in the back or just clock me over the head. Metal scraped against concrete as she dragged a chair back into my line of sight and sat in front of me, weapon still in hand and pointed in my general direction. Her scowl was gone.
She tugged something out of her pocket: a wristwatch. Unlike the platinum Rolexes worn by most mobsters, this was a black Concord with a rubber band. Its simple yet unique design was easy to recognize, especially since I’d been with Pops when he’d purchased it. It had set him back over two large, and I’d asked him why he’d spent so much on a watch with a rubber band.
“You can tell a lot about a man by his timepiece,” Pops said, securing it around his wrist.
“What does this one say about you?” I asked.
He smiled down at me. “Quality and functionality; not a cheap piece of shit, but not the main man, either. I work with my hands, Son, and I don’t need anything that catches the light or clanks against my wrist when I’m… working.”
The rare memory of Pops spending time with me formed a lump in my throat. I swallowed past it and asked, “Where did you get that?”
“Mom. About a month ago she disappeared for a couple of days and when she came back, she had this. Said she’d met with an old friend who gave it to her and told her Carlo had killed dad.”
I couldn’t stop staring at the watch. If Pops was truly dead, then whoever killed him should have taken the thing and hocked it. That’s what I would have done. I had an agreement with a guy off Stewart Avenue, who knew my previous owners never came looking for their shit. He’d give me at least five hundred for the watch. Wiseguys didn’t give up a penny, much less five hundred bucks. No way would they just hand it over to the mistress. But if that wasn’t Pops’s watch, someone had gone to a lot of trouble to replicate it.
Natalia shifted, stuffing the watch back in her pocket. “By the way, Dad didn’t bring down the Durantes. Mom said Great Uncle Maurizio was a monster who never should have been made into the Capo di capi. Everyone was scared of him. Half of his own family was feed
ing secrets to the Mariani family, and Carlo Mariani promised to protect everyone who turned on Maurizio. But Carlo’s a snake.” She spat. “He took out every single one of them.”
My stomach sank. “What happened to your mom?”
Natalia dropped her gaze to the gun in her hands. “She was murdered right after she gave me Dad’s watch.”
“Which is why you’re here.” Everything clicked into place. “You think Carlo had her killed.”
“I know he did,” she growled. “Mom knew a lot of secrets about Carlo… broken promises, lies, where he buried the bodies of people he swore to protect. She should have gone to the Mariani boss years ago, but she didn’t know whether Carlo was acting on his orders or flying solo.”
It didn’t matter. Even if the boss had no clue what Carlo was doing, Ambra Durante never would have made it in to see him. “Is that your plan? Go to the boss and tell him his uncle broke his promises to your dead family?”
She shook her head and her eyes hardened. “No.”
When she didn’t elaborate, I asked, “You gonna kill him?”
She shook her head. “No. Death is too good for him. I want Carlo to live while I kill the person who matters to him most.”
Did anyone really matter to Carlo? He’d throw his own life away for the good of the family. Constanza, though… he’d be lost without her. He played it off like she was just a housekeeper, but I was certain there was more to them than that. I liked Constanza, and would hate to see her caught up in this mess.
“You think you can go up against Carlo?” I snorted. “You’re suicidal.”
“He won’t even know what hit him,” Natalia replied.
She was going for surprise? “Too late for that, don’t you think?”
Her brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Carlo knows you guys are here. Well, at least Joey.”
She froze. “How does he know about Joey?”
“You can’t drop dope in this city and expect Carlo not to find out about it. Because of Joey’s little stunt—”
Breaking Bones (Mariani Crime Family #2) Page 19
