by CD Reiss
“Yeah, hang on.” She gives him the phone.
“Boss.”
“The minute they pick her up, I want you to get over to Vito, in the city.”
The locksmith is standing in the back of his truck, still empty-handed, so I may have to keep my guys here to nail the fucking door shut behind Damiano, but yeah, everything is fucking fine.
“Leave the house alone?” Armando asks.
“You there to protect the furniture?”
“They’re here!” Violetta’s voice comes past Armando’s agreement that no, he’s not there to protect the furniture.
“Verify it’s them, then do what I asked.”
“Got it.” He hands the phone back to my wife.
The locksmith is in the back of the truck, checking another compartment.
“Forzetta.”
“My king.”
“Today will be tricky,” I say. “Things might go wrong. If you asked me a month ago if I could trust a woman—even my wife—to do what we plan today, I would have laughed.”
“You would have been an asshole for it.”
The locksmith jumps off the truck bed with a box in his hand, and my body can barely contain the relief.
“Please be careful today,” I say. “If one hair on your head is hurt, I’ll use the fire of hell to burn down heaven.”
“Can you stop with the drama? I’ll be fine.”
“You’re everything to me.”
“I love you too,” she says. “I have to go.”
“Bene.”
“Bene yourself.” She makes a kissing sound into the phone, and I think this is over, but she continues. “Hang on. Armando wants you.”
The phone gets handed over.
“Boss.” His volume drops and I can hear the floor creak as he walks to the other side of the room. “It’s just Marco.”
Violetta’s safe enough in the car with my uncle. He’s not a soldier or a killer. He doesn’t know how to hurt her. But I expected something different, and I don’t like surprises.
“He says Tavie came along, so with Gia and Paola, Violetta makes six. There’s no room in one car on the way back.”
“She stays home,” I say. “Go get her.”
I hear him doing as I say, saying, “Santino says she can’t go” as a car door opens. My wife grabs the phone and the gravel crunches under her feet as she walks away.
“What the fuck?” she hisses.
“Do not get in that car.”
“Why not?”
The locksmith comes back in, smiling. “Boom!” He holds up the box.
I give him a thumbs-up and leave the room.
“Because I don’t like it and I don’t trust it,” I whisper to Violetta.
“That’s it?”
“What else do you need?”
“Common sense? Reality? Or is this intuition from the same part of your brain that believes some ancient artifact has, like, real power?”
“Do not mock me.”
“Okay, okay… look, I have an idea.”
“No ideas.” I don’t know how to be more clear. She needs to stay home with Armando. Vito will have to do without him. If she leaves with Marco, something bad will happen, and I can’t explain how I know because yes, the knowledge doesn’t come from my mind, but from knees that bent unwillingly and a heart frozen with dread. “I don’t want to hear them.”
“I’ll be alone with him,” she pitches the idea anyway. “I can talk to him. Apologize for last night. Try some diplomacy.”
“No.”
“He’s going to leave without me,” she says in a panic.
“You stay. Put Armando on.”
“This is you being controlling and bossy.”
“This is me protecting the only thing I love in this world,” I snarl, holding back a hurricane of rage.
She takes a deep breath, and I wait for her to argue again. This constant resistance is going to get her killed, and if that happens, starting the war I’m trying to avoid won’t fill a fraction of the hole in my heart.
“Fine,” she says in the growl of a woman agreeing with a clenched jaw.
“Listen,” I say, “you lose sometimes. When we get back, they’ll be married and we’ll fix it. I promise.”
“Stay there and meet him,” she says. “It works without me. I was just there to distract them. My job was to make them think it wasn’t you getting in the way. It’s messier, but all we need to do is make sure they’re not married before you get back with that stupid fucking thing.”
She’s right. Her job was to keep the unwilling bride distracted while I trapped the groom long enough to change everything.
“All right,” I say. “Tell Armando to stay with you.”
“Thank you!” She makes a kissing noise into the phone and hangs up.
This should be a victory. I should see the road clearing in front of me, but something is wrong.
It’s not that Damiano didn’t ask me about last night’s conversation with Marco or Violetta’s announcement. Word must have gotten to him. I have a song and dance ready to go, but he only texted back that he’d come.
He’s getting married today, and he thinks he’s coming here for a renewed blessing. A gift. A smooth path.
He can’t know what we’re planning. Armando doesn’t even know.
And yet… something is wrong.
Something is very, very wrong.
Ten minutes later, a text from the airport terminal comes in. It’s a bill they always send when a flight plan is complete, and in this case, the plane carrying Gia and Paola landed half an hour ago.
29
VIOLETTA
I hang up with Santino and shake my head. They say women are the dramatic ones.
Not that the day’s activities aren’t exciting and theatrical, with high stakes and the prospect of victory for me, someone I care about, and an entire community of people. All that’s true, but the execution on my side’s pretty simple. All I have to do is say stuff. And all Santino has to do is close a door. All we have to do is get to the lawyer’s office in time to get some artifact that’s going to save the world because Santino believes it will.
Then it’ll be okay. But in the meantime, Gia needs me. She’s going to get off that plane terrified and it’s my job to make sure she knows I’m on her side.
Armando approaches, and I wave.
“Santino says to let me go. He says you know what you have to do?”
He nods. “I got it.”
Armando opens the passenger side door of Marco and Anette’s Buick.
“Hey!” I say to Marco, who’s driving alone. “I hear it’s just us?”
“Just us.” Armando closes the door, and Marco heads for the open gate off the property. “Tavie has his aunt Anette.”
The gate clacks closed behind us, and I look back with a string of doubt that maybe I should have listened to Santino.
Too late now.
Marco and I chat about the weather, the traffic, the innocuous events of my party the night before, but the person I’m pretending to be has something on her mind.
“I just wanted to say…” I stop and clear my throat. “I’m really sorry about what I said last night. I didn’t know it was insulting to you, but Santino said it put both of you in a bad position.”
“It’s okay.”
“I know you can make decisions for Gia and I’m sorry I questioned that. I think she’ll be really happy, and I’ve decided I’m going to help her.”
“Don’t you think you’ll be a little busy?” He glances at me, then back at the road. “Someone put a flea in my ear”—he winks—“that there are two people sitting next to me?”
My giggle is only half fake. “Well, it’s early, but… yes!”
“A wedding and a baby! We are truly blessed.”
“Yep.” It’s really easy to sound chipper and excited as long as I focus on my baby and not Gia’s wedding. This whole thing’s going to be a piece of cake. “So she brought
a lot of things back?”
Marco blows his cheeks and exhales, flipping his hand up. “I’ll tell you one thing. She’s already got spending her husband’s money down to a science.”
Good for her.
We’re at the light before we turn onto the bridge when Marco curses. “Cazzo!”
“What?”
“You don’t happen to have the brooch my wife gave to you?”
“It’s home.”
“Gia was very clear. She said she wanted you to bring it for her ‘something borrowed,’ and I forgot. Che stupido.”
“We can grab it on the way back.”
“Yes. Good.” He seems to wave it off, then reconsiders. “I don’t know. She’s been so emotional. Paola says so. Crying over everything like it’s the end of the world. And she said clearly to bring it, but… nah. She has to toughen up.”
Even though I know the marriage will be out the window by tomorrow, I don’t want Gia to accept things she doesn’t want, ever. I also don’t want her to be upset or distracted while I do my song and dance.
“Let’s go get it,” I say. “We have five minutes to spare.”
When we get to the gate and it doesn’t open right away, I remember Armando is gone. I can either lean over Santino’s uncle and punch the keys, or I can tell him the code.
“Keep it running.” I’m out of the car before he even says a word. “It’ll take a half a second!”
I run around the front and punch in the numbers. The gate opens. As I run down the driveway, the sound of the Buick gets quiet in the distance. If he even puts it into park, I don’t hear it in the time it takes me to put in the door code and run into the house, up the stairs, and into the room I keep as my own, even as I sleep in Santino’s. I open the top drawer of the ugly dresser that was owned by an ugly man, and I dig around for the brooch, then remember I left it in the bathroom.
I slap open the jewelry box in the bathroom. Find the brooch face down against the green velvet lining the drawer.
Wouldn’t it be nice if she saw it on me? And I offered it before she asked? No matter what happens after that, we’ll have a moment where we both wanted the same thing and I gave it to her before she asked.
I swing open the gold latch behind the pin, and before I have a chance to lift my head, a voice comes from behind me.
“Happy birthday.” When I look in the mirror, I’m face to face with Damiano Orolio. “If I were you, I wouldn’t move.”
But he’s not me, and he’s not supposed to be here. He’s supposed to be at the River Heights house, so I turn to him. I don’t make it all the way around before he has me painfully by the hair, driving me to my knees.
“I told you,” he says.
“Let me go!” I drop the brooch and clutch for the place where my scalp feels as if it’s being torn off, but he’s shaking me so hard I can’t get a grip.
“Sure.”
I’m launched into the bedroom. Sliding over the slippery floor, my lower back smacks into the corner of a bed leg. The pain is a wake-up call. I need to be faster, stronger, and more afraid.
“I’ll let you go.” I start to get up, but he throws me down, pressing his knee to my back. “When I have what I want, I’ll let you go to the bottom of the fucking river.”
He tugs at my left elbow, and for a second, I can’t figure out what he’s doing. Then I realize my arm is under me, and his weight on my back is keeping it there.
“What. You. Want?” Every word is a breath I can barely get out.
“Your ring.” He grunts, but won’t relieve the pressure.
I don’t give a shit about the ring. It means nothing to me. But Santino said not to let it leave my finger before he even told me why. Understanding the reason is one thing. Now I understand the threat.
“Fuck off.” I wiggle, making it harder for Damiano to take his knee off without losing me.
He gets off me to pull my arm, but though he’s strong, I’m quick enough to get out from under him. I back into the window. There’s nowhere to go, and I have to keep my hands behind me so he can’t get at the ring.
“Why?” I ask.
“You don’t know?” He seems incredulous, simultaneously mocking both my witlessness and the impossibility of my ignorance. I’m a stupid woman who can’t possibly be this stupid.
“The stone. It’s big but—”
“Fuck the rock. He never told you what was engraved inside it?”
I gain nothing by telling him Santino told me everything about the engraving. If Damiano knows, he knows. “No.”
“It’s a license number for a lawyer.” He steps forward. “The one with the appointment you’re going to miss today. And when I get it, I’m going to know where to go and get your inheritance. The one that was promised to me.”
As far as I’m concerned, he can have the ring.
He can have the stupid crown.
But there’s a piece missing to all this.
He can’t just walk into the lawyer’s office and pick up what my father left to me.
Maybe if I was dead, or I was married to him, and neither of those things will happen as long as Santino DiLustro is breathing.
I gasp when I think of it.
Damiano knows where Santino is, but Santino’s waiting for Damiano to show up to a house on the other side of the river. My husband’s a sitting duck.
“I’ll give you the ring,” I say.
One of his eyes narrows. He doesn’t believe me.
I hold my left fist to my chest. “But you call Santino right now. Tell him you’re here. By the time he gets here, you’ll be gone.”
“When he gets here, he’ll be dead.”
Damiano grabs my hand, but I hold the fist tight. We wrestle. I twist and fight. He spins and throws me some direction that could be up, or left, or both and neither. I crash into the dresser. Heavy things fall. The ornate clock. A brass lamp.
He punches me in the face. I see every star in the sky.
“We can do this easy,” he says from the other side of consciousness. “Or we can do it fun.”
The stars fade. I’m leaning on the dresser. I grab a fallen plaster statue of a half-naked woman by the throat and swing wildly, hitting his bicep.
The blow sends him rightward by half an inch, but doesn’t slow his advance.
“Fun then,” he says, slapping me this time, but so hard I’m thrown against the wall.
Swinging wildly, waiting to get hit again, I stumble back into the bathroom. I aim the naked woman for his head, but he sees me coming a mile away. He grabs the statue by the base, yanks it from me, and throws it over his shoulder. A gurgle of nausea pushes up my throat.
“I’m going to get that ring whether I hit you again or not.”
I don’t want to get hit again. I really don’t, but I can’t just hand over the ring. Not now that I know why Santino told me not to.
“Come get it.”
The ease of getting me face down on the floor proves I never had a chance. He was playing with me from the beginning. This time, my left arm isn’t under me. The ring’s stone is inside my fist.
“Open it,” he demands.
On the floor in front of me, three Furies dance on a carved seashell.
“No.”
“I’ll cut your fucking hand off.” He digs his fingertips into the seam between the heel of my hand and my knuckles, peeling open my fist.
It doesn’t hurt, but I scream from the effort it takes to fight him.
“Fuck, you’re a fucking bitch.” He tries to get the ring off, but I won’t uncurl the knuckles.
“You wanted the fun way.” I’m all growls now, watching the Furies frozen in time, knowing I’m going to lose.
“So do you,” he says, bending the entire finger back.
The pain sends a shock from my hand to my heart. My scream goes from effort to agony, and thinking he’s won, Damiano shifts. I snatch the Furies with my right hand, twist, and ram the pin deep into the first exposed body part I fi
nd—his wrist.
His eyes go wide. He leans back, the shell and gold oval flapping in the hinge. “Bitch.”
He’s more mad than in pain, and I’m fucked. I pull out the brooch before he has a chance to do it, and without wasting a second or holding back the force of my entire body, I jam the entire pin into his eye. He screams with the cameo covering his impaled eye, half his gaze covered by the fury of women.
I run out of the room and slam the door closed, snapping the deadbolt Santino used to trap me in that room a million years ago. I’m safe, but I press my back against the opposite wall and slide along it, afraid to turn my back on him.
With a loud pop, the door cracks at the seam. He’s shot out the lock. The deadbolt holds, but the wood around it is shattered. I run and almost make it down the hall, accompanied by the sound of cracking wood behind me. Right before the stairs, my feet are yanked out from under me, and I land on my hands and chest.
“Where you going, little girl?”
I’m dragged back by the ankles. My shirt crawls over my bra as I try to grab for the hall table and miss. My hand drags over the long, splintered bullet hole I shot into the floor. Twisting, I look behind me at my assailant. Damiano’s facing forward, pulling my legs like a plow horse.
“Stop,” I say weakly. I don’t expect him to obey me, but I have to object. “Stop!”
He ignores me and pulls me into my room. I grab the doorjamb just for the sake of resisting. He pulls me hard, but I hold.
“You’re cute,” he says, dropping my ankles.
Whatever he’s about to do next is lost in the sharp beep of the front door opening.
I scrabble up. Damiano grabs me by the back of the neck and pushes me against the wall next to the doorframe.
“Violetta!” Santino calls. The keys slap on the front table.
“Scream,” Damiano hisses, pointing his gun at the place Santino will appear when he follows the sound of my voice. “Do it.”
“You,” I snarl, fighting his entire weight. I can’t see much now, and I realize the eye that isn’t being pushed against the wall is swollen shut.
“Forzetta,” Santino calls from the kitchen casually, as if he expects me to be at the airport, but he’s checking anyway.
