“Evan’s been asking about you,” says Gayle as we sit.
“Evan?” asks Rebecca. “The slime ball?”
Evan. My ex-husband. The first man who played with my emotions and spat me out a wreck, but that was only for a short while, until I realized what a snake he really is and how lucky I am to have dodged that bullet.
“What did he want?”
“He said he missed you, can you believe it?”
I groan. “I so don’t want to see him. Is he still with that blonde? His secretary?”
“I have no idea,” says Gayle. “My interest in his life and whereabouts is zero.”
“Kerry, girl. Talk to us,” says Rebecca. “You went missing without a word. Chloe said you had to move and that she couldn’t say more. It was kinda hurtful, especially to Gayle. She’s been a mess. Then Chloe went and disappeared too.”
“Yeah, Mom told me. When was that?”
“About a year ago,” says Gayle. “Everything seemed normal, and then she was just gone. She left a note in her apartment, but it just said she was fine, and it was too weird. Something just didn’t add up. Her folks were desperate. It’s been a mess.”
“A… a year?” After I disappeared to Canada. Ice trickles through my veins. No, it has to be a coincidence, why would she—
Christian.
Christian would be looking for me. Christian knew she and I were close.
Nausea rises in me and my head spins. No no no!
“Gotta— bathroom,” I squeak, jump to my feet and rush up the stairs. Throwing open the toilet lid, I empty my stomach of the wine, and the sandwich I had earlier. Sweaty and spent, I fall back, leaning against the bathtub. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, then I smear out my makeup as I try to dry the tears off my cheeks.
It’s him. Of course it’s him.
A knock on the door makes me flinch and my heart jumps to my throat. “One moment,” I shout. I get to my feet and look at the flushed mess that is my face. Oh fuck.
“Ker?”
“Coming! I just got something in my eye.” I wash my face in ice cold water and then rub it dry as I unlock the door.
Gayle’s wise, light-gray eyes regard me. “Talk to me. What happened to you?”
I study her new face, the unfamiliar jewelry, the dyed hair, before I sink back to the floor and pull up my legs, hugging my knees. “I’m dangerous, Gayle.”
She crouches before me. “What do you mean?”
“There are people in my life who would hurt me if I talk.”
Gayle’s face turns serious. “What? Why? What did you get yourself into?”
“There’s a world out there we aren’t supposed to know about. Ruthless monsters. I met a man, and I thought we had something. He turned out to be someone else. Dangerous. He stalked me. I had to run.”
My friend shakes her head so the black, spiky tresses bounce. “You’re not making sense. Are these not people? Monsters?”
I grip her arm, tight. “They’re mafia,” I whisper, “I tried to, but I can never get out.”
Gayle pales. “Kerry… you’re scaring me.”
“I’m scared too. Day and night.”
“Cecilia,” she says, “is she… his? This man’s?”
I cringe and look at my feet, then I nod, whispering, “Yes.”
Gayle puts her hand over her mouth, widening her eyes. “Oh my God. But you’re back? Are you safe now?”
A half-hysterical laugh escapes me. I hug my knees tighter and rock back and forth, trying to calm my racing heart. “Please, don’t ask more,” I manage to grit out, fighting new tears that threaten to soak my cheeks.
“Can I do something? Anything?”
I look up at my friend, my old friend, and new friend by the looks of it. “Just be my girl again? I thought I’d lost you all, for sure. I’ve been so lonely. I can’t pull you into my shit, but I need you so bad.”
“Of course,” she says and throws her arms around me. “Always.” Then she pulls back, and grabs my shoulder, holding me at arm’s length. “What do we tell Rebecca?”
“Not everything! Not that word I mentioned. She’s a little…”
“Gossip-y?” suggests Gayle.
“Yes!” I laugh. “I was gonna say chatty, but yeah, that.”
“We’ll trim it down to a Rebecca-sized truth. Don’t worry. You wanna come down? Or are you done for the night?”
I get to my feet. “No! Give me wine. I think I got some tequila somewhere. Probably some years old, but—”
“There’s my Kerry!”
The rest of the night is drama free. Between the two of us, we serve Rebecca as much of the truth we think she can handle. We eat and they update me on everything that’s happened in their lives since we last saw each other. I sit opposite Gayle and struggle with the twinges of guilt.
After the main course, and a couple glasses of wine, I’m beginning to relax. Rebecca has found a steady acting gig in a TV-show and has a new boyfriend who snores like a troll and she is seriously considering getting rid of him for that reason only. Gayle offers repeatedly to let ‘the poor man’ sleep in her bed, because apparently he’s an Adonis, and they engage in a lively discussion about what’s hot and what’s not in a man.
Gayle plays bass in a band, and makes us listen to their mix of grunge, punk, and rock on Spotify. It’s not bad, and I promise myself that I’ll listen with a little more focus some other day, because tonight I’m not quite here.
I sit with my mouth open and listen to their chatter. They seem so young. Was I like that once? Before I met a tall, dark man who turned my life upside down.
I feel so old.
When they leave, I’m exhausted, drunk off my ass, and my chest filled with joy.
Until I close the door and tonight’s realization comes rushing back. Christian is somehow behind Chloe’s disappearance.
His black eyes burn in me that night, through sleepless hours, and deep into my dreams. They filled with rage and regret, hope and fear.
I wish I could have asked him.
Chapter 15
New York
Angela Russo
“You’re thin as a stick, brother.”
His eyelids flutter, but he doesn’t wake. He sleeps a lot, my big brother. Or, he used to be big. Now he’s nothing but a shadow. My chest clenches with worry at what will become of him. Will he ever be himself again? My strong hero and protector. Chris has been both my mother and my father through my whole life.
I poke him. “Hey, dude. You gotta eat some. I made you a smoothie. It’s got kale, and carrots, soya milk, three raw eggs, and a ton of fresh strawberries.”
“I’m not a fucking rabbit,” he mutters, and I exhale with relief. As long as there is snark in Christian Russo, there’s hope.
“Well, from where I’m sitting, you’re helpless as a baby, and you do what I tell you.”
He opens one intense, deep brown eye and regards me. “Or what, sis?”
“Or you’ll starve to death. You’ll get bed sores and die in your own shit while flies feast on your rotten flesh.”
“You’re as charming as ever.”
I laugh. “Always.”
“I’ve missed your laugh, Ang. Everything is always so fucking serious.”
“It’s always life and death with us, isn’t it?”
“It’s the way of the Russos.”
“The Russo way sucks. I don’t ever wanna see you in a hospital bed again. You scared us. You scared me!”
He pushes himself up until he half-sits against the big fluffy pillows behind his back. We’re at Nathan’s. The room is big and bright, the ceiling high, the floorboards a beautiful light wood, a whole wall of windows with a sliver of a view of the Hudson river, right now covered in long white curtains. The bedside table is filled with half-full glasses of water and crumpled tissue.
“I scared myself good too.”
“What happened? Who’s Kerry? You keep talking about Kerry in your sleep.”
> He flinches as he reaches for a glass of water. “I don’t fucking talk in my sleep!”
I hold out the smoothie for him.
“Keep your kale to yourself, you hippie. A real man needs steak.”
I shrug and take a long sip of it myself, shuddering. Not my best work. “You talk all the time. Kerry, Cecilia. Storm. Water. Middlebro. When you sleep you’re a babbling mess.”
Christian groans and closes his eyes, falling back against the pillows. “You might as well forget you heard that. It’s not gonna go anywhere anyway.”
“Who are they?”
He opens his eyes, and the depth of the despair in them makes a shiver run across my back. “What am I, Angela?”
“My… brother?”
“What am I?”
I swallow. “I— I don’t understand.”
“What do I do?” he growls, so loud that I twitch.
“You’re a hitman for Uncle. Is that what you want me to say?” I spit.
“And as such, what do I do?”
A chill settles in the pit of my belly. These are the things I never want to touch, never want to acknowledge. “Kill people,” I whisper. “You kill people.”
He’s silent.
“This Kerry… is this someone you killed?” My voice barely carries. This feels important. Whatever it is, this has had a profound impact on my God-like brother. It’s as if a piece of his soul is missing, as if his aura is flickering, being consumed.
“No. She’s alive, but I might as well have killed her.”
“What did you do?”
He grabs my hands, clutches them in his large paws. “I hurt her bad, Ang. Really bad. I don’t know if she’ll ever forgive me.”
“What did you do. Tell me everything.”
“It’s… it’s too dirty.”
I scoff. “If you lived it, if she lived it, I can fucking hear it. Tell me, or I’ll force feed you kale. I have the fridge stocked.”
“You’re an evil bitch.”
“I’ve learned from the best, bro.”
Seeing my brother clenched up, his gaze empty, tears me to pieces. I caress his thick hair, longer than I’ve ever seen it before, as I stare emptily at the tattooed cross on his forearm. Religion. God. These Italian macho men all go to church and pray and make their confessions, then they go out and keep hurting people. It’s all such a farce.
“She was a hit. Luci ordered me to kill her because she knew something she shouldn’t. But she was beautiful, Ang, inside and out, just amazing. I couldn’t. I should have stayed away, but I couldn’t. She… I seduced her. I don’t think I gave her an option to be honest.”
My heart speeds up, the faint memories of the rape threatening to resurface from deep into that dark void where I’ve pushed them.
“Tell me you didn’t force yourself on her,” I exclaim.
He twitches and looks up at me. “No. Fuck no. It wasn’t like that.” He looks over my shoulder, at the windows, and his gaze turns distant.
I wait for him to continue, pushing and pushing to put the lid back in place. I can be okay for months at a time, and then something triggers me, and it rips me right back to when I was a proper little sixteen-year-old, very naive, very Catholic, very, very stupid and trusting of an old neighbor.
“What was it like, then?”
“After… I had to kill her anyway. Luci, he—” Christian gives me a look that makes yet another shudder run through me. “He didn’t give me a choice.”
“That’s sick. You slept with her and then you were gonna kill her? Like what? Right there, in bed?”
I’m nauseous. How can I love Christian, and Nathan, and my other two brothers, Matteo and Luca, knowing what they are? Am I just as sick as them?
He groans. “No. Anyway, I failed. She beat the crap out of me. Shot me, nearly killed me.”
“Oh! Was that when you were in the hospital last time?”
“Oh yes,” he sighs.
“One day your luck will run out, Chris.”
“It already has,” he says darkly. “Turns out we made a baby that night, a little girl who’s my spitting image. Long story short, she ran from me, I followed. I found her, in Canada, shit happened, and some good stuff too. And here I am.”
“You have a daughter? Is it Cecilia? Oh my God. Where are they now?”
“Apparently she’s back home.”
“San Francisco?”
He nods.
“You gotta go see her. Them.”
“No. You don’t understand. She thinks I’m dead. For two fucking years my existence made her life hell. You didn’t see her, she was a shadow of her former self.”
“So are you.”
He shrugs. “She’s finally free. She’s better off.”
“But you don’t wanna hurt her again? Right?”
“Fuck no!”
“Then explain to her—”
“No!”
“What the fuck? You’re so stubborn. All of you. You’re hopeless.”
“Unlike you, sis?”
I stick out my tongue at him.
“Angela, I’ll just hurt her more. It’s all I do. I can’t be the man she needs.”
“There’s good in you, Christian! You have to believe that.”
“I don’t do your New Age stuff. I don’t believe in shit like that. You are what you are. I’m a monster.”
“New Age,” I scoff, “that’s so the eighties.”
“Vegan shit, then? Buddhism. Whatever. A man is defined by his actions. My actions speak loud and clear. I can’t ever go near them again or I’ll destroy them.”
“I think she’s already there.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nate said she went to see Salvatore.”
Christian’s eyes darken, but he doesn’t answer.
“And you two have a child together, a Russo. I think she’s already there, in the dark. She’s in the worst shit imaginable if Salvatore’s got his eye on her. And he has, you know it.”
Christian suddenly sits up, sweat beading on his forehead. “Give me that smoothie, but you gotta get me some real proteins too, red meat. I need to get back on my fucking feet.”
I stand. “Now we’re talking. There’s my brother. I wondered who that whining puddle in bed was.”
A wicked grin spreads on his face and I see a little bit of myself in there, in the dark determination to get what I want. Whatever it is he needs to do, he’ll do it. There are no other options.
“Ang,” he says, “you’re fucking brilliant.”
“I know. You owe me one.”
“No. I owe you a million. Now go get me some real food, woman!”
Kerry
‘I used to think of him a lot because I felt like I had to in order to survive. I needed to keep my focus and never forget. Now I have moved back home, where the open ocean soothes my need for air and the bright sky lifts me up. It helps a little. No. It helps a lot. But he still lingers.
He’s dead. So why do I keep feeling this pain? Why doesn’t it go away?
It hurts just as much every time as I see him throw himself after her before disappearing into the ravine. He gave his LIFE for her…
And how did I treat him? What did I make of his last days? Cecilia’s father.
God. I’ll never be free, will I?’
“Kerry!”
I spin around when I hear the all too well-known voice, light and slightly raspy. A ghost from the past. Cecilia is asleep in the stroller, I’m walking along the docks, enjoying the sun, warm on my face, and the scent of salt in the air.
“Evan,” I say, trying to come up with some measure of polite enthusiasm.
He throws his arms around me and scoops me into a tight hug, way too tight, sending me into a coughing fit. Evan takes a step back, but a hand remains on my shoulder, making my skin crawl, his eyes darting between me and Cecilia.
I shrug off his hand and look him over. He’s got a receding hairline and has shaved his head to a short blond
stubble to maybe hide the fact. He was always vain. A thick blond beard covers the lower half of his face. His blue eyes glitter. Evan is thinner than I remember him, and a few wrinkles have appeared on his forehead. He’s still handsome, but I can’t for the life of me remember why I ever saw anything in him. I married him out of convenience that I mistook for love in my young naivety.
I’m still not sure I know what ‘love’ is, except for the love for a child, but I sure as hell know passion, and that’s something he and I never had between us.
“Fancy meeting you here!” he exclaims, still cheerily. “I haven’t seen you in ages! Doing well, I see. Who’s the lucky father?”
I freeze. “What’s up, Evan? What are you doing down here in the middle of a work day? I thought you catered to the high and mighty over in the fancier districts, selling them ridiculously expensive apartments.”
“Yeah, I… That didn’t— Hey, let’s go grab a coffee! Come on.”
I really don’t want to, but I can’t see a way out of it. What harm is a coffee anyway? We spent eight years together, five as married, and he still pays me enough every month to keep me afloat, almost to the point where I’ve begun to feel guilty about it. One more year, then I’m gonna have to start fending for myself in earnest.
“Sure.” I nod and force a smile.
“Fantastic!”
We turn our backs to the docks and begin walking side by side. “A kid, Kerry! My God. I didn’t know you’d married! Honestly… I think our agreement on the money—”
“I’m not married,” I say quickly. “There’s no father.”
Evan side-eyes me and frowns. “Really. That’s not like you.”
“You don’t know what’s like me anymore, Evan. Things happen, sometimes they don’t go as planned.”
His gaze darkens. “Tell me about it.”
An unease creeps into my stomach. There’s a tension in him, something different, an underlying sense of desperation.
“So, does the father pay up at least?”
“He’s dead,” I snap.
Evan’s mouth forms into an O, and for a moment he looks like a fish out of water. “I’m sorry,” he says, and he does sound like he means it, making me soften a little. This is just Evan, after all. He’s not inherently bad, just really stupid. He cheated on me, sure, but I’m lucky our marriage ended, I’d have been miserable in the long run.
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