Chapter 3
3
SAMANTHA
I give up pretending to sleep and sit on the couch, hugging my pillow. It’s well after midnight, and the storm outside is finally letting up. At least the snow has stopped; the wind continues to blow, buffeting the double-pane windows in strong blasts that make my fingers clench.
He killed her.
He actually fucking killed her.
Every time I close my eyes, I see Eliza’s face—her dark curls, her hot-chocolate eyes, her strong nose that could have been the model for any statue of Caesar through the ages.
Elisabetta and Giorgia and Gianni and me—four cousins crowded into the Canna house on Gateshead Court. Four children growing up amid the casual cruelty of Philadelphia’s Mafia crime.
Eliza’s father, my uncle, was one of Don Antonio’s favorite capos. From the moment Eliza took her First Communion, she knew she was promised to the Mafia boss.
Don Antonio spoiled her. Sent her to Sacred Heart Academy. Paid for piano lessons, and when Eliza hated those, for voice lessons, and painting lessons too. He bought her an Arabian gelding and hired someone to teach her to ride.
I was jealous, but I knew not to argue. I was a ten-year-old orphan, taken in by my aunt and uncle. I still had nightmares about my parents’ car exploding, blowing out all the windows of our home, even mine on the second floor.
To this day, I have scars from the glass—a tangle ghosting my hairline, on my right temple. I’ll never forget waving to my parents as they headed to the opera. My mother looked back for one last air-kiss as my father started the engine.
Even when I was ten, I heard the whispers. My father was a rat. My mother was a whore. They got what was coming to them. They knew the rules.
Sitting on my couch now, I close my eyes and Eliza is laughing the way she did when we were little girls, hunting for Easter baskets on a chilly spring morning.
She’s crying with me, for me, the night my parents died.
She’s stern with me, earnest, helping me to flee That Night.
She’s begging, pleading, praying for Don Antonio to spare her life.
He shot his way into the room where she was hiding. Was the muzzle of his gun still hot when he shoved it into her body? How fast did she die? How long did her neurons fire in unimaginable pain?
I press my thighs together and bury my face in my pillow and try not to think anymore.
The knocking wakes me—urgent and loud. I scramble for the pepper spray in my nightstand drawer before I realize I’m sprawled on my couch. The sun streaming through my living room windows is blinding, the sky a brilliant, knife-like blue.
The banging turns steady—solid, determined blows like someone is taking a battering ram to my front door. My pulse rattles my eardrums as I peer through the fisheye peephole.
Fuck.
I don’t recognize the man slamming his shoulder against my door. I don’t know the two guys behind him either, the ones with their hands suggestively reaching across their bodies, to shoulder holsters beneath their coats.
But I know their type.
And I know the man standing behind them , immaculate in an Armani suit and Testoni shoes, with a day-old haircut that must have cost him five hundred bucks.
Don Antonio.
My gut turns to water. I’m not sure if I’m shaking from terror or fury. But I’m certain if I don’t open my door, the muscle man will eventually tear it off its hinges.
I swallow hard. I raise my chin. And I swing the door wide.
For one insane second, I think about greeting him: “Uncle Tony!” I could throw my arms around him like we’re old friends, hug him like any other man I’ve known since I was in diapers.
Instead, I shoot an apologetic smile down the hall to Mrs. Samson, who’s glaring from her front door, clearly agitated by the noise. Caleb’s watching too, shushing his husband as they both gape at the live-action drama in the corridor. I step back, because keeping Don Antonio and his East Falls Crew in the hallway can only make things worse.
I’m hit by a wave of Acqua di Parma cologne. It’s the same scent my father wore. All of Don Antonio’s men copy him. The citrus-and-wood scent marks a territory, like Russo-family piss.
I watch my cousin’s killer catalog my home. He glances at Braiden’s shoes by the door. At the pair of plain white dishes on the kitchen counter. At the single wine glass and the empty bottle of Barolo.
He takes in my nest of blankets on the couch.
And then he studies me.
“Giovanna,” he says.
I swallow. “How did you find me?”
“I have always known where you live.”
Like everything else Don Antonio has ever said, this simple statement of fact sounds like a threat. In an instant, I realize I’ve spent the past eleven years lying to myself.
My name. My address. My career. I thought I was building on a foundation of stone after That Night, but a tidal wave just washed everything out to sea.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“I made a promise to my wife. And now I’m here to keep it.”
“A— a promise?” I hate that my voice shakes. There is literally nothing I want to know about Don Antonio’s relationship with my cousin.
“I told Elisabetta she would die if I ever found her with another man. And I told her I would take a second wife before her body was in the grave. I told her I would marry you if she ever betrayed me.”
We’re standing in Dover, Delaware. This is the twenty-first century. We’re miles and decades from the scrub-brush hills of Sicily, from the sun-baked towns where the Mafia launched its reign of terror.
But I believe every word Don Antonio says. I believe he threatened my cousin with my safety. And I believe he’ll take me now, marry me against my will, just to prove he can. Controlling me will keep everyone else in line, all the men and women who must obey Don Antonio without question.
Still, I have to try.
“I don’t know what happened between you and Eliza?—”
“Elisabetta.”
“W— with Elisabetta. I don’t know what fight you two had?—”
“Do not treat me like a stupid child. You heard me kill your cousin. You heard why.”
I have to concede the point. But still I argue: “We were talking, but she dropped her phone. I heard her fighting with someone, but I don’t know who that was. I don’t know what happened.”
“Giovanna,” he says again, and now my name is drenched with scorn. “You are supposed to be a very good lawyer. Very good lawyers tell lies for a living. You must be capable of lying better than this.”
“There was a noise,” I say, bargaining for my life. “I think a gun went off. But that could have been an accident. A mistake.”
“There was no mistake. I put my Beretta in the figa of my lying, cheating wife. I let her finish her prayers, because I am a generous man. And then I pulled the trigger, exactly the way I warned her I would if I ever caught her fucking another man.”
Sweet Jesus .
He only says these things out loud because he knows he can’t be caught. The men standing behind him don’t even blink; they don’t shift their weight. I’m powerless here. Trapped by a madman.
“I told Elisabetta,” he says. “And now I’m telling you. We will be married tonight, in the church of Santa Caterina.”
“I can’t marry you!”
“Get your things,” he says, as if I haven’t spoken. “One suitcase will suffice. You and Elisabetta are nearly the same size. You can wear her clothes, once you’re home.”
I’m a lawyer, not a doormat. I need to make an argument he can understand. One he can accept, that gives him a way to back down in front of his men.
“I’m not a virgin. Your wife must be pure.”
He purses his lips and makes a dismissive sound. “My first wife was chaste when we wed, and see where I am now. This time, I will take a used cow. One that knows the road home.”
For all the emotion in his voice, he honestly might be talking about livestock, or maybe a second-hand car. He stares at me, his chin carved out of limestone, his eyes shadowed like stagnant pools.
“I can’t,” I whisper. “I won’t.”
“You will,” he says. “Or I will send a man to Gateshead Court. Your old nanny, Bettina, she still lives there. She has arthritis in her hands and knees. She’s slow to move. She’ll be an easy target.”
Bettina was the only adult in that house who ever had a smile for me, who ever spoke a kind word. I know he’ll kill her without blinking. But still, I have to fight. “You’re bluffing,” I say.
His lips twitch as he shakes his head. “You always were a spirited girl. I will tame that soon enough.”
He reaches into his breast pocket. For one heart-stopping moment, I think he’s going for a gun, but he pulls something even more dangerous.
A phone.
He taps the screen, placing a call through the speaker.
“Boss?” says an unknown man.
“Go to the Canna house on Gateshead Court. In thirty minutes, shoot the old woman who lives in the basement apartment. Take her kneecaps before you kill her. Make it hurt.”
“On my way, Boss.”
The strangled sound in my throat used to contain words.
Don Antonio returns the phone to his pocket. “Once you and I are on the road, I will call him off. So are you taking any personal possessions? The roads are bad, and we must be at Santa Caterina’s by sunset. We leave in five minutes.”