CHAPTER 47
Van
She stirs. I exhale for the first time in what feels like years. Hours, at least. Since she left, was shot, went unconscious.
“Ellie!” I whisper shout. Luna’s best friend is in the room in an instant.
It’s one of her guest rooms in Mark’s house, theirs now, but they’ve brought up the medical equipment from the secret basement.
Luna’s on a monitor and getting an IV of fluids.
Probably overkill but I don’t care. She was so pale on the chopper off that building, so frail. Peaceful and still.
I hated it.
Luna’s eyes crack open.
“Hey,” I say softly.
“Don’t even fucking think about it,” she manages to get out. Her voice is raspy.
“Here,” Ellie offers my wife water from a straw.
“Is it poison?” Luna spits, eyeing her friend with suspicion.
Ellie’s head recoils back.
“Watch it,” Mark warns from the doorway. I didn’t even realize he was in here. Sneaky fucker.
“You watch it, asshole.” Luna says, her mouth clearly dry as a desert. She looks at the water, then her friend. “Seriously, how can I trust any of you?”
“You take a sip I’ll tell you everything I know,” Ellie tries.
Luna’s face contorts, “Marlon?”
“Fine. He was grazed, just a big scratch. He’s sedated so he doesn’t hurt himself.”
“Sedated where?”
“In my living room, listen, please drink something, sit back,” my wife’s lifelong best friend tries again, but Luna doesn’t budge. “I’ll explain what I know and when I knew it. Every single thing, just drink some water, Luna!”
I think it’s seeing calm, sweet Eleanna raise her voice that finally gets my wife to take a sip.
“First of all, I am also angry,” Ellie says.
Luna scoffs. Mark sighs. Ellie goes on, “I am not currently speaking to my husband who did not tell me that Skulls Quinn was one of us.” Luna’s eyes go wide at the use of that last word.
Ellie corrects herself, “One of his men. On the inside, so to speak. So, I was in the dark about your marriage, their plans, the recent attack, secret underground bunkers, your escape, very impressive, by the way,” she half smiles. “I wish we could tell Mia.”
Luna’s nostrils flare at the mention of the younger Delgado sister. They’re close, I know, so I understand her protectiveness. Luna is fierce for her chosen few. I wonder if I’ll ever be on that short list.
“Tell her what, that your husband is a spy and you’re all a bunch of rats?”
“Hey,” Mark tries to warn again, but I don’t like his tone.
“Hey yourself, fucker,” I say, stepping between him and Luna.
“Both of you should leave,” Ellie says.
“No,” I answer. Mark simply leans back against the doorjamb and crosses his arms, disengaging. For now.
“I found out about Mark after I was shot. I learned some of the disgusting details you probably know—”
“Like that my father killed my mother?” Luna’s voice is like acid. I expected her to be angry but she sounds almost hateful. Not good. She sneers, “When did you find out about that, friend?”
“What?” Ellie gasps.
“Leave her, Ellie, she’s not worth—” Mark stands up off the wall again and I turn to glare. He pauses but says through clenched teeth, “Get a handle on your wife.”
“Get a handle on yourself,” I say, stepping toward him. “We both know I could flatten you like a gnat.”
Mark starts cursing in Spanish, and I join in, also in Spanish.
“What the fuck?” Luna says quietly.
“Your husband is reminding mine that every time they’ve ever sparred Mark has had to go to the infirmary,” Ellie rolls her eyes and then talks loudly to quiet all of us.
“Anyway, no. I did not know about your mama. I’m so sorry, Lu, I am,” at her friend’s genuine contrition, Luna looks away.
Ellie goes on, “Mark was supposed to be attacked, because my uncle was suspicious that maybe he was CIA.”
“Ha! I wonder why!” Luna yells, then winces. I move forward to beg her to sit back but she turns her venom on me. In Italian. “I know you can understand this you big ugly dumbass, don’t you dare try to touch me.”
“He’s right, though, you need to lay back and calm down or you’ll reopen the stitches in your shoulder,” Ellie tries.
Luna sits back but she howls out a frustrated growl through her teeth.
Ellie pulls up a small armchair to the side of the bed.
“Listen, please. I showed up to surprise Mark when the staged ambush was supposed to happen. So they knocked me out with the butt of one of the guns.”
Luna looks up, “Mark’s people, Van’s—Quinn’s—people, are the ones that smashed your head?”
Ellie nods and explains, “That was Mark’s call, so he could bring me in. Which he didn’t even have permission to do.”
Mark tries, “But I loved you so much—”
“Oh, shut up!” Both women say in unison. I fight a grin.
“So then you framed the Italians so I’d have to marry him?” Luna asks Mark, “All to get to Papa?”
Ellie scoffs, “You’re giving them too much credit.”
“Too much credit?” Luna squeaks, “I’m giving what has to be the biggest and best super secret international syndicate, shadow government, too much credit? You’re telling me all this wasn’t their plan?”
“Well…” Mark starts.
“Not you!” Luna points at him. Then me. Her eyes don’t soften even an iota when she says, “You. Talk.”
“The Italians were the easiest to frame at the time,” I say. “Because of the problem on the Sound, Command thought—”
“Who the fuck is command, who is O?”
“O is short for Otets,” I say.
“It means father,” Mark adds.
“I know the Russian word for father but wow, thank you, what’s the Russian word for fuckface?”
“Luna,” Ellie exhales her name and grabs her forehead.
“Uh, sorry not sorry. I knew your husband was a snake! I knew it.”
“At least I’m not the spawn of a man who killed his own wife and made it look like a damn car accident,” Mark hisses back.
“That’s it,” I say, then I turn and punch Mark in the face so fast he doesn’t even get his hands up in defense.
“Mark!”
“Quinn!”
“Van!” Mark grabs his jaw, “What the actual—”
“Get out or I’ll keep going. You’re old, slow and out of practice. It won’t even be fun for me,” I almost growl at him.
He stares at me, contemplating, then looks at his wife. “Do you want me to stay?” Ellie shakes her head. “Fine! When you all want to actually make some kind of progress, plan, get answers that no one else in this room has, let me know.”
As he stomps off, I look at Luna, she’s panting. Ellie is staring at the doorway, conflicted.
Finally, my wife says to me, without looking in my direction, “I wish I’d done it myself, but thank you for that.”
I don’t reply. Might as well quit while I’m ahead.
“He’s not a snake,” Ellie says softly.
“I love you, Ellie, I do, but how the hell is he not a snake? Keep talking, I guess, because I still feel like I’m stuck in a fucking vipers nest here,” she gets more animated, “Slimy, sneaky, enemy, lying, liar vipers!”
“Mark’s real name is Marco,” Ellie whispers. “His family was burned to death.” Luna’s head rears back a fraction. “When he was eight.”
“Damn.”
“By my uncle,” Ellie finishes.
Luna’s jaw drops, but she quickly shuts her mouth.
Her best friend presses on, “His father had a cafe in Delgado territory and missed a payment, Luna. One payment. They made an example of not just him but his mother and Mark’s abuela too.
And Mark’s mother and younger brother and sister as well.
Children burned to death.” Luna sniffs, Ellie does too, as she adds, “Mark heard their screams. He was in the walk-in fridge. He opened the door but the flames were too big. He was trapped. He tried to get out, he has…scars.”
Luna frowns, then I see her realize it. I’m sure Ellie mentioned early on that Mark never wears short sleeves.
I remember Mark saying Ellie changed all his clothes before she even knew why.
She only knew he was miserable in the Texas summer heat and started swapping out his clothes for lighter fabrics shipped in from Europe.
We all gave him a lot of shit about that. About how she was falling for him.
Lucky bastard.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Ellie continues softly, “One story and I flipped on my whole family, my blood. And the answer is yes. But also no. Because it’s a million stories, Luna.
It’s your mama,” Ellie pauses. Luna sniffs again before Ellie goes on.
“It’s Van’s twin brother, it’s thousands of innocent bystanders who have ended up injured or dead so what, our families can ship more drugs?
Make more money? Yes, I’m a traitor to my family, Lu.
And to yours. Maybe you’ll never forgive me for that.
But I’m loyal to something bigger, something more.
And before I agreed to anything, anything, I said Mark had to get you and Mia out. ”
Luna’s voice is small when she replies, “What if I didn’t want to get out?”
“I know you, Luna Mancini. You may be a cunning, cutthroat mafia princess but you would never burn children alive. You would never force a boy to murder his own twin. You would never stage a car accident to—”
“To kill a rat?” Luna cuts in, her voice breaking. “I might! I might’ve sanctioned a hit on my mother if she was a traitor!”
“I don’t believe that,” Ellie says, voice calm.
“Well fucking bully for you El, but I’m not so sure,” she snaps before she looks at me, finally, and rants on, “I was there! I went to Vix. I was going to turn you in! All of you!”
I rush to her side and grab her hand, “But you didn’t, Lasa.”
She pulls her hand away, “I told them about the bunker.”
“From the muffled audio we could pull through the air conditioning vents in that building, you told them it was under the house.” Luna sighs as I add, “You lied for me.”
“I just didn’t give them the full picture because Volotov senior was the target. That wasn’t for you, that’s just Intel 101.”
“Now you’re lying,” I say and I smirk. I can’t help it. She did lie for me.
She rolls her big brown eyes. “Tell me what the hell is so important about the fucking Long Island Sound.”
“You actually told him about that,” Ellie says, getting animated.
Luna looks at her friend, “What?”
“Your bluff, it made Vadim share about the magazines.”
“Right, magazines, but, what did that mean?” Luna asks, taking another sip of water.
I answer for Ellie, “We have been trying to figure out what the larger syndicates are actually moving. There’s been way too much money coming in and laundering through, much more than the drugs we all move.”
“So, what is it?”
“We still don’t know,” Mark answers out of nowhere.
“Don’t do that, man, make yourself known. Creep,” I say, turning to punch him again.
“Sorry, but do you all want to know what the actual fuck is going on, or not?”
Luna puts a hand on my forearm, “Let him explain.”
“Actually, I’ll explain,” a buttery voice comes through the hall.
Mark’s eyebrows shoot up right as Ellie’s scrunch down.
My mouth falls open.
Luna looks around and then at the doorway, where, unbelievably, in walks a woman I haven’t seen in years. My heart flips over. Her eyes scan me in that assessing way mothers have. She’s not quite old enough to be my mother but she’s played that role anyway.
“Hi, Luna, please excuse my boys. I’m Allie,” she stretches out her perfectly manicured hand to my wife.
“You’re…O’s wife?” Ellie asks.
Allie straightens and then levels a knowing, proud look at Luna and says, “I’m Command.”