Chapter 15 Emilio #2
"Always," Claudio says. One simple little fucking word that he means with everything in him. The most Claudio has ever put into a single syllable, and I feel it through the frequency and now my chest is full and tight and I can't fucking breathe.
Aurelio looks at me. "Emilio."
I step forward and my legs work, which is a surprise because the rest of me has gone numb.
I stand beside the bed and look at the man who found two orphaned twins at fifteen and took them in and gave them a name and a purpose and a place in the world that nobody else would have given them.
The man who taught me to shoot, to negotiate, to walk into a room and make people listen.
The man who slapped me across the face when I was seventeen because I was drunk and about to drive a car, and then sat with me on the curb for an hour while I sobered up and told me that we don’t make stupid mistakes here.
The man who never said he loved me because men in his world don't say that, but who showed it in every assignment, every correction, every time he looked at me and Claudio across a room and nodded, once, which meant good, you're good, I see you.
"Sir."
"You're the heart of this family." His voice is getting thinner.
"You don't think you are. You think you're the loud one, the reckless one, the one who makes jokes because he's afraid of what he'd say if he was serious.
But you're the heart. People follow Leone because they respect him.
People follow you because they love you, and that's rarer and more valuable and you need to stop treating it like an accident. "
"I'm not the heart… I'm the idiot."
"You're both, and that’s why we need you." His hand comes up off the blanket, and I take it and his fingers are cold and thin and I can feel every bone and the grip is barely there but it's there and he holds on. "The bartender."
"Savannah."
"Keep her. She's the kind of person who tells a dying man the right thing when his own people won't. That's courage that can't be trained. Don't waste it."
"I won't."
"And stop getting shot. You're not as bulletproof as you think."
"It was one time and the vest caught it."
"It was three times over two years and you think I didn't know because I'm in this bed, but I know everything that happens in my compound, including the fact that you and the bartender had sex on the bar I built in 1987.
If you'd broken my counter I'd have killed you myself. She can run the bar. Tell her that she’s family now. "
I laugh, but the sound comes out wrong, choked and wet, and I realize I'm crying.
I don't know when it started. The tears are on my face, the laugh turns into something else, something that isn't a laugh anymore, and I press my forehead against his knuckles because I can't look at him right now without losing every piece of myself that's holding together.
"None of that," Aurelio says. "Stand up. Look at me. Be brave, Emilio, be brave in life and be brave in love. I’m proud of you, my boy."
I stand up and look at him. His face is blurring through the water in my eyes, but I can see enough. The pride. The finality. The acceptance of a man who has made his peace with the door he's about to walk through. I squeeze his hand and move to stand beside my brother.
He looks at Carmelo. "You haven't moved."
"No, sir." Carmelo's voice is monotone.
"You don't have to stand in the corner. You can come here."
Carmelo pushes off the wall. He walks to the bed and stands at the foot of it and his hands hang at his sides and he doesn't take the hand Aurelio offers. Instead he puts his hand on the old man's ankle through the blanket and holds it there.
"Guard them," Aurelio says. "The way you've guarded me."
"Yes, sir."
"All of them. Including the ones who aren't yours yet."
Carmelo nods.
Aurelio looks at the ceiling again. His oxygen machine hisses as his breathing changes and the room is full of sounds that are keeping him alive, but he's leaving anyway, on his own schedule, the way he's done everything.
"Dahlia, my girl, it’s time."
She lifts her head from his hand. Her face is wet. The tears came silent and she didn't wipe them off as they're running off her jaw and onto the blanket.
"You don’t have to step into my place. Do what you’ve always dreamed of, I will be watching you. I am proud of the young woman you’ve become and the one you will become," he says.
"Papa… please… please don’t go."
His fingers squeeze on hers. One last grip. "Tell Bam I said thank you. For taking care of what I couldn't. I love you, my little flower."
She nods. She can't speak. Her mouth opens and nothing comes out and she closes it and holds his hand tighter.
And then Aurelio Bonaccorso closes his eyes.
The room listens to him breathe. Twelve breaths. Twelve breaths, each one shallower than the last, and we stand around his bed, the five of us, and we listen to the man leave.
The monitor goes flat.
The sound is a single, continuous note.
The nurse comes in. She turns off the monitor. She checks his pulse. She looks at Leone and says, "I'm sorry," and the words sit in the room, and nobody acknowledges them.
Leone reaches over and closes Aurelio's eyes. His hand shakes. One tremor, quick, and then it steadies and he pulls the blanket up over Aurelio's chest, neatly, the way you'd tuck a child in, and the care in that gesture breaks something in the room that all of us were holding together.
Dahlia puts her head down on the bed and cries.
The sound is muffled by the blanket and her arms and it's the worst sound I've ever heard because she is not a woman who cries and the fact that she's doing it now, in front of all of us, means the last wall is down and there's nothing left between her and the grief.
She’s broken and it’s spilling over.
Carmelo's hand is still on Aurelio's ankle. He doesn't let go. He stands at the foot of the bed with face wet, and his jaw is locked and he doesn't move. He won't move until someone makes him.
Claudio is beside me. I can feel him through the frequency. The vibration has gone silent. Not calm. Empty. The way a house sounds after everyone leaves. He's processing and he won't talk about it, but Charlotte will hold him through it because that's what Charlotte does.
I look at the man in the bed. The blanket tucked to his chest. The hands folded on his stomach, Dahlia still holding one. The face that's already changing, the muscles relaxing, the lines softening, the fury leaving his expression for the first time since I've known him.
He looks peaceful and I fucking hate it. Aurelio was never peaceful. He was restless and demanding and impossible and brilliant and he changed my life.
Leone walks to the window. He puts both hands on the sill and leans forward, and his shoulders curve inward and his head drops and he stands there, bent over the windowsill.
The sound that comes out of him is quiet and private, one I shouldn't hear but I do because the room is small and grief doesn't care about who's listening.
Low, broken, from the chest, and then nothing. He straightens up, wipes his face with one hand, and turns around.
His face is the neutral, steadfast commander he always is.
The transition takes less than two seconds and it's the most devastating thing I've ever watched because the man just buried his grief in real time and put the Don face on over the top of it.
He will wear that face while he holds this family together because that's what Aurelio asked him to do and Leone has never once failed to do what Aurelio asked.
Not even once.
"Emilio," Leone says. "Claudio. Outside."
We follow him into the corridor. Dahlia stays with the body and Carmelo stays with Dahlia.
Bam is in the hallway, back against the wall, and the look on his face when he sees Dahlia through the open door, bent over the bed with her face in the blanket, is the only time I've ever seen an expression on the mountain.
He goes in. He stands behind her and puts his hand on her back, and she reaches up without looking and grabs his wrist and holds on.
Leone closes the door. The three of us stand in the corridor and the compound is quiet and the hour is somewhere between late night and early morning.
It hits then… the Don of the Bonaccorso family is dead.
"I need an hour," Leone says. "Then I address the compound. Nobody in or out of Aurelios room until I've spoken to everyone. Claudio, find Carmelo a task. He can't stay in that room all night."
"He's not going to leave."
"Then give him a reason to. Whatever you need to tell him.
Whatever errand, whatever job. He'll sit with the body until it calcifies if someone doesn't move him.
" Leone runs his hand over his face. His eyes are red, but his voice is strong.
"I'll call the Castillos. They need to know. Ferrara will understand why we aren’t holding up our end while we grieve. "
"Leone." I don't know what I'm going to say until I say it. "He was proud of you. He told me once. Two years ago, middle of the night, I was doing rounds and he was awake and I sat with him and he said he was proud of you.”
Leone looks at me for a long time. Then he reaches out and puts his hand on the side of my neck, grips once, firm, the way Aurelio used to grip my shoulder when I did something right. He holds it and let’s go.
"One hour," he says. He walks down the corridor toward the war room. His steps are even and his back is straight and he doesn't look back.
Claudio and I stand in the corridor.
I lean against the wall and slide down until I'm sitting on the floor with my back against the concrete and my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands. Claudio sits beside me. Our shoulders touch. Neither of us speaks.