Chapter 15
Valentina
“What do you mean I deserve to be here?” I asked, breath hitching in anticipation of the answer.
“You and your family ruined my life, yet you barely know I exist,” Dave said, shaking his head in disgust. “Well, you’ll know me now.”
I tried to think back to any lesser mafia outfits that we might have destroyed or taken over. Maybe Dave was one of their enforcers. “How did we ruin your life? Who are you?”
“Think really hard,” he said before taking a drag from his cigarette. “Back about a year ago. One of your shootouts with the De Lucas.”
“Those happened frequently,” I said. “You’ll have to refresh my memory.”
“The shootout where a bunch of innocents were shot in the crosshairs,” Dave told me. “I was one of the unfortunates who got hit by several stray bullets.”
“You survived,” I said. “I see why you hold a grudge against us, but you lived.”
“I survived?” he spat out, his harsh voice scraping across the brick walls and echoing through the storage area.
“I got into medical debt that I’ll never be able to pay off.
My credit is shot. I lost my house. Things got so bad that I started drinking.
Taking drugs. Then I lost my job. Because of you. ”
“I’m sorry.”
“You and your war did this to me. I ended up on the streets,” he forced out as he bared his teeth at me. “The only way to manage the pain of what the bullets did is with pills. From one of your clinics by the way. The irony. You bastards shot me and now I’m addicted to your product.”
“If I had known—”
“I was homeless for months,” Dave kept on going, as if he had bottled this inside him for so long that he couldn’t hold it in anymore.
“When I found out that my actions had gotten my wife hooked on drugs, I tried to save her. Tried to reconcile with her. But I never got the chance. You know why? Last winter she overdosed. My wife died. Because of you.”
The fear and rage inside me gave way to something else. A profound sadness and regret. The remorse transformed into an empathy that brought tears to my eyes. Our war had done this. I had done this. Dave was right. This was my fault. He had every right to blame me for his loss.
We had been so careless. So callous with people’s lives that we hadn’t paid attention to the innocents around us. In spite of everything, my heart broke for Dave. It broke for every single person we had ever wronged.
“Is that why you came after us?” I asked softly. “Revenge?”
“I wanted both families destroyed,” he answered, taking a puff from the cigarette. “I figured I’d get a job working for one of you. That way I could get dirt and feed the information to law enforcement.”
“That worked. The FBI is closing in,” I told him, hoping that might placate him. Hoping that might be enough revenge.
“Going to the feds with intel against your family was a waste of time,” Dave said snarled.
“The feds dragged their feet. Probably because they care more about advancing their careers rather than justice. They wanted something bigger than a mob boss. They all wanted to make international headlines. They don’t want mobsters anymore.
What they want are terrorists and whatever politician they can make an example of on any given day.
Either way, the feds are just as corrupt as the people they investigate. ”
“Is that why you started coming after us?” I asked. “The FBI wasn’t moving fast enough?”
Dave kept on smoking. “Yeah. I had to take matters into my own hands. When I learned that both families were setting up a marriage alliance, I knew what I needed to do. You were all going to be spending time together, in the same places. I could use that opportunity to destroy both families at the same time. Destroy all their future power.”
“But me and Enzo getting married ended the war,” I said. “Isn’t that what you wanted? An end to the bloodshed?”
Dave scowled. “You two were walking away scot-free. All that war and zero consequences for you? While the faceless, nameless innocents suffered? Fuck that.”
“So that’s why you came after my father that night at Enzo’s apartment? Because you wanted to punish him?” I asked.
“Not just your father,” Dave said, a cloud of smoke over him now. “That night I planned on killing all of you. Don Romano, Enzo, you. A mafia don and the heirs to the two families in one go. But that son of a bitch Enzo was too quick for me. He was always too quick for me.”
“And the bank bombing?” I demanded, remembering how vital it was that I got information from the bomber himself. Even as I feared for my life, I wanted to build our case for immunity. Anything to protect my family. “Why did you do that?”
“Practice,” he said, flicking ashes from his cigarette. “That day was practice. Both the bank bombing and burning the De Luca dealerships’ cars.”
“Practice for what?” I asked.
For once, Dave refused to answer. All he did was shrug.
“Why did you threaten us? Those texts and that bullet you delivered?” I demanded in frustration, hating that he had the power to evade my questions. “You were terrorizing us already. Why send all those threats?”
“I liked knowing that you scared. Even when I didn’t have access to you in your safe little house, I could still scare you,” he said. “I wanted you cornered, powerless, afraid. Just like I was.”
“You tried to poison us,” I said, shivering with the fear of the memory that I could have ingested poison and died at my own wedding tasting.
“You know, by that point, I was experimenting,” Dave said. “Nothing seemed to work against you. Shooting you didn’t stick. I didn’t expect the bomb to take you out, though I wish it had. But I thought maybe poison. Too bad that didn’t work either.”
“And you set the fire on behalf of my father,” I said.
“It was my job to deliver all of his get-well cards and presents,” Dave explained.
“Eventually, we started talking. I kept telling your father how I just couldn’t trust Enzo.
The old man started to buy it. He was the one who let me trace where you were through one of your texts.
Then he gave me orders to set the fire.”
I shut my eyes, shaking my head as I thought about how vulnerable my father must have been.
Still recovering from his wound, entrusting my safety to Enzo, his enemy and a man he barely knew.
Of course Dave had been able to put poison in my father’s ear.
It was wrong what Papa did, but I could see how he would have been persuaded in his state.
He was terrified that he couldn’t keep me safe and was ready to listen to anyone who promised my security.
“Your fire didn’t work,” I said, shaking. “You failed. Again. Just like you failed at the wedding.”
“I almost had you at the wedding,” Dave said coldly. “Admit it.”
“You shot a bystander at our wedding,” I choked out angrily. “You could have killed an innocent person. I thought you cared about innocents, Dave.”
Dave swallowed hard, averting his gaze to avoid my accusatory glare. “I do care—”
“No, you don’t. Enzo and I have been trying to end this war.
Trying to achieve peace for months. You’re the one who’s continued it.
You have kept the violence going all this time.
” I thought about my dream of going legitimate.
The future that I wanted for my children.
It would be a permanent end to the bloodshed.
A path to pace. A brand new beginning for all of us where no one had to get hurt anymore.
Now, in the face of death, I saw just how badly I wanted that dream to succeed.
“Shut your mouth,” Dave barked.
For a moment I was so scared, I considered shutting up, but I was too horrified by what he had confessed to me. “You really thought you were going to get away with this. Well, you thought wrong. Someday, all of this is going to catch up to you. The same way our terrible choices caught up to us.”
“First of all, nobody gives a shit if a bunch of mobsters wind up dead,” Dave said with a roll of his eyes as he resumed smoking.
“You’re the scum of the earth and no one respectable would miss you.
But even if anybody cared, I made sure that every attack just looked like another battle in your war.
If the cops bothered to look, they’d conclude that you and the De Lucas had started fighting again.
Nobody would pin it on me, the lowly driver. ”
My heart sank. He was right. We definitely couldn’t depend on the police or the FBI to help us.
While we might be able to bribe law enforcement to look away, they wouldn’t come to our aid unless something far more valuable than money was on the offer.
Nobody rescued people like us. Time and time again we had to rescue ourselves.
“You don’t have to keep this going,” I said.
“You’ve taught us a lesson. A painful one.
We’re sorry for everything that we’ve done to you.
There never should have been any bystanders getting hurt.
And when there were, we should have tracked all of you down and paid your medical bills. We failed you, Dave.”
“I’m not letting you go, Valentina, so you can drop the act,” he said.
“Please. I want to make up for things,” I said, meaning it. “We’ll pay off your medical debt. Set you up financially for life.”
“I don’t want your blood money,” Dave said in a deceptively soft tone.
“Please forgive us,” I said, a tear sliding down my cheek. “We wronged you.”
“You did. And on top of all that, you wouldn’t fucking die,” Dave said, his voice a low menacing growl.
“No matter what I did, you just kept surviving. After I shot your father and managed to escape, I thought at least Enzo would let the old man bleed out. Same way I thought one of you would let the other drink poison. And during that fire...I’m guessing Enzo lived because of you. You saved him, right?”
“I wasn’t going to let him die,” I answered, my heart clenching.