Chapter 29 Annetta
ANNETTA
The closer we get, the more relaxed Dom seems to become.
Hours ago, he turned on the radio to a low volume, humming along with the music in a deep baritone as he toys with my fingers. If I concentrate, I can pretend we’re going to a cabin in the woods for a relaxing vacation.
But as I start to recognize the streets and buildings where I spent the last few years of my life, the fantasy dissolves into reality.
We’re going to Marco’s house first.
Even this close to midnight, the neighborhood is brightly lit, and Dom weaves through the streets until he finds a slice of road that cloaks us in darkness.
He turns off the radio and faces me. “Get in the driver’s seat.”
Gone is the man who serves me in the bedroom, and the woman I become with him. I follow his order without question.
We step out of the car. Mild night air brushes against my exposed skin, and I inhale the familiar saltwater scent of the bay as I walk to the driver’s side. This late at night, almost all of the lavish, two-story homes are dark and silent.
I’ve visited a few of the families in this neighborhood. If any of them recognized me on this empty street, they’d invite me into their homes with bright smiles as they reported me to Marco or Giulia.
Dom’s adjusting the bulletproof vest under his clothes, the gun at his waist, and the knife at his calf. I remember our wedding when I thought him a warlord. Now, the only difference is I’ve tasted the truth of it.
When he looks at me, the teasing, playful smile he usually wears is nonexistent. He’s businesslike as he moves, tugging at the Velcro of my bulletproof vest and speaking in a firm tone.
“Stay alert. If you see anyone approach the car—man, woman, or child—drive away. We’ll meet at the neighborhood entrance. If I take longer than thirty minutes, drive away. Use the burner in the glove box to call Salvatore. Keep your gun out and ready to use.”
I hang on to every word, nodding.
His hands pause on my waist as his gaze skates over my face like he’s memorizing my features. Then he wraps me in a tight hug, the bulk of our vests making the movement stiff and awkward.
“Stay safe,” he whispers against the top of my head.
I swallow. “You too.”
He waits until I jump into the car and lock the doors, and he’s gone, jogging down the street through the backyard of the nearest house.
I wait.
Without Dom at my side, I’m hyperaware of how exposed I am, parked in the middle of the neighborhood with great big houses looming over me on every side. No one’s out this late at night, and judging by the lights in the windows, only the house across from me has someone still awake.
To keep myself alert, I check my radius every minute, circling my head hundreds of times. Only one other car passes me with a young woman inside, seemingly oblivious to the gun I had pointed in her direction as she headed home.
After twenty minutes, a figure limps from the shadows of a nearby hedge.
Dom.
My intuition screams that something’s wrong. He’s favoring his left leg and clutching his neck. As he steps under a streetlight, the form his body suggests cuts into sharp definition. Blood. Blood on his hand, his neck. He’s pale and gritting his teeth.
My breath seizes.
I lean over to open the car door as he approaches, and groaning, he hauls himself inside.
“Drive,” he wheezes.
I don’t question him, I just start driving and glance into the rear view mirror for anyone that might be following him.
“Dom, what’s going on?” I take every effort to smother the panic in my voice.
He’s covered in so much blood. It’s streaming through his fingers onto his chest.
He laughs, but it’s a frail-sounding thing.
“I kicked the hornet’s nest, and I got stung.
They had a couple of guards I had to take out first. Marco had extra friends over for poker, and I spent too long fucking with the last one.
Marco snuck up on me and shot me. Bastard got me right in the fucking shoulder. ”
Dom wheezes a chuckle as he pulls out medical tape from the glove box and wraps it around the bloody meat of his shoulder, right where I bit him a lifetime ago. “Don’t worry. I got him back. He’s dead. Drive to Giulia’s house.”
I swipe at the tears welling in my eyes. “You need a hospital.”
“Drive to Giulia’s house,” he grits out. “That’s a fucking order.”
I could disobey him.
I should.
Instead, I maneuver his car through the labyrinth of million-dollar homes, toward my ex-mother-in-law’s house. There’s no safety, no peace for any of us until this is finished. My former family knows that, and it’s taken me all this time to understand it as intimately as they do.
I strangle the steering wheel and pray to a god I’ve forsaken a hundred times over to please keep my husband safe. Take anyone, take me, but please don’t let Dom die. And like always, He is silent.
The edge of Giulia’s property slices into view. I press down on the gas pedal. We’re almost done.
CRUNCH.
The airbag explodes into my face like a grenade and smashes me against my seat.
What was that?
My ears ring. I can’t hear anything else.
The airbag hangs from the center of the steering wheel like an empty pillowcase. Acrid gunpowder smoke stings my nose.
“Drive,” Dom shouts.
I don’t think—I slam on the pedal. Our car revs, but something has it hooked—it won’t move.
We’re stuck.
Bullets punch into the glass of the back window. Dom’s hand slams onto my head, jerking me down. He lets loose a slew of curses.
“I get out. Then you run.”
“No, Dom—”
“That’s a fucking order. Now run!”
He jumps out of the car, his gun popping off at the car behind us—at Marco—he survived?
I scramble to unbuckle myself and dive out of the car. When my feet hit the street, I bolt straight for Giulia’s house.
To my left, a porch light flicks on. Our crash woke up the neighborhood. We don’t have much time.
Instead of running toward Giulia’s front door, I race for the back. I know the family. I know their habits and their hobbies and their sins.
It’s a Saturday night, and Giulia has insomnia.
She’ll be in the garden.
My lungs burn, but I force myself to keep sprinting. The pain is a sweet reminder that I haven’t failed yet.
I’m alive.
I put on another burst of speed.
I have to finish this.
I can’t go back for Dom. I have to trust him. No one will hurt him—he’s Dom.
My body is not my own—it’s a machine, the muscles of my thighs and arms working in perfect, practiced synchronicity to propel me forward like a freight train toward Giulia’s sprawling backyard.
And when I see her guard walking the perimeter of her house—Tommy, the one who always ate my desserts and played cards with me—I don’t think.
I pull out my gun, jerk to a stop, aim, and shoot.
He crumples to the ground in a soundless heap.
I keep running until I meet the border of the dark green hedges that wrap around the perimeter of her yard.
I force myself through a narrow gap between the branches and leaves.
The wood claws at me as if obeying the will of their mistress, but tonight, my will is stronger.
When I burst onto the other side, we see each other in the moonlight.
Giulia Chiarelli, matriarch of the Chiarelli mob, aims her gun directly at me.
She doesn’t hesitate.
But neither do I.
She cries out when my bullet tears through her shoulder—right where her bastard son shot my husband. Her gun goes flying.
Her bullet hits the plate armor of my bulletproof vest, and I don’t make a sound.
She crumbles to the ground, but she doesn’t waste a moment searching for her fallen gun in the dark grass.
I spot the dark gleam of metal first and sprint to kick it far away.
When I turn back to her, she’s grimacing at me, her bloody hand clutched to her shoulder and her knees in the dirt.
“I always told my son you were a dumb whore,” she spits at me, in English for once. She must be in unbelievable pain as she grasps the arm hanging loosely from its socket. Blood pours out between the fingertips of her left hand.
“Your son was a pedophile.”
The vicious look on her face is completely unrepentant.
“Your other son, he’s going to die by my husband’s hand. Tonight. Do you think my Butcher will be lenient with baby Marco?”
A new emotion flashes across her features—fear—although she smothers it with arrogance. “What do you want, fottuta puttana?”
This is the woman who’s haunted me for months, who’s responsible for the death of my sister, who raised her sons to be vile men.
Who attacked my brother, me, and my husband.
There’s no forgiveness for this woman.
When I raise the gun again, my round-faced, soft-spoken former mother-in-law chokes out a laugh. “I’m so happy your sister died first.”
I shoot.
I waste only one breath, staring down at her dead body. I shoot her three more times in the head and the chest like Dom taught me, and I run after my husband.
The vehicles are still smashed together in the middle of the street, but the drivers are nowhere to be found. A few neighbors stand outside, wrapped in winter coats over their pajamas, phones pressed to their ears. One of them shouts after me, but I don’t stop to listen.
Gun in hand, I creep from house to house, looking for Dom’s unmistakable shape and praying I don’t find it on the ground.
If Marco took him, his death won’t be as quick as his mom’s, and I don’t give a damn if the police are on their way.
I find them, almost completely swallowed by the shadow of a towering, pale house. Two formless shapes merge into one dark horror.
“Dom,” I call out as I approach, gun raised in my hand.
The larger shadow moves.
“Don’t make a sound,” Dom murmurs to the man underneath him. When he looks to me, I can barely make out his eyes in the darkness.
“It’s over now,” I say. “She’s dead.”
I recognize Marco’s voice as he cries out in anguish.
“I have to take you to the hospital now. We have to go.”
Dom’s laugh is fragile. He turns to the man. “You hear that? Your mom’s in hell. Now, why don’t you go join her?”
Dom slashes his arm to the side and staggers to his feet, leaning heavily against the side of the house. His knife, bathed in blood, shines darkly from one of the streetlights. Dom sheathes it and turns to me, stumbling forward and nearly crushing me to the ground under his weight.
I’ve always loved how big he is, how much larger than life he feels, but right now, I hate it. I can barely keep him upright, and that’s with him supporting most of his own weight. I don’t know what I’ll do if he faints.
“Lost a lot of blood,” he says dreamily. “I love you. Don’t know if I said that yet. Thinking it a lot.”
My heart wrenches. He wasn’t supposed to get hurt. He’s Dom—he’s invincible.
A tear slips down my cheek. “Dom, I love you too. I love you so much. Stay awake, okay? I still need you. I have to set you down right now. I’m going to get the car.”
“Don’t leave me, reginetta,” he whispers against my hair. “Stay with me.”
“I have to. I’ll be right back, I swear.”
I do my best to ease him to the ground, but he’s too big, and I drop him with a heavy thud into the grass.
“Don’t go,” he calls weakly after me as I sprint back to the cars.
“Are you okay?” an old man shouts at me from the sidewalk. I ignore him. In the distance, there’s a wail of an ambulance and police sirens.
I stop before the vehicles. Our car is hooked onto Marco’s, and the front of his is almost completely smashed in. I don’t know if either will work. I try ours first, diving in and yanking the gear stick to drive.
It revs uselessly for several long seconds until, in desperation, I scream through gritted teeth and swing the steering wheel to the side. It jerks free and slams into someone’s mailbox.
I tear through a patch of flowers and nearly crash into the side of the house where Dom is.
“Hey!” someone shouts from the street.
I stumble out of the car, and a bald man in a bathrobe marches up to me.
“What the fuck, lady! Are you fucking drunk—”
I swing my gun at him.
The man stills. Distantly, a woman screams.
“Get back in the house,” I tell him. “Lock the door.”
He scrambles back, tripping over his robe to get to his front door.
I spin to Dom and kneel at his side.
And my heart stops in my chest.
He’s dead—no, no, wait, he’s breathing. He’s unconscious. God, please. Blood soaks his shirt. Whose blood?
I can’t—I won’t be able to get him into the car. He’s too heavy, and I’m not strong enough.
I try anyway, tears streaming down my face as I drag him along the ground to the passenger seat as the ambulance circles closer. I might as well be hauling an entire fridge into the air as I shove his upper half against the car body. His blood is hot, sticky, and slippery.
I can’t lift him inside. I can’t lift his whole body into the car.
“Dom,” I cry urgently. “Dom, please. Please wake up.”
He rolls his head. His eyelashes flutter.
“Just stand a little, and I’ll handle the rest. I need you to get inside, please.”
He wheezes. I bite my lip so hard I taste blood. Then I slap him—hard.
“Stand!”
With monumental effort, he brings his legs underneath him and pushes. Together, we heave him into the passenger seat.
“Don’t you dare fucking die on me,” I say as I dive into the driver’s seat.
I’m not sure if I imagine it, but I think I hear him laugh a little.
I break a hundred traffic laws on my way to the nearest hospital.