Chapter 21
Vivi
It’s a horrible, awful, sunshiny day, and I hate it.
In all the movies, rain drizzles steadily down during funerals. The lighting is somber and muted, a fitting accompaniment for sadness and grief. People hover on the fringes of the cemetery, shivering in dark coats, veils, and black umbrellas. Slow, instrumental music plays in the background, or maybe an old pop song that speaks of loss.
Funeral days are always dull, grim occasions.
The weather today, though, the day we bury Eduardo, seems to mock the event. Birds flit overhead. The sun shines with an unbearable joy that hints at laughter rather than tears. The sunbeams shining down upon us aren’t the hot, stifling ones of July and August…they’re pleasant, instead, warming the chill away rather than causing discomfort. A soft breeze plays along the leaves of the trees and caresses the memorial flowers on the graves, then drifts close to play among the strands of my hair.
It’s not funeral weather. It’s not a funeral kind of day, and yet here we are, dressed in black and strolling through a cemetery, burying our dead.
I file alongside Ivan, my gaze cataloging but barely tracking my surroundings. Damon, Lulu, and little Giorgia are on my other side.
I don’t lift my head until the asphalt path beneath my feet morphs into the heavy velvet cover surrounding the casket. I have to look up, then, and find my seat. Rowan sits on the opposite side of the casket, sending me a sad smile across the expanse of white lilies and roses that drape the polished wood.
“Eduardo wasn't a Valachi by blood.” I look up as Damon begins to speak. “He wasn't even Italian. He started off at the bottom of the ranks, just another guy that Don Valachi had hired. The bullet Eduardo took for Lulu more than a year ago was not the first one he had taken for the Valachi family. He had already earned Lorenzo Valachi's trust by taking a bullet for him years earlier, as well.”
A stifled sob rises from the people standing around me, but I don’t look back to see who it is. The sound is enough of a reminder: Eduardo had people who loved him. People who valued him, outside of our immediate family.
Damon continues. “After that incident, Eduardo became part of Lorenzo's personal guard. Eventually, he fulfilled that role for the entire family, protecting each of Lorenzo’s children as if they were his own.” His gaze travels to Lulu and then lands on me, solemn and heavy. “He loved you as his own, and if there’s one thing I’m absolutely certain of, it’s that he wouldn’t have done anything differently had he known how his life would end.”
My fingers tighten on Ivan’s.
I know.
I took my first shaky toddler steps with Eduardo watching protectively in the background. He wiped my tears and threatened to crack skulls when my first crush broke my heart.
He dropped me off and picked me up from school and events more routinely than my own parents had ever done. Sometimes, I would search the crowd in such an event for a familiar face, and it was him I’d see, rather than any member of my family.
He was my family.
In many ways, Eduardo was more of a father to me than my own.
It hits me then, harder than it did at Lorenzo Valachi’s funeral, that I have no father now. I am a fatherless girl, and for all intents and purposes, a motherless one, as well. I have no one except my sister and my husband.
As Damon continues to speak, my gaze drifts past him, several feet away, to the concrete stone that marks my father’s grave. A set of incomplete dates for my mother is inscribed on the next stone, ready for her when she leaves this world. I insisted that we bury Eduardo here, with the Valachi famiglia . He deserves this place of honor in our world.
Angel has a headstone here, too, but we didn’t give him a funeral. His honor was too tarnished for our mafia world to pay him homage with a proper burial. Ivan, Damon, Lulu, and I know his grave is empty, and there was no point to the subterfuge of a funeral ceremony.
All of the families provided extra security for Eduardo’s burial, even though he’s being laid to rest on Valachi land, and the chances of anyone bursting upon this gathering of these people are slim. It’s their way of paying their respects by recognizing the part he played in our lives, a nod to the protector he was.
I look around at the faces of Evie and Cassidy, Luca and Carina, and Enzo and Rowan, taking note of everyone who came to wish Eduardo godspeed. Everyone else here is security or a random, unconnected acquaintance.
Eduardo didn't have a family other than us. He left that part of his life back in Mexico when he moved to the States to make a better life for himself. I wonder now if there’s anyone we need to contact, someone we need to let know of his death.
Father Greco takes over for Damon and begins to speak. He has the honor of making the final address. I don’t hear the words, only the resonant tones of the priest's voice. It’s obvious that he does this frequently.
It’s equally obvious that he did not know Eduardo. He does not deserve the honor of speaking about him, but I suppose someone has to do it.
He talks too long, going on and on about eternity and heavenly rewards. My fists clench around the wadded-up tissue someone pressed into my hand.
I need him to stop. To shut up.
Ivan shifts his weight in the chair beside me and wraps an arm around my shoulders. His warmth curls around me, a blessed reminder that he’s alive. I’m alive.
We’re here, breathing.
Finally, the service draws to a close. A few people shuffle off in the direction of their vehicles; others huddle together, smoke from cigarettes curling into the blue sky above their heads. The cemetery attendants wait patiently; they won't lower the casket until we’re all gone.
Dropping his hand to my waist, Ivan begins to steer me toward the line of parked vehicles, pausing as Luca Marzano raises his hand. “Ivan, a word?”
Wordlessly, his hand still resting on my waist, Ivan starts over to him. I walk beside him, my heels sinking into the sod.
Luca stands next to Carina, the General Queen of the West and an older man I do not recognize. Luca tosses a cigarette on the ground and stubs it out as we draw near.
“Emilia couldn’t make it?”
Emilia—Mila—is Ivan's little sister. I met her once, during the fitting for Carina's wedding. I guess that’s why Luca asked after her.
“No,” Ivan replies briefly. “She couldn't.”
He leaves it at that, his tone inviting no further questions. He sent his sister back to Russia before making his move against Angel, fearing, perhaps, what would happen if she was caught in the middle of things.
Last I heard from her, Mila was chasing some boy from her childhood whom Ivan didn't approve of. I imagine we’ll be heading to Russia for an intervention when this is all over. She’s the only person I’ve ever seen Ivan give a damn about.
“Well, I wish her my best,” Luca says. He shifts slightly, opening up so we can see his company more clearly. “Allow me to introduce you to a friend of mine. Ivan, Waylon Vigneault. Waylon is the police commissioner for New York.”
The last addition is unnecessary. Vigneault is a familiar presence in the news.
Ivan reaches out and shakes the man's hand but doesn't say anything.
Tension fills the space between us. The Code of Omerta forbids mafia from using the police to punish one another. Rats are the worst kind of traitor. The only exception is when a man becomes an Untouchable, a status that Luca had managed to achieve some years ago. He works directly with the police on common issues between our worlds, trying to keep things in balance. This gives him a bit more protection than the average mafioso.
Before Angel called in Azrael, Luca was Untouchable, not only where the authorities were concerned, but even in the mafia world.
Vigneault speaks, his voice nervous but pure Bronx. “I've heard that you are part of the effort to get this whole Azrael situation under control.”
Ivan’s faint Russian accent is more noticeable when he replies. “I don't know what the hell you're talking about.”
Luca snorts. “Relax, Romanov. Waylon has been helping us run plates and trying to track down these people.”
“Yeah. I won’t be keeping my position much longer if there are bodies piling up in the streets. All of us want Azrael to be stopped,” Vigneault adds.
Ivan casts him a cool glance. “What exactly are you proposing?”
“I would like a more open relationship between the two of us. The way I see it, we need to combine our resources to take down a common enemy.”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Ivan tilts his head, a predator assessing a particularly interesting prey. “And how do I know that you won't use that information to nail me later?”
A small smile plays around Vigneault’s mouth before fading away. “I know who you are, Butcher. I value my skin. And, of course, our mutual destruction is assured. My helping you puts me at risk, too. No one likes a corrupt cop.”
Ivan doesn’t reply immediately. His silence stretches for an uncomfortably long time. Working with the police is risky. Luca has managed it delicately and sometimes savagely, but I know there are things that Ivan does that would never be accepted by a police alliance.
Finally, he speaks. “Wait to hear from me. I come to you; you don’t come to me.”
Vigneault glances at Luca and then nods. “I can accept those terms.”
Ivan turns and walks away, his hand falling away from my waist. His strides lengthen to the point where I can’t keep up in my high heels. When I stumble, Ivan catches me smoothly without faltering, stopping a couple dozen yards from the others.
“I'm sorry, my pet. All this talk of politics and backscratching makes me think we should be congressmen instead of made men.”
“Luca is just trying to do what he can to help,” I attempt to soothe.
Ivan’s gaze settles on me for the first time since the service, dark and troubled. “I wish I had your capacity to trust people. And after everything…” He shakes his head a little, then touches my jaw line with his thumb. “How are you, little one?”
“Fine,” I answer quickly.
Ivan’s gaze darkens. “The truth now.”
Honestly, I don’t know how to answer. Should I tell him how I’m trying, with every desperate breath, not to think about that night?
That every day since then has been an exercise in control, a concentrated effort to be calm and composed and…brave.
The first night after the attack, I woke up screaming, the residue of a nightmare clutching my heart and lungs and making me gasp with a vague recollection of terror. Ivan had to hold me, stroking my hair with that big paw of his, until I fell back asleep. But the dreams didn’t stop. All I could see, even in my sleep, was the look on Eduardo's face as his life drained away.
Resolution.
Pride.
Terror.
I can still hear the sound of the metal and glass as his body strained against the door every time the knife drove into him. My nightmares always end in thunder, with me holding a gun while a strange woman collapses onto the ground.
But I am a mafia wife. A mafia wife in the middle of a war.
I can’t distract Ivan right now, even though I know he would drop everything to try to make it better. Even though he demands it of me.
I force myself to meet his gaze, and I smile reassuringly. “I am sad, but I will be fine. I just need time.” I offer him a small bit of the truth he wants.
After a moment, he sighs and nods, knowing that’s not all of it but choosing not to press the point. We head to the car, while around us, the day continues to mock me with its pleasantness. I watch as a squirrel chases something up a nearby tree, oblivious to the presence of the dead all around it.
When we reach the car, Damon Papparado is waiting for us. He doesn’t bother to straighten from where he leans against the metal. “Nice service.”
Ivan shrugs. “A little long.”
Damon glances past us. “They tend to be that way for good men, and Eduardo was one of the best.”
A sob battles to break loose of the confines of my throat, and as if he perceives it, Ivan growls. “What do you want, Papparado?”
“I want to give you a gift. It's not here. You will need to come up to the house to get it.” Automatically, my gaze travels over Damon’s shoulder to where the road winds around a curve and disappears in a small copse of trees. The Valachi home sits around a quarter mile up on a slight incline, part and parcel of the property where we just buried Eduardo.
I sense Ivan’s look fall upon me, then shift back to Damon. “We've had a long day, and I’m not in the mood for gifts.”
Ivan tries to push past Damon to get the car door open, but Damon puts his hand on Ivan's shoulder. It's the same shoulder that was stabbed. Ivan doesn’t react.
“You are really going to want this gift.” Damon smiles and walks away without waiting for a response, and after a brief hesitation, Ivan opens the door and hands me into the back seat.
He settles himself beside me, putting a hand on my knee and squeezing gently. “To the Valachi residence,” Ivan tells the driver. “Follow him.”
His look settles on me, brooding and assessing. “Can we trust this man, pet?”
I take a breath and let it out slowly. “Yes.”
But the truth is, I don’t know who we can trust anymore. Damon was able to trick my entire family for years. I know that Lulu would never do anything to hurt me, but Damon Papparado?
Only he knows his agenda and what he’s capable of.