Page 27 of The Mad Don
It is the only punch any of them lands. I straighten up immediately, drive my knee into his stomach, and bring my fist down across the back of his neck. He falls.
I turn toward Ricci when the door opens, and a fourth man comes in. He jumps on me, we both fall, and he drives a needle into the side of my arm before I can get my hand on it. The first two men are back on their feet, and they grab my shoulders and hold me down to the floor as the fourth man depresses the plunger.
I shove them off, pull the syringe out of my arm, and reach inside my jacket for my gun. But I realize I can’t move my hand no matter how much I try. I am on my side on the cold tile, my hand is open beside me, and the gun is still in the holster.
Ricci steps over me.
“You are going to regret the day you humiliated me, Mondi.”
I try to move. My heart is beating too fast, and I can feel each beat hitting the inside of my chest. My mouth will not open.
The feeling of helplessness is oddly familiar. It’s like I am seven years old on the floor of the apartment in Via Carmelo. My father is standing over me, and my body is not working because he has hit me too many times, and I cannot get up. Lucia is over me. Her small body is over me, her arms spread wide, her face turned up to look at the man who is hurting us. She is trying to be a shield.
One of the men hands Ricci a knife.
Ricci takes it. “You pushed me,” he says, “far more than was wise.”
I know he will not kill me. Killing the Don in a bathroom at a Marchetti gathering would bring the entire weight of every family in the country down on his head, and Ricci is not a stupid man. But he wants to leave a mark on my face that will sit there for the rest of my life and remind every man who looks at me that he put it there.
I brace myself for the pain, and the door kicks open.
Yana comes through it with a gun out.
How did she get one? I didn’t see it on her.
She shoots the first two men in the chest. She shoots the third in the neck and shoots the fourth in the head.
“Down,” she shouts at Ricci.
Ricci lowers himself to his knees with his hands above his head. The knife is on the floor beside him. There are footsteps in the corridor. The gunshots have brought people. I can hear voices rising at the door.
Yana comes to me. Her face is red, her chest is heaving, and her dress is torn at the side from how fast she must have moved. She kneels beside me and looks at my face, and I can see the fury in her eyes, but I cannot tell who it is for.
She slides her arms under mine and pulls me up.
I am heavy, but she is strong. She gets me up to a sitting position and then to my feet, she pulls my arm across her shoulders, and she holds my waist with her free hand.
Her gun is back in her grip on the other side.
The crowd at the door parts, and Valentina pushes through.
“What’s happening?” she is saying. “What was that, what —”
Then she sees her father on his knees on the bathroom floor with four dead men around him.
“Papa!”
She runs to him, drops to her knees, and grabs his face. Yana is turning us toward the door, my weight on her shoulder. I can’t move my legs; she is fully dragging my body.
“Watch out!” a voice calls behind us.
From the mirror, I see Ricci. He has the knife, and he is on his feet, rushing toward Yana’s back.
I try to speak, but my mouth will not work.
“Papa, stop!” Valentina is screaming.
Yana turns without letting go of me, and she shoots him.
