Page 11 of Mafia Queen
“Ah, a nice age.” I drop into the nearest chair, where I can watch the path of blood behind the crawling man. I want a cigarette, but they’re soaked, and my lungs still feel half-filled with broken glass. “When I was fourteen, I swore an oath to the Cavallo family. My father was dead, and the man who took me in…wasn’t much of one. So. You get the family you get, no?”
“I can’t… I don’t…”
“Your wife though. Let’s make a deal.”
“Don’t.” Lucio’s gun is out of reach, but he grabs in that direction.
I lean my heel on his wrist. “If my wife is dead, I take yours.”
“I don’t know where she is.”
“You’d better tell me something, Cali. The hand of God pulled me out of death. What will you say when you meet Him? You didn’t tell me what I needed to know—what God Himself sent me back to Earth for—because you wereloyal?”
In his weakened state, the superstitious logic gets through. He swallows hard. Blinks. Starts to answer, then stops.
“It’s Damiano,” Calimero says.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“And Cosimo. His father. Bankrolling. Paid us all.”
No surprise. Cosimo’s lusted after the crown since the day it was pulled from the devil’s warehouse.
“What’s in it for you besides a paycheck?”
“A place. Under the crown.” His energy flags. The river of blood from his leg flows into the pool.
“Where is she now? This is your last chance.”
“Don’t know. Tomorrow morning…church.” His eyes close, and his body goes limp.
I slap his face until he’s half-conscious. I’m trying to stay calm and failing. “Then what?”
“Marry her. Claim crown…”
Dami’s intentions with the crown may be to rule himself or give it to his father to expand his territory here. He may want to jerk off on it. None of it will matter. He’ll kill Violetta after God and the devil used up a miracle to save me from death.
“Where is shenow?” I ask again.
But the light goes out from his eyes, and I drop him to stand. The blood stops flowing from his leg. He didn’t know. She could be anywhere, suffering in a thousand different ways.
“Fuck!” I shoot him in the head.
Bone and blood and brain spray like paint. The bullet leaves a hole in the patio tile. No blood flows. He was already dead. Can’t turn back time and kill him. Can’t turn it forward.
Tomorrow morning.
I pace into my house, turn corners, sweep the pictures off the mantel, the garbage statues and clocks off the tables. There’s an entire house to waste time destroying because she’s out of my reach. I fall back onto the couch. My chest hurts.
How many hours to blow a hole through this town? Burn down every house she isn’t in until I find her? Leave them a place to run? To go deeper into hiding?
Out of habit, I reach for the pack of useless cigarettes, but they’re not there.
Not in one piece, at least. My pocket is full of soaked tobacco and paper sludge around a misshapen, dented Zippo, and I understand everything.
The bullet hit my chest hard enough to send me into the pool, but the lighter’s steel casing kept it from piercing me. When I laugh, my chest hurts, but I laugh anyway. Neither Heaven nor Hell saved me, but my purpose is both holy and damned.
Gia’s already telling them I’m dead.
