Page 78 of Mafia Queen
Is he in pain while we clear the furniture? Cook the meals? Watch the sun crawl across our slit of sky?
Does he know we’re looking for him?
Or—with every hour that passes—am I getting him killed?
22
SANTINO
The concrete floor is like a hammer to the back of my head, but I don’t sit up.
The remaining fingers on my left hand ache with the loss of their brother. The pain that shoots all the way to my shoulder is like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Putting pressure on my skeleton to get myself up is as distant a possibility as tearing down this wall with my bare hands and running to Violetta at a hundred kilometers an hour. But not only am I horizontal, they used quick-hardening mortar between the bricks. And I can’t run that fast. I can’t do anything.
So there’s me, and pain, and darkness, and regret.
A lot of regret, in all flavors and colors. Regret for leaving my mother behind where I saw her last, sleeping on the side of a volcano. For treating Violetta like a doll. For withholding information because I was ashamed. For being given away in marriage. For not taking Violetta sooner. For not taking her later. For the baby we lost and the children we’ll never have.
I regret things I’ve done and things I’ve avoided. I promise not to do things anymore and to do everything, all of it—without defining what it is—if I can just see her again. I promise God nine more fingers for Violetta’s life and offer the whole hand to spend it with her.
There are noises. Creaking floors. Muffled speech. A kind of harmless cracking, clapping, and slamming one hears in life. I don’t realize my eyes are open for a long time.
There’s some kind of nightlight in the adjacent room. It casts a dim glow through the little hole at the top of the wall. As much as my eyes adjust, it’s not enough to see by without giving it full attention.
Deep breath.
Every sin of neglect and harm has been catalogued. Every sacrifice offered. There’s nothing else to do but wait for heaven’s reply. I have the attention to spend on what I’m seeing and hearing.
I’ve wet my beak on construction money enough times to know the difference between a property’s value and the assessment, but not enough to know what the net of pipes and conduit just below the ceiling are for.
Dim light bursts in through the brick-sized space above. After the scrape of a chair, there’s a click and a rattle from above me.
“Santino,” a woman whispers from the other side of the wall. It’s not Violetta.
If she was on the other side of the wall, it would melt with shame for being the only thing standing between us. But it’s one of many things, and I don’t know how to tear down the first. I have never felt so helpless and ashamed.
“Santino,” she says again, closer. Gia isn’t tall enough to see into the hole, but standing on a chair, she can just about put two bottles on the ledge. Looks like aspirin. I need more than that. “I got you…” She stops, huffing with strain as she puts a bottle of water sideways, so the cap looks like a diver peeking over the board. “Water.” I hear her dropping back onto the floor. “Are you there?”
“Yes.” My head hurts from lying faceup on the concrete. Maybe it’s thirst.
“I understand why you did what you did to Papà.”
I let that hang in the air without telling her I don’t need her to understand, because I’ll kill her too, and none of it will matter any more.
“Is it bleeding still?” she asks.
When I lift my hand over my face, the shoulder bones feel as if they’re grinding together. “No.”
“I found some disinfectant,” she says. “And I left you a surprise.”
Above me, the floorboards creak and the pipes hiss. The shaking silver tube spanning the ceiling is the diameter of a can of tomatoes. They’ve all been making a symphony for what seems like hours.
“Where are we?” I ask, getting my arms under me. My skull is made of lead and my brain is made of screams.
“Damiano told me not to say.”
“Who does he think I’ll tell?” I have to put my hand on the wall when I stand, or I’ll spin right back to the floor.
“I don’t know. He doesn’t tell me anything anymore. It’s like…” She doesn’t finish.
