Page 94 of Mafia Queen
I couldn’t hit a bottle this way, and now I don’t even know what I’m aiming at.
Until the passenger door opens and a man gets out. He has a thick black moustache and dark widow’s peak on a low forehead. No one is in the driver’s seat. He was alone in the front. His hands are up and he’s blindfolded himself with a long black scarf, as if he’s been prepped for his execution.
“No!” Loretta shouts.
“What?”
“Violetta DiLustro?” The blindfolded man’s knees bend, but he manages to keep upright.
“Carlo!” Loretta screams from below me.
“What is it?” I ask.
There’s a scuffle up front, making me shake a little against the edges of the sunroof.
“I have something to deliver to Violetta DiLustro,” he says.
“If it’s another body part, you can keep it.”
“Turn over the crown and we—”
The rest is lost in the rev of the engine beneath me. Inertia that bends me in two as the Alfa thrusts forward, hitting the man, then pinning him against the Suburban and pushing it so hard it tips onto two wheels.
“What the fuck?” I cry.
The car stops. The Suburban rocks back into place.
Carlo is practically torn in two.
I slide down into the back seat. Loretta’s bawling against the steering wheel with Celia resting her hand on Loretta’s back as she stares at the bloodied windshield.
“What just happened?”
“He killed Elio,” Loretta roars into her hands.
To think I was worried that she still loved Santino.
Now is the moment we’re supposed to drive down to Lasertopia with four cars behind me, but the road’s blocked, and there are so many people. They all need me, and there’s one man I need.
I get out of the Alfa and run to the Suburban, then I open the back door.
No Santino. There was no trade. We planned for that, but there are too many people. I keep saying it to myself because I don’t know what to do about it, and I don’t know how long their delusion will cow them. If they all wake up at once, we’re fucked.
Loretta’s crying because she just killed a man, and that changes a person. Celia’s staring at the carnage. I crouch by Carlo Tabona’s mangled body. An internship in the ER did not prepare me for this many compound fractures or a dying man’s screams. People shouting. No gunshots. Not yet. And I don’t need Santino any less.
Without apology, I reach into Carlo’s front pocket, praying it’s the only one I’ll have to search. My prayers are answered when my fingers find the car’s fob.
Leaning into the driver’s seat of the Alfa, I use the Bluetooth to ping Vito. “I’m going alone. Take care of Loretta.”
I rush around the Suburban. The driver’s door opens with the glow of the dome light, and the standard monotone dings…as if the passenger door isn’t pushed into the seat like a freeze frame of a train wreck.
I get behind the wheel, and with some back and forth, I separate it from the Alfa. Carlo flops to the road, and I head down the mountain alone. This is what it should have been from the beginning. Just me, speeding to him.
“Hold on, Re Santino. I’m coming for you. Finally.”
Finally, finally. I’m going to apologize to him for taking so long. For letting myself get stuck up in a tower. If he’s alive, I’ll beg for his forgiveness.
At the bottom, where the street is more level, a rain-drenched man appears, straddling the centerline. The light washes out his features. He is upright, tall, and utterly still. There’s no room to pass without wrecking the car, and when I consider stopping, I realize that at this speed, on a rain-slick road, I won’t.
