Frankie would always remember the day she realized Michael was dead. It was the beginning of March, and the jonquils were already forcing their way through the snow. There had been no word from him in two months, which was a month longer than they’d ever been out of touch, even when he was in the Middle East. She begged her father to make inquiries, but when he came to the house one night, his face ashen, and told her he couldn’t locate Michael or the contact who’d arranged the mission in the first place, she knew.
At first she raged against her father. “You taught me never to trust the government. How could you?” she yelled.
“My contact wasn’t with the government,” her father said.
“But his contact was, and you always said ‘the apple don’t fall far from the tree.’”
For one of the only times in his life, Tony Pacelli’s silver tongue was silent. There was nothing he could say. Frankie shouted, cried, threw things, then sank into a despair so wide and deep she wanted to drown in it. Her father wasn’t much better. The loss of his grandson, the successor he’d always hoped and expected Michael would become, crushed him. He took the blame, apologized profusely, and told Frankie he had nothing more to live for.
He didn’t. A month later Tony Pacelli died of a massive coronary. Although Frankie was grateful he hadn’t suffered, she was furious. Why was God punishing her? She’d loved only three men in her life, and two of them were dead. As for the third, Luis—well, who knew what had happened to him? Pain gnawed at her like a rat feeding on a carcass, so fierce and raw it threatened to eat her alive. At times she wanted it to.
But Frankie had to put aside her grief temporarily. With her father gone, she was the de facto head of the Family, and if she wanted to keep her position, she would have to fight for it. She wanted it. Why had she suffered so much, if not to assume the mantle of power? Perhaps God was rewarding her by making her the captain of her own ship. It was time. She’d learned from her father, and she knew she could steer it well. But there had never been a female head of any Cosa Nostra Family, and there would be threats to her succession.
After the funeral she closeted herself in her office with Roberto Donati, her father’s consigliere.
“Roberto, I want you to analyze all the high-ranking soldati in the Family. Who am I going to have problems with?”
Donati leaned back in his chair and templed his fingers. A tiny smile unfolded across his face. “Your father asked me the same question a few weeks ago.”
Frankie arched her eyebrows. “He did?”
Donati’s smile broadened. “I will tell you what I told him. I see two threats.”
“Only two?” She tried to smile, but the corners of her lips wouldn’t move.
“One will be from Benito Albertini. You may be too young to remember, but his father tried to unseat yours years ago. He failed.” Donati flicked his hand. “Albertini thinks with other parts of his body, rather than his head.”
Frankie nodded. She didn’t know Albertini well, but he was a weaselly runt of a man, and she didn’t like him.
“And the other?”
“Gino Capece. Your sotto capo. He is a capable and ruthless man. But he is shrewd. An altogether different situation than Albertini.”
“What do you advise?”
Donati was quiet for a moment. Then, “Offer them their own squads, reporting only to you. Better to turn an enemy into an ally than the other way around.”
This time Frankie did smile. He sounded so much like her father. “Set up meetings with both.”
Albertini came in an hour later and declined her offer. “The Family rightfully belongs to me.” He flashed her a contemptuous smile. “A woman cannot do the job. Even your father agreed with me. As do most of my capos.”
Frankie knew he was lying but said she’d consider his advice carefully. When he left the room, she nodded at Roberto. Albertini wouldn’t make it home that night.
Gino was another matter. “Your father and his were friends. They respected each other,” Roberto said. “He will bide his time, but you will have to earn his respect. If not, he will stage a coup.”
“When?”
Donati shrugged. “That I do not know.”
Frankie told him to bring Gino in. He was a tall muscular man who’d seen so much action over the years that his natural expression was one of suspicion.
“Please sit, Gino,” she said. She explained that she wanted to offer him his own unit. “In fact, I want you to consider yourself my second in command.”
Gino cocked his head and narrowed his eyes—he was known as a man of few words—then nodded. Frankie could tell he knew what she was doing and that while he didn’t mind being bought, he would be watching her every move.
By the next day, for the first time in history, a woman was named the head of a major crime Family. Despite her grief Frankie couldn’t suppress her elation. This was the way it was supposed to be. She would take the Family’s businesses to new heights.
After everyone had left the Barrington house, she wondered if this was why the men she loved had been taken from her. Why she had suffered so much. Since she couldn’t have love, she would take power instead. And God forbid any man—or woman—tried to take it away from her. They would pay a price. She was finally free to make her own decisions. Do as she saw fit. Without interference.
There was only one issue in her way. Carmine DeLuca had been a distant husband and a worse father. Her father, calling in a few favors, had arranged the marriage to shield her from the stigma of bearing an illegitimate child. She couldn’t go back to Nick; she’d broken his heart once, and she knew he wouldn’t let her do it again. She had no choice. So she married Carmine and tried to be a dutiful wife, if only for Michael’s benefit. But now Michael was dead, and so was her father. There was no reason to keep Carmine around. He might even prove to be trouble. So around midnight she picked up the phone and made a call to a man known only to her father, and now, Frankie.
“Hello, my friend. I have a job for you.”
The sun broke through a swollen overcast, and weak light spilled across Carla’s one-room apartment. Efficiencies, they called them. Studio apartments. Why didn’t they call them what they were, she thought. A box inside a box for people with no money. Still, she spent as little time outside as possible. Even in September the oppressive Miami humidity left her gasping for air. Florida was only ninety miles from Cuba, but it was another world. No trade winds, no Malecón, no bay. Instead there was the inter-coastal, which was usually clogged with nausea-inducing exhaust from power boats. Although mired in poverty, Havana was more delicate and graceful. Everything in America was big, brash, and dirty.
Including her. Carla felt like a cow: all nipples, stomach, and cud. She never realized that being pregnant would be so uncomfortable. Like lugging around a twenty-pound sack of rice. She felt a pang of guilt for all the pregnant women she’d treated so cavalierly back in Cuba.
She squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t think about home now. She had to get to work. She slowly lumbered down the stairs and out of the small building on NW Avenue Twelve. Sweat promptly beaded on her neck. She picked her way across a wide street that was more highway than road, dodging the cars that barreled past. She hoped they were on their way out of Little Havana forever. She waited for a bus that took her to her job at a Spanish-speaking drugstore. The irony was, she was earning minimum wage in the U.S., but she still took home more in a day than she had in a month in Havana.
Forty-five minutes later, she stepped off the bus and walked the two blocks to the pharmacy. The owner, a Cuban doctor originally from Pinar del Rio, was somewhere in his sixties, with thick salt and pepper hair. She’d met him at the Catholic Church six months earlier. He’d asked her a few questions, which she’d obviously answered to his liking, because he offered her a job. She would not be a doctor, he said. He could not practice medicine in America without returning to medical school, and neither could she. But she could work in his pharmacy. She was grateful. She had no papers, money, or ID.
Now, he looked up from the vial of pills he was filling in the back of the store. “Buenas tardes, Carla. A man came here looking for you.”
Carla, who’d already started towards the cash register in front, jerked her head around. Her father had passed after she arrived. She hardly ventured out of the barrio except for an English class at the community college. She’d learned that, like Havana, it wasn’t wise to speak out in the U.S., but for the opposite reasons. No one in America wanted to hear how Cuba was more beautiful, egalitarian, and less materialistic than the States. Especially from someone who’d grown up under Fidel. She’d learned to be circumspect and to keep a low profile. In fact, she only knew two or three people in Miami, and, with the exception of her boss, none of them were men.
“Who was it?” she asked nervously.
“He was—perhaps—a bit younger than I. But fat. Not much hair. Olive skin. Red-faced.” The pharmacist shrugged. “The heat, you know.”
“What did he want?”
“He claimed he knew your husband.” Her boss motioned to her belly.
A sudden fear skittered around in her. She’d told no one about Michael. No one. In fact, she’d given people the impression that her pregnancy was “one of those things.” She hadn’t been careful. She didn’t think it was that time of month. She certainly never claimed to be married. She ran a hand through her ponytail. She’d let her hair grow long, but she mostly kept it pulled back in a band.
“What did you tell him?”
“That you had the afternoon shift and to come back.”
Her expression must have betrayed her apprehension because her boss extended his palms. “I am sorry. Did I make a mistake?”
She unlocked the register, thinking it through. She’d figured out by now that the documents Miguel had given her were related to his mission. She’d also figured out the mission had fallen apart and that both Luis and Miguel were killed because of it. But she still had no idea what the mission was, or why the map was important. Now, though, it didn’t matter. If someone had tracked her here, it wasn’t good.
As if to emphasize the point, the baby kicked.
The baby. Her landlord’s wife claimed to know a midwife. Carla herself knew enough to deliver a baby, and had bought all the supplies through the pharmacy. It would be born soon. Any day, thank god. But now a new danger was flashing as brightly as one of those huge American neon signs. Her survival, and that of her baby, might be at stake.
When would it end? The past nine months had been a nightmare: from the night Miguel had been shot and she’d begged Diaz to go back and he’d refused; to the crossing when a sudden squall had nearly capsized the boat; to the horror of being left on the shoals of American soil with no papers or money; to eking out a living while trying to stay healthy for the baby. She might have survived worse in Cuba, but that was her home. In the land of plenty, her life was harsh and difficult. Almost desperate.
She almost shed a tear but forced it back—it was merely the result of hormones. Still, part of her wanted to surrender. She was exhausted with the daily struggle to survive. She was, as they said in English, at the end of her rope. She needed help. Especially once the baby came. But now, she had to flee. Find a new safe haven. She didn’t know if she could. How much could one person stand?
She closed the register and told the pharmacy owner she needed to take a break.
“But you just came in.”
“I’ll be back in an hour,” she lied.
She took the bus back to her apartment. There wasn’t much to pack. It had come furnished, and she’d been frugal with her paychecks. She picked up a duffel bag and started back down the stairs. At the bottom of the steps a pain as sharp as a knife tore through her abdomen. She had run out of time.
Over the next twelve hours she swam through an ocean of pain. She had dim recollections of biting down on towels. The midwife making her walk around. The smell of blood—her own—worming its way up her nose. There was temporary relief, but only for a few seconds. Then the agonizing pain came back. She lay back down and slipped into a dream-like trance where everyone shouted for her to push. She did, but she couldn’t remember why. All she wanted was the pain to go away.
And then, finally, it did.
“You have a daughter, Carla,” a voice said through the dream. “A beautiful baby girl. With such rosy, chubby cheeks!”