Emilio Moretti called me Impavido. Fearless. A compliment more to my acting than my heart. I fear plenty. Death mostly. Going into the eternal quiet of nothing while the noise of things undone stays behind, crying for me to come back and finish.
Four chambers in a heart. Four rooms to fill with love or sadness. I fill two of mine with the fear of death.
The other two, with Violetta. One chamber filled the day I saw her as an unready, unripe fruit. Her eyes, dark as blood. Her hair, a coiled frame around the face of a lioness. The feeling wasn’t in my cock, but where I kept the things that are mine. My responsibility. My duties and burdens, but also my people. My comune.
She stepped into the last chamber with her laughable attempt to manipulate me by sucking my dick. I already wanted to fuck her. She already pumped my blood full with fire. But her clumsy humanity caught me unaware, breaking the lock and ramming the door.
Death in two rooms. Violetta in the others. The inside walls rattle as if the two are trying to make love through the lean, red meat between them.
Café Mille Luci rises out of the sidewalk like a slab of cake. The bulk of my operations run out of the corner store of white-painted red brick, and it does exactly what a slice of cake promises. It looks rich but it’s empty—a pretty front with easy calories meant to top off a full meal of plans made elsewhere.
We don’t do much business. We confuse the Americans moving into town. We’ve got cakes, finger sandwiches, thick coffee that used to be a special thing but isn’t anymore, and a full bar even though the place closes at five. It’s a normal selection and the right hours where we’re from, but in the American religion, closing a bar before dinner is a mortal sin. I worship an older God. The college kids from the other side of the river can build their own church.
Today, traffic cones threaten to undo the already chipped frosting around the outside. More roadwork. More jackhammers. It rattles the windows and the stacks of short glasses behind the bar, then it stops as if someone pulled the plug as my cousin Gia walks in.
The guy with the jackhammer puckers his lips behind her back, while another whistles. There’s a comment ending in the word “bambina,” mocking her ethnicity while inviting her into his filthy mind.
“Hey, Cugino Santino!” She waves to me, bouncing to the back room with her ponytail swinging.
I wonder which of the crew’s throats I should cut first.
“I can go handle it, boss.” Frankie wipes down the glasses behind the bar.
I wave him off. He’s loyal but not bright. He was the first one to point out the way the crew working on the street whistles at Gia when she comes into work. As if I don’t notice how he looks at her.
He thinks he can go handle it and make a show for her. He must think I’m stupid.
“No,” I say. “I’ll handle it when I have time to slit a throat. Not before.”
You don’t stay in business as long as we have by acting in anger. When Roman interrupted Violetta and me by the pool to warn me that Damiano Orolio requested a meeting, I wanted to rage at the messenger or the message, but I knew neither would get me far, so I accepted the meeting and went to Mille Luci for it.
An SUV six inches short of a bus pulls into one of the few vacant spaces out front, pushing against one of the cones to fit.
Damiano Orolio has to drop a foot and a half to get out of that piece of shit. He waves to the construction guy who rights the orange cone. It’s not an apology. It’s a dare.
Damiano and I used to be built about the same, but no more. He’s worked his upper body up to the size of a sofa, while the rest tapers down to the ground, spindling under him like the legs of a card table. The scar on the side of his mouth makes him look as if he’s half smiling, and in the summer—when he’s tanned—you can see the white slash a block away.
The bell rings when he enters. He doesn’t have to be asked to raise his arms so Roman can pat him down. He’s in this position when Gia comes out from the back, tying an apron around her waist. He catches sight of her like a hawk spotting a mouse in a parking lot.
“Who’s this?” he asks lasciviously as Roman works his ankles.
“Gia,” I say, “I need you to do inventory on the linens.”
“That’s next week,” she says, as if I don’t know what day of the month it is. She glances at Damiano not as a potential partner or a threat, but a potential tipping customer.
Roman nods and Damiano lowers his arms.
“Tu vai.” I don’t want to snap at her, but it’s my duty to protect her and that means inventory in the back room. “Subito.”
“That’s Gia?” he asks when she slams through the swinging doors. “Little Gia?”
I don’t answer. She’s my responsibility, and I don’t like the way he’s looking at her.
“Something for you?” I ask.
“Yeah.” He slides onto a stool, leaning over the bar to Frankie with one huge elbow. “Gimme a caffé coretto.”
Frankie looks to me for confirmation and I nod so he can make it.
Damiano watches Frankie carefully as he brews up the drink. We don’t talk. I know why he’s here, and if he thinks I’m going to give him what he wants, he’s dumber than I ever imagined.
“Look at this place.” Damiano waves his hand over the room, then knocks on the wood as if it’s the hood of a used car. “It ain’t changed since 1978 when Sal opened it.”
“You weren’t even born in 1978.”
“I know what 1978 looks like.”
“It’s fine the way it is,” I say.
“If you’re a seventy-year-old hitter with a fat wife and an ulcer.”
“You have an ulcer?”
Frankie delivers Damiano’s espresso and places a bottle of Sambuca next to it.
“No ulcer yet. A little agita when I heard you got married and didn’t invite me.” He gives a theatrical shrug. “But otherwise…”
“You brought me a wedding gift?”
“Can we cut the shit, Santi?”
I sip my espresso without the flinch he’s hoping for. We’ve known each other too long and he should know better. No one calls me Santi anymore. No one.
Damiano and I grew up together. We were partners for most of our childhood. Damiano was better at everything—school, sports, generosity. He helped me learn English. When my parents needed money, he brought me in to meet Emilio Moretti—swearing on his mother I was hardworking, reliable, and quiet when it counted.
Emilio hired me on my friend’s word. I was Santi. He was Dami. We were equals.
Until that day on the shore. Winter. The point of it is the beach is empty while waves and wind cover what you’re saying. Emilio and his guy, Jacopo, were negotiating a delivery. Dami and I were point. Jac had two of his own guys behind him. Routine shit, but you can’t take a routine for granted, so my eyes are all over the place. There was a lady about a hundred feet off, throwing a stick for her dog to fetch. A man smoking on a bench in the freezing fucking cold. A couple necking over that way.
“You think he’s gonna get some?” Dami said, indicating the couple.
“If he can get past her body armor,” I replied.
Dami concurred with a chuckle. Her black down coat zipped up from the floor to just under her chin.
“I don’t like that guy.” I nudged my chin toward the smoking man as Emilio and Jacopo argued over drop-off points. “That’s his third smoke in fifteen minutes.”
“His wife probably don’t let him. Hey—” He slapped my chest with the back of his hand. “Did you get a load of Rosalie? That dress?”
The woman knelt to retrieve the stick from the dog, but there was something off in her movements. Before, she’d leaned forward to grab the stick, but this time, she kneeled between me and it, taking it from the side.
And when she stood—stick in hand—she pivoted to face us.
“Down!” I yelled, pushing Emilio away with one hand and drawing with the other.
The stick was a thin rifle pointed at Jacopo. I aimed and squeezed the trigger just as a hot pfft scored the left shoulder of my jacket. The woman went down, and the dog barked.
That was when—for saving a business partner—Emilio took me under his wing, Dami started resenting me, and I learned to never underestimate a woman.
He’s not Dami anymore, and I’m sure as shit not Santi.
“Drink up,” I say as he rubs lemon peel on the rim of his cup at the Mille Luci. “Then we can cut the shit.”
“You wouldn’t poison me in your own place.” Damiano pours Sambuca into the coffee.
“I wouldn’t poison you, period.”
“Yeah.” Damiano pounds it back, pinkie raised, and clicks the cup back into the saucer. “You ain’t that bright.”
“Obviously.” Poor Damiano never got over the day he stopped being better at everything.
“You got to the Moretti girl,” he says. “I know you pulled her outta her aunt and uncle’s place and took her to St. Paul’s. You know I know. I was there. You’re counting down the days to her birthday.”
I coil tighter than a serpent, limbs ready to spring. My sister used to say I was like a duck: frantic on the inside, smooth as glass on the outside.
“Violetta’s my wife now.” I said the rest like a man exchanging news. I didn’t need to issue threats. That was a sign of weakness. “Under God and the Church. You don’t have to count down the days, because she’s not yours. She’s mine, and no one is going to touch her.”
“Okay, sure.” Another theatrical shrug. “But have you ever thought, in that fucking pea brain of yours, you got a target on your back?” He pushes away the espresso cup. “Then the next guy can drag her in front of Father Fonz and find all of it out?”
“You the next guy, Dami?” I make sure to stress his old pet name.
He rubs the scar on his face, eyes dark and clouded. “Nah. I got respect for the institution of marriage. What I’m saying is…there are guys here and back home…all talking this kind of shit. Thinking she knows where it is.”
“She doesn’t,” I snap. “Neither do I.”
“I’m just warning you outta respect. Your life ain’t worth shit now.”
Do I believe him?
Partly.
There’s a target on my back, and plenty of ambitious men are willing to take their shot at a bullseye. The warning is real. Redundant, but real.
“Thank you, my friend,” I say, holding out my hand.
“I miss you,” he says, shaking.
“The same.” We join in a back-slapping hug. Neither one of us fully believes in the affection of the act.
“I was thinking,” Damiano says, lowering his voice. “If we joined up—Just us.” He moves his hands between our chests. “You and me. Like the old days.”
“The old days weren’t that great.”
“The days ahead can be. We make our own family, the way it always shoulda been.”
He’s pitching peace without acknowledging the war it would spark.
“Thank you,” I say with a pat to his shoulder. “I cannot do it that way.”
“If something happens to Violetta…” He levels his gaze as if this is the crux of the entire offer. “I can protect her.”
Sliding my hand up his shoulder, I grip the back of his neck. It’s all muscle he spent years building when he should have been working on the brain above it.
“She’s mine.” I shake him in a way that could be a threat or could be affection. “Whether I’m alive or dead, she’s mine to protect.”
“You can’t protect her from the grave, you dumb fuck.”
I let him go. He’s right, of course. I can argue that I’ll stalk the earth as an avenging demon, but playing into a fantasy never helped anyone. I take my hand off the back of his neck and lay it on his massive shoulder.
“I’ll think about it.”
Gia comes in from the back with the inventory book. Damiano smooths his shirt and straightens his cuffs.
“Don’t think too long.” He thumbs his nose and sniffs. “I don’t like what I’m hearing on the grapevine.”
He waits for me to ask for details, and when I don’t, he holds out his hand. We shake, and he leaves. He gets into his SUV, backs up unnecessarily to tip another cone, and pulls out.
“Roman,” I say when he’s out of sight. “Find three trustworthy engravers who know how to shut the fuck up.”
“Engravers?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Like, guys who make metal plaques and shit?”
“Yes, Roman. Engravers. Three quiet ones.”
“Now?”
“Now.”