Dio mio, she looks exactly like her father.
Those wide-set eyes in the rearview mirror do several things to me at once. They break me, they alarm me, they defeat me. It’s my duty to those eyes to protect their holder and they tell the story of my failure.
I almost lost her. Not just a woman promised in marriage, but her. The delicate little bird I’m charged with protecting. The feisty and fiery young woman who keeps me on my toes. The most beautiful creature I’ve ever encountered in this godforsaken life.
I almost lost her.
The men who tried to take her will pay dearly. Killing them is too kind. They don’t deserve and will not be granted a quick death. They will be destroyed. Demolished. Stolen in the night and sold for parts. They will exist only in excruciating pain until I see them in hell.
Violetta didn’t ask for this life. No matter her name, no matter her family, no matter the strings that tie her to me—this debt is not hers. She will live under my protection.
Looking at her in the rearview reminds me of many moons ago, in a different car, with a different set of eyes staring back.
Emilio Moretti sat in the back seat with Damiano. I was driving. This was before the big money hit, when Emilio was the only one who knew what the fuck he was doing. There was no Alfa Romeo. No big house. Just a beat-to-shit Lancia with more trunk space than seating.
We were driving down a desolate road, not a damn thing in sight—only barren fields with abandoned machinery and broken barns. Potholes colonized by rabbits. Swampy marshes ate everything in reaching distance, even the puttering of an archaic engine. Bleak shit. The smell alone stayed with me for weeks when Emilio first took me out there.
Damiano hadn’t had a first time yet, and he shook so hard he rocked the car.
“Come on, Dami. Don’t worry.” Emilio clapped him on the shoulder. “Sing a song with me.”
That was Emilio’s answer to everything—sing a song with me. Old folk shit from the toe of the boot that had enough Arabic tones to make you listen just to make sure you had the right song. His rich baritone filled cars and offices and parking garages and empty warehouses. He did it especially when nasty shit was about to happen and knew some of the guys had weaker stomachs, or it was their first time.
That’s what you did. You’d sing a song with Emilio. You’d get the fucking job done.
Dami, though, he was never around for the singing. He had made a name for himself by muscling his way through the gig, throwing around weight and weapons and hot-shit talk. He didn’t have to put weight behind his words. Threats were his specialty. We had others for the follow-through.
Tonight—that night—there were no others. It was only Dami, Emilio, and me.
He took a special shine to us, Emilio. Called us the sons he never had. The brothers he always longed for. He was taking care of Dami. Trying to soothe him. Sing with me. Pay attention to me instead. This way, Dami, this way.
It didn’t work. Dami was too little a man with too many nerves. Emilio should have known better.
I parked by our usual spot and we all met at the rear bumper. Emilio made some smartass remark about soap and how tight it was in the back seat.
“You can drive home,” I said, pocketing the keys after I unlocked the trunk because I knew better.
“She’s a good car.” Emilio patted me on the shoulder. “You’ll miss her when she’s gone.”
“Unlikely.” I hoisted the lid of the trunk, its protesting creaks and groans eaten by the marshes.
The guy tied and taped up scowled and thrashed against his restraints, but Emilio had taught me not to underestimate the value of a good knot. The more he squirmed, the tighter he made the restraints.
When Emilio first hired me, I thought we’d talk about guns and territories and family hierarchy…but no. It was all ropes and knots, as if we were on a fucking sailboat.
I dragged the guy out of the trunk and threw him on the ground. Reached in the deeper recesses of the trunk for a shovel and slammed it shut.
Dami stood there like a guy about to revisit his lunch.
“Dami.” Emilio pulled out his gun, and my buddy’s eyes got wider.
I have to admit, I had a moment of worry. A guy never knew what another guy could get caught doing.
But Emilio turned the gun around in his hand so it was on the bottom, and his fat gold ring with the inset of diamonds in the shape of a crown was on top—visible as a warning—and passed it to Dami. “Since you’re the one who got this sfigato where we could reach him, you get to do the honors.” He might as well have said, “Make me proud, son.”
Even though Dami took the gun, I was thinking it was going to be a long fucking night.
“We’re doing him a favor.” Emilio took the guy by the hair and jerked him to his knees. The fear in our captive’s eyes was palpable. “Either we do it fast or his boss is gonna do it slow.”
Damiano wiped his face with one hand and pointed the gun with the other. The sfigato flinched because he knew this was it for him. Poor fucking guy. Didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to his mother.
Right about then was when I started to wonder why I wasn’t shaking. Why I didn’t care. Why I just wanted to get the business done and move on. It wasn’t that the guy was a rapist. He had come to us with an opportunity because we paid better than the Tabonas—the family he’d pledged to. He was a stupid and careless soldier. Not worth killing except that it would put us—a soldier cell of the Cavallos—in a position to find a profitable peace. Emilio would rise to capo and give Dami and me a place we belonged, if only my friend would stop acting like such a fucking vergine.
I hadn’t killed anyone either. I decided I just might shake too, because before I worried about hell, I had to believe I had a soul to burn.
“You won’t be green after this,” Emilio promised Dami. “After your first, it’s like riding a bike. It’s new. New shit is scary. But it’s a whole damn lot easier once you get up and going. Once you’re ready for it, know what to expect. You understand?”
Dami nodded, but it was clear he couldn’t do it. Emilio was getting bored. The sfigato tied up before us laughed from behind the duct tape. Not just any close-mouthed chuckle, but a laugh of derision. Like if we were going to kill him, he was going to get an insult in and Dami was so out of sorts, the guy with a gun to his head was telling him to get on with it.
So Emilio nodded in my direction and I knew what to do. I laid my hand over Dami’s and waited for him to loosen his grip on the gun. He didn’t. He knew that if I did his job, it wouldn’t look good.
“You’re shaking,” I said loud enough for Emilio to hear. “Did you eat? You sick or something?”
I’d known Dami so long, I could tell he understood what I was saying was not what I meant.
“Just a little agita.” His grip relaxed. “I don’t wanna miss is all.”
“You get the next one.”
My friend let go of the gun and I took it, swung my arm around, and popped the sfigato right in the face. A spray of blood blew out the back of his head, and he wavered on his knees as if falling one way or the other was the difference between heaven and hell, and God and the devil were fighting over his soul. He dropped to the left. Another win for the devil.
Easiest kill I ever had. Didn’t even think about it. Just handed Emilio his gun.
Then I started digging, because I was a kid—a nobody—and that was what nobodies did.
“You understand I need men under me who do what I tell them?” Emilio got in Damiano’s face. “These people aren’t your friends. You’re not responsible to them or their fucking immortal souls, and if you’re worried about your own, go join the priesthood.”
Emilio snapped toward me and put out his hand. I knew to stop digging, but as soon as I leaned on my shovel, I got this feeling I had only had once before. The bathroom in my building had two sinks. The one on the right had water that sometimes came out brown. The other had an exposed wire for the overhead light touching the pipe. The electric water didn’t hurt, but if I touched the flow right out of the faucet, it shook the nerves of my hands to the bone.
When I stopped shoveling, my whole body felt like that. All I wanted was a cigarette, so I lit one up.
“I think it was the capicola.” Dami held up his hand. “I’m still shaking.”
I glanced over as I tossed aside a shovelful. He wasn’t shaking. Not really. Anyone could see he was faking it.
“Santi.” Emilio reached toward me and snapped his fingers before opening his palm. “Give me that.” Emilio took the shovel from me. “Make yourself useful.” He tossed it to Dami, who caught it as if digging was what he was meant to do. Then Emilio plucked the cigarette from my fingers and held it up by the filter.
“What happens when you finish this?”
“I smoke another?”
“No, stronzo.” He slapped me in the back of the head then wedged my cigarette between his lips. “You flick it. I watch you. Eh? I see you flick the filter. And who cares, right? But you see you’re at a murder scene or no? Your spit”—he took another drag—“and now my spit’s all over it. You leave this lying around, it’s not just you that’s getting put away.”
“Okay,” I said as he handed it back by the filter.
“It’s not just your ass. It’s all of ours.”
“Sorry.”
“Listen.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “You got the brains for a real future, but you don’t have the experience to know all the shit that goes wrong. I need you to think of the worst that can happen. Just because we got the police in our pocket’s no excuse to be careless. This sets a fire”—he pointed at my cigarette—“and you bring attention to a dead body. Best case? It don’t, but you leave evidence behind for some puffi. Then it won’t matter how much I believe in you.” He pantomimed flicking my butt-shaped life into the trees. “You set yourself and all of us on fire.”
He was right in a thousand ways.
“Thank you,” I said, taking the lit smoke, looking Emilio in the eyes.
They were shaped just like Violetta’s. Just like now, in my rearview mirror, wide and full of emotions I don’t have anymore.
This isn’t about protecting her the way I couldn’t protect Damiano or Emilio. It’s about something more important—and more impossible.
I will never be able to contain this woman.
I am going to lose her.
I am going to fail at protecting her.
My life will be meaningless.
Nothing to look forward to.
Nothing to fight for.
I’d fear emptying into a shell of a man, but I already am.