“What about collateral? There’s the house.”
“I don’t care about your fucking house.” I don’t care about this deal at all really. O’Malley’s in deep with one of the three most powerful Camorra clans in Toronto and he needs money, fast. Clearly, he thinks he can try to play one Italian crime organization against another, begging on his knees to La Cosa Nostra to bail him out when Severu Serpico’s soldiers come knocking, which they will.
But the Titones aren’t in the business of bailing people out. We’re in the business of making money. By any means necessary. And even this sprawling gingerbread house of a Thornhill mansion behind us now isn’t enough temptation. Everyone knows the Irish bastard is sinking fast.
A bead of sweat rolls down from O’Malley’s temple, dampening his thinning hair. His hair still has the slightest sheen of rust, a memory of red beneath the grey. Another bead of sweat follows the first, and he swallows noticeably, his ruddy throat bobbing.
Despite the August sun beating down, I know the heat isn’t why he’s sweating.
He’s sweating because he’s come to me – the last and most ruthless resort.
And I’ve turned him down.
No more options, O’Malley.
I stand, doing up the button of my suit jacket. The sun drenches my black-clad shoulders and the leather of my gloves, heating my skin beneath the fabric.
Fuck. I can’t wait for winter.
“Sell the house if you need money,” I say. “You’re not that old yet. Sell a kidney. I know someone who’ll pay.”
O’Malley jumps to his feet, his cushioned monstrosity of a patio chair clattering over backwards to the perfectly landscaped stone.
He starts blabbering, half angry, half desperate. Telling me about how he’s good for the money. How this is just a temporary blip. How we could…
I lose track of it all. All the words. All the bullshit flying like spittle from his mouth.
That isn’t like me. To lose track of anything. I haven’t gotten to where I am today, helping my uncle Vincenzo turn the Titones into one of the richest and most feared crime families in the country, by tuning out the details.
I got here by paying attention. Relentlessly.
That, and a whole lot of blood.
But something else has cut into the conversation. A scattered drift of notes.
Music. Violin?
The notes grow louder. Become almost solid. Like if I squint hard enough, I can see them catching the summer light.
Ignoring O’Malley completely now, I start walking, leaving the stone patio area. My black shoes crush the springy, well-watered blades of grass as I stalk over the lawn.
I scan the broad back of the brick house, searching for the source. I can’t say exactly why I need to find it. I just do. The music is somehow both sharp and sweet. It pricks at my skin. Hooks into my ribs and makes my teeth grind.
Near the top of the back wall, I find the second-floor balcony. And on that balcony…
An angel.
I blink stinging sweat from my eyes, dragging my hand through my hair and slicking it back. I don’t believe in angels. Never have.
A glossy mane of red hair tumbles down a slender back, the curling ends brushing the slightly flared skirt of a yellow sundress. Two pale arms float in the air, one still, the other sawing back and forth over what has to be a violin I can’t see from down here. Every time she moves, the sunlight catches on her hair, setting it ablaze, a glittering inferno. My scars burn under my gloves, the ruined skin on my neck tingling. The scent of smoke from nineteen years ago fills my nose while screams echo in my head, and I’m reminded why I can’t fucking stand red hair.
But the music distracts me from the past, from pain. It’s deafening, yet somehow not loud enough. So soft it makes my throat go dry. So powerful it slugs me in the temple. Leaves me reeling.
Elio Titone. Fucking reeling.
Instincts jerk to life inside me. Instincts that have never once led me astray. Instincts telling me to cut and run. To leave, right fucking now, and never look back.
I ignore them.
I start walking again, circling around towards the left side of the house so that I can see her face.
From below on the lawn like this, I can only just see her profile. Thank fuck that’s the only glimpse I get. Because even that one sliver of her face ruins me.
It isn’t just her physical beauty. The high, round cheekbones or the shadows cast by thick, long lashes – I’ve seen it all before. I’ve been with women more alluring, more sensually appealing than her.
It’s the expression shaping those features that does me in.
An expression of pure, deeply human joy. Something I wasn’t entirely sure actually existed until now.
Her soft lips are drawn into a sublime half-smile. Her eyes are closed, her chin balanced delicately on the violin as her long, deft fingers spirit over the strings. Her other arm pushes the bow through the air with surprising force.
“What’s that song?” I mutter. I almost don’t want to speak. Don’t want to make a single noise. But I have to know. Her song is strangling me.
O’Malley comes to a stop beside me, huffing and puffing, having followed me across the lawn. I shoot him a brutal glance, wanting to wring his neck for breathing so fucking loudly.
He pants, bending to place his hands on his knees before straightening.
“It’s Irish. An Eala Bhàn. Was one of her mother’s favourites.”
My eyes crawl up the brick to the balcony once more. The girl’s smile has contracted. Her brows furrow slightly. Tension creeps into her jaw and neck as her fingers fly faster, grinding the notes out harder.
The joy in the song, in her, darkens. Becomes edged with pain. But even in that pain, there’s beauty. Beauty I want to peel back, layer by layer. To understand.
To own.
My fingers twitch at my sides, wanting to clench into fists around something. The bow. The violin’s neck. Hair the colour of fire I’d rather forget.
My next words come without thought and without hesitation.
“That’s it,” I say to O’Malley, my eyes glued to his daughter. “The collateral.”
“What?” O’Malley asks. “The violin? It was her mother’s. It’s worth a fair bit now, but it’s nothing like-”
“Not the violin.”
If not for the music, there would be a long beat of silence before he explodes. His Irish accent, dulled by years in Canada, grows suddenly sharper.
“You want my daughter?” he sputters. “What, that the only way ye can get a woman, ye ugly piece of shit?”
My pistol finds his forehead before he can even blink. His cheeks, so red with rage a moment before, drain of all colour, turning ashen.
“Watch yourself, O’Malley,” I murmur softly, already imagining the spray of blood and brains on the manicured lawn. I’ve killed men for less insult than this.
The music stops.
The softest tremor of sound, the call of, “Dad? Are you down there?” on the summer air has me hunching into myself, slipping the gun under my jacket. My breath shudders out of me. My guts burn with something I haven’t let myself feel in years.
Shame.
There’s something terrible about being a monster in front of a pure little songbird like that.
It almost makes me hate her.
“That’s the deal,” I hiss savagely, too quiet to be heard from the balcony above.
O’Malley scowls at me. But I can already see him cracking. Even his earlier rage didn’t come from the place of a protective father but was the irritation of a man who didn’t want to give up a prized possession.
“Fine,” he grunts. “But it won’t come to that,” he adds quickly. He turns away from me, running a hand down the back of his neck. His next words are so quiet I almost miss them. But that torturous music has stopped, so I catch them despite the whisper.
“God help me.”
My eyes dart up to the balcony.
But no one’s there.
There’s relief in that. No wide eyes watching me. No music clawing at the scar of something that might have once been called a soul.
“God can’t help you now, O’Malley,” I say, keeping my voice cold and steady. I mask the disgust I feel for him, so greedy and pathetic he’d offer up his daughter, a lamb to slaughter, to save his own skin. There’s repulsion, too, for my own unexpected weakness. For my wanting.
But stronger than any of that – the disgust, the loathing – is the beat of that fucking music in my blood.
And I already know without a shadow of a doubt that even if I slit my own throat and bleed to death right here on the grass…
I’ll never get it out.