“Meaning?” Michelle asked.
Fiorenza groaned as he rose to his feet and lumbered to where she stood. The stench of stale smoke and greasy onions lingered on his lips as he shrugged his shoulders, and he made a show of examining his weapon.
“Meaning your father goes any which way the wind blows,” Fiorenza started. She knew that at any moment, he could put a bullet in between her eyes. But for the moment, he was making no such move.
Keep talking, Mich.
“Where… where is my father now?” she asked.
“Would you believe that he was ready to give you up to save his own skin?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”
Fiorenza nodded as he padded his way toward the kitchen and started to nibble on the cooked bacon and onions still on the cutting board. “There’s a lot of insurance money to go around,” he began. “At the end of the day, no one’s going to trace the fire back to us.”
“At least not on paper,” she said.
“Very true,” Fiorenza responded, downing a slice of bacon.
“And it’s not like I’m letting your crime slide,” he continued. “But…”
His voice trailed off as he munched on some raw onions, a flavor to which he was obviously partial, and kept his gun almost hidden as his vile breath wafted over Michelle’s face.
“But his lies aside, your old man is far from fit to start over again.”
“Guess I can’t really argue with that,” she said, her peripheral vision just shifting toward Lorenzo when he started to stir. Lupo spoke with his feet, kicking the man’s injured side and causing him to grunt in pain.
“Don’t do—”
“Would you rather he did it you?” Fiorenza warned. “After all, you’re the one that killed his guy.”
Michelle’s tongue stilled as she glanced down to see Lorenzo sucking in deep breaths to make the agony evaporate. At the pond, there was no pain. Should they have stayed outside and succumbed to the ripples? Or abandoned the pond altogether and just kept moving?
Too late now.
“Then do it to me,” she said.
“With pleasure!”
Lupo didn’t wait for his boss’s orders as he lunged toward Michelle and gripped her wrist.
“You son of a—”
Her voice failed as he sent her crashing toward the ground, near Lorenzo’s side. Again, he looked as if he wanted to reach out to her, but she swiftly realized that he was pushing the fallen knife in her direction. She briefly eyed the weapon as she met his eyes and waited to make another move as Lupo got down in the figurative dirt and started to tug at her hair.
“Joey, no!”
Fiorenza’s voice barreled through the air, and Michelle saw Lupo’s struggle to contain his frustration as he pulled away from her, readjusting the eyepatch that had just fallen.
“We can still make a deal with her.”
Pressing her hands behind her back to pry herself into a sitting position, Michelle looked to Lorenzo once more and waited as Lupo hovered over her with rage in his eyes.
“It’s like this, tesoro,” Fiorenza started. “Cook for us. You know your way around the kitchen, right? Cut us in and we’ll have our numbers guy do the books to launder what we need from other operations. And we’ll throw the rest of the trash back into the water.”
So that was why they had watched and waited. Lupo stayed like a statue as Michelle managed to get her hands around the knife and wondered where best to stick the blade.
“All you have to do is follow your father’s lead, and you might find your way out of this.”
“And my father?” she asked as Lupo pulled Lorenzo to his knees and pointed his gun at the man’s head.
“Birds of a feather stick together,” Fiorenza said as he licked his fingers. “But if you want him to go the way of your boyfriend here, then that can also be arranged.”
She tried to picture her father now, sitting in some squalid studio apartment. Was he contemplating her next move? More than likely. If she were to see him again, would there be any sign of relief? Or simply anger at the fact that even in his greatest of schemes, he was being passed over for what Michelle could offer by way of her culinary skills? The latter seemed far more probable, but she still started to nod as Fiorenza clapped his hands together.
“Nice to see we’re all on the same page,” he said. “We won’t let one fallen soldier get in the way of so much cash.”
“But, Boss,” Lupo protested. “You said she had to pay!”
“And now I’m changing my mind. You’d be wise to stick to the new party line.”
Lupo’s one good eye glazed over, and she saw him as a caged animal in heat as Fiorenza patted his shoulder.
“Have your fun with Ivy League over here. That’ll make up the difference.”
Seemingly satisfied, the big man turned his attention back to the food. Joey Lupo, with one corner of one eye out of commission, pulled Lorenzo off the ground by his rich, dark locks and pressed his gun to his head.
“Take him back to the water first,” Fiorenzo instructed. “Let it wash away the evidence.”
One choice. One chance. Behind her back, she felt the knife and shot another quick glance at Fiorenza, who was more than enjoying his makeshift meal. She said nothing as she pulled the knife from behind her back and forced her entire being forward. She managed to slice Joey Lupo’s ankle with one quick push, and she felt the knife resist against tendons. Lupo cursed as he fell forward, losing hold of the gun that now fell into Lorenzo’s hands. He seemed stunned for a slight second, and Michelle felt time slow further still as Fiorenza looked away from his meal to see Lupo bleeding and grabbing his ankle.
“You fucking little bitch!”
Fiorenza forgot his stomach and took aim. Michelle hoped that she had enough time to scramble away from the bullet when Lorenzo got off one shot. The man clutched his shoulder, and Lorenzo hurried back to Michelle’s side, helping her to her feet.
Lorenzo looked ready to finish the job when a sweeping kick courtesy of a pudgy limb caused him to lose hold of the gun once more.
“Fucking Parisis think they run the whole goddammed world!”
Without anything in the way of weapons, Michelle drew closer to Lorenzo and started to walk toward the back door.
“Not so fucking fast!” Fiorenza roared.
Fiorenza’s rage knew no bounds as he kept firing. The gunshot wound to his shoulder shattered his accuracy and Michelle could see the sparks as each bullet landed against the walls of the hideout, and Lorenzo worked to guide her toward the backdoor. They met the fresh air together and started to run.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Are you?” Lorenzo replied. She nodded as another shot rang out.
“You’re a fucking sciocco!” Fiorenza bellowed. “I’ll see that both you and your pop have unmarked graves!”
That threat caused her to shudder some, but Michelle kept moving at Lorenzo’s side. Soon, they were near the edge of the water once more when his strength gave out.
“Come on!” she urged, trying to help him back to his feet. “We can still make it.”
“No. You go.”