Massimo puts himself between Sergio and me. “You can go home.”
“Right, but what I was trying to say… I like the Colonia. You guys got a lot of shit sorted out. Kids aren’t running off to law school then taking you to court. Back home, our guys were robbing ice cream trucks and getting busted by their own cousin. It’s embarrassing, but you know, it’s someone else’s problem now. You and me, we’re gonna be like brothers.”
The two men stand off. We’re not going to get rid of Sergio. He’s got his hooks in us. I’m not sure Massimo—who caught a beating for wearing our father’s shoes—is capable of killing him.
I follow my brother to Ray’s car but stop in the middle of the sidewalk.
Last chance. If I get into the car, they’ll own me again. If I’m going to run, I have to do it now. The Colonia has no hold on me. They won’t chase me out in public. I can find my way back to the house. The Skylark is still parked right there, in front of the hydrant. It’s crooked. Parked by a beginner with the keys still in her pocket.
Run.
Once I go back inside the Colonia, I’m going to be watched more than anyone I’ve ever known. That will be the end of hope for me.
“Goody,” Massimo calls.
Dario will understand. He worked so hard to free my mind. Going back in is a betrayal of what he wanted.
Run, run, run.
I can run. I can be free, or I can go to Dario.
There really is no choice.
I get in the car.
CHAPTER 6
SARAH
When I join Massimo in the back seat, I can see the sweat beading on his brow.
“Murray Hill,” he tells Ray.
“You got it.” He pulls out and smiles at me when he checks behind him. “Nice to have you back.”
Massimo doesn’t wait for me to encourage the conversation. “What did you think you were doing in there? In ten minutes, all the women are going to be yackity-yacking about you giving orders.”
“I’ll ask nicer next time.”
“No. Here’s how it’s going to be.”
“Tell me how it’s going to be, Emo.”
“You’re one of us, and you’re sticking to your story.” He lowers his voice, so Ray won’t hear. “You have no feelings for Lucari.”
“None?”
“You hate him. Do you understand? If anyone thinks you care about him, like this—” He snaps his fingers. “You’re worthless. And you know what happens then.”
I nod and look away. I know what happens, and I won’t be as lucky as Dafne. I’ll live.
“Our father’s dead. You’re in mourning. Dress. Veil. The whole thing. You walk around like someone took your heart out.”
“Someone did.”
He looks me up and down, letting out a humorless chuckle. “Fucking women.”
“I want to see him.”
“Tomorrow. I need to see what’s going on here first.” He looks out the window.
That’s the end of discussion.
We ride in silence until Ray pulls up to the apartment we shared with Daddy and Grandma. The last time I saw this place, I was in a wedding gown, ready to marry the wrong man.
“Ray’s gonna take you up,” Massimo says. “I have to retake what that asshole’s trying to steal. I’ll send for you.”
“You should stay off the leg.”
He ignores the advice as if he’s already down at Precious Blood, seizing his birthright. “Our grandmother still lives here. Be careful around her.”
“As always.”
“Remember…” He snaps his fingers. That’s how fast I’ll be worthless enough to hollow.
Ray opens the door to let me out and escorts me to the elevators. I know what he did to Dafne in the greenhouse. My skin crawls in such a tight space with him.
“Talia had the baby,” he says.
“Congratulations.”
“We named him Peter, after your dad.”
“Great. I’ll get him a picture book with trucks.”
I want him to remember his own love of big yellow trucks. I want him to ask himself how he grew from that boy to a man who rapes on command. But Ray smiles, delighted, and I hate myself for giving him that moment.
The elevator doors slide open. They have the same squeak they did the last time they let me out. The hallway still smells like detergent failing to cover over a hundred years of human history.
Grandma’s at the apartment door, standing straight with her hands folded in front of her black skirt. She wears the bland, beatific expression of a woman with neither the desire nor the ability to scold or punish.
“Timothy’s gonna be driving you from now on,” Ray says. “So, I’ll see you around.”
“Yeah.” I remember my grandmother is there and curtsey.
Ray gets back into the elevator.
“I’m glad to see you alive and well.” She gives me a nod.
“You too.” I kiss her cheek.
“Come in, come in,” she says impatiently, stepping aside to give me room. “Before an outsider swoops you up.”
The old threats seem so foolish now. Why was I ever afraid?
Once I’m in, she closes and locks the door.
“I’ll put on a pot of water.” She shuffles to the kitchen.
The apartment is the same, but different. Where Daddy’s formal portrait hung, there’s now a clean white rectangle. There seems to be more air in here without his steely gaze.
The rest of Daddy’s things don’t look any different for being the property of a dead man. His cane sits by the door with its brass handle and tip worn to a diagonal—the grooves that make the shape of a cobra’s head are shallow and shiny where his hand wore them away.
The same pictures of him look back from their frames. At the cusp of puberty, in his own father’s shadow, he’s tilted to one side on his club foot.
I take down a wedding photo I’ve seen so many times I’ve taken it for granted. By the time he married Mary Ballardo—my mother—he’d learned to compensate, standing straighter than any man around him. But when he moved, he was fearsome. Once, I was looking in his office between the edge of the door and frame while he held a meeting with three other men. He leaned just a little left when he took a step and turned that purposeful overcompensation into a chokehold on the man next to him. I ran away before the scene played out. I’d seen too much already. The sway of his gait became his way of maintaining a frightening unpredictability.
“He turned disability into power,” I say, looking for grief and finding only fear.
“What do you mean?” Grandma Marta seems truly baffled.
Daddy wasn’t disabled to her, and his authority was for the good of the Colonia. She’s too old to change the way she sees the world, and yet, she looks too young to understand how a man wields power.
“Nothing.” I put the photo back on the mantel. “Everything looks just the same.”
“We haven’t touched your room.” She leads me down the short hall, passing the door to Daddy’s home office.
With my free hand, I try the knob.
“Sarah Colonia,” she scolds. “You’re barely here five minutes and you’re back to your old ways.”