“Massimo called for me. I know the way.”
“Good.” He props his feet up and goes back to his game.
Head down, I scurry down the hall as if my only purpose is to be where Massimo called me to be.
My father’s office door is closed. Men’s voices come from the other side. I raise my hand to knock, but before I can, it opens.
“Hey there.” It’s my cousin Ray, acting as if he never did an evil thing to a good woman in a rooftop greenhouse.
I step in without being invited. Massimo sits sideways behind the desk, his bad leg propped up on a metal folding chair. Timo, our old bodyguard, leans on the windowsill with his arms crossed. Another man faces the desk. He turns to look my way, unlit cigar clamped between his teeth, draping an arm over the back of his chair. Uncle Caesar. My father’s brother. He’s in import-export, whatever that means. His three-story brownstone on 87th Street houses six children—two from his new, young wife. My snooping revealed his tithes to the church could fund Colonia stipends all by themselves—his payment to keep having children without raising a single eyebrow.
“The kiddo returns,” he says, standing. “Come over here, girl.”
Out of habit, I obey. Uncle Caesar clamps his cigar deep in the webs of his third and fourth fingers and removes it before planting a kiss on each of my cheeks.
“It’s nice to see you, Uncle Caesar. How’s the baby?”
“Cries. Shits. Eats. Cries.”
“Sounds like she’s doing well.”
“Sure, sure.” He looks at Massimo, who jerks his head ever so slightly, then at the guy at the windowsill. “I gotta take a piss. How about we stretch our legs? Those of us who can.” He barks a big fake laugh, signaling a joke, then slaps his son on the back. “Come on, Raymond. Clear your big thick head.”
Timo—never a talkative guy—nods to me as he passes. Uncle Caesar waits at the door as the other two men exit, then follows, closing the door behind him.
I turn to Massimo. “What does Uncle Caesar want?”
“He wants to make money.” Massimo waves away the idea. “He pays me tributes to worry about shit so he doesn’t have to.”
“Is that what this meeting was about?”
“No. It was about a bunch of other shit that’s not your business. But you’re here now, so why were you waiting outside the door like a fucking sneak?”
“I was there two seconds.”
“I know what you were like, Goody. Going through Dad’s shit. Listening to his conversations. That’s not gonna go on with me.”
“A lot of good it did. I had no idea how bad it was.”
“How bad what was?”
“Am I getting hollowed?”
He sighs. Looks out the window for a moment, then taps his knuckle on the desk. “If I was going that way, would I let you sit with your little sewing buddies?”
No. He wouldn’t. The women of the Colonia think mutilations are a thing of the past. If he intended to do that to me, he would have made sure no one saw me first.
“You’re trying to keep me safe?”
“It’s my job.” He tries to readjust himself to face forward, but he can’t do that and keep his leg lifted. I could tell him I don’t need protection in my own home, but those are just words. I need it here more than anywhere. “Your job is to keep your head down until this all blows over.”
“We never decided what it meant for everything to blow over.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“If anyone should be worrying, it’s me.”
“What the fuck do you want out of me? You think I don’t have enough to deal with? Agosti’s undercutting me every chance he gets. I’m finding shit’s been going on right under my nose my whole damn life, and I’ve been trailing Dad around like a dimwitted fucknut, getting fed information in little bite-sized nuggets. You have no idea what’s landed in my fucking lap. Now you want me to tell you when you can pick your head up? Never, okay? How about never?”
How long will you keep Dario in that cell before you kill him?
I don’t ask him. He won’t answer. Our collaboration is over now that Massimo has all the power in our relationship and all the motivation in the world to expand it over a kingdom.
“Everyone’s talking about the girls he stole.” I tent my hands on the desk, leaning forward.
“Not your problem.”
“What if they’re alive?”
“Excuse me? Do you know something I don’t?”
So, Dario didn’t utter a word about St. Easy when the blood ran over his shirt. He’d never undo his life’s work over a little pain.
“If you tell me,” Massimo says, “you can save everyone a lot of trouble.”
Has the floor opened up under me? Am I spinning through space, grasping for something to break my fall? Have I had the ability to end Dario’s suffering this entire time?
I can bargain with St. Easy.
Can’t I?
No. I can’t. I’ll lose Dario and my soul at the same time.
“I would if I could,” I lie. “He never told me anything specific. He was always afraid I’d end up back here.”
“He must have opened the right fortune cookie, because here you are.”
“Dario will let you bleed him to death before he tells you anything. He’ll never break. Never. Not for you.”
“Sarah. I know you care about him.”
“It’s not that.”
“You’ll get over it. All the feelings… they’ll go away…”
I slam my fist onto the desk. “It’s not that! Sergio’s still trying to find a way into that chair. Dad put him in charge while you were out looking for me, but you’re the legal successor. You both have a valid claim and he’s not going anywhere.”
“I know how to deal with a power vacuum.”
God save us all from a man who thinks he can control a situation he’s never encountered before. Massimo’s a lost little boy halfway around the turn where he realizes his shortcut got him lost.
Men sometimes need to be followed to their own minds.
Grandma’s little sayings about men haven’t been very helpful until now. I can beg and plead to see my husband. I can reason my way there. I can corner him into having no choice but letting me down there. But Massimo will never let me see him unless he thinks it’s his idea.
“If Sergio finds them…it doesn’t matter who you are—every Colonia family will side with him. You’re going to end up dead in a ditch, Emo.”
“Stop it. Jesus. You need to get pregnant before you grow a dick.” He must see my confused expression, because he waves at me as if to suggest I should just forget it. “There’s a lot going on. I’m trying to keep a lid on what happened to Dafne… what they did… these fucking assholes.” He thrusts his hand at the door Ray, Timo, and Uncle Caesar walked out of. “The older guys—Uncle Caesar and them—they knew, and now we all know.”
“All the men, you mean.”
“Whatever. They’re thinking, ‘wow, what a great deterrent,’ and you know what? They’re right. Wife gets out of line? Look at her like you’ll scrape her pussy off. Watch how fast she shuts up. And there was more shit Dad was going to loop me in on”—he snaps up a piece of paper and flicks it to the other side of his desk—“and I’m like, fuck. I can’t stop it, and I can’t be like ‘whatever’ about it.”