“Dario Lucari’s survived a lot. He may survive this.” I try to sound casual. Marco’s too drunk for nuance anyway.
“Cool, then. Let him. Massimo’s gonna have no choice but to annul that fucked up marriage you got. Sergio’s got cold steel balls, that guy. Your brother’s gonna run like a bok-bok-bok, or he’s gonna get his head cut off like one.”
I don’t care how drunk he is, he can’t talk about Massimo like that.
“Honey,” Denise chirps, “what inning is it?”
“Oh, yeah! Let me check.”
He’s goes, but the tension remains. My lungs feel full, even after I finally exhale. I want to go home, but the stock pot of lentils is a center of gravity. Dario’s sustenance seems more of a focal point after Marco’s jovial, non-threatening threats.
“I’m sorry about him,” Denise says ruefully. “He’s just talking.”
“It’s fine.”
It’s not fine. Everything is terrible. I unscrew another sippy cup.
“Everybody loves Massimo, and he was your father’s choice, so…” She shrugs, promising nothing.
Does she want the power that comes with being the wife of Sergio’s right hand? Will she ever want to get away from a husband who beats her? Is that the only thing that keeps her going, even as it consigns me to marrying a man I despise?
First, Massimo’s going to annul us.
Will it matter if I tell Dario?
He deserves to know, but more importantly, he needs to get out of here before our lives are split apart.
“Is that Matty crying?” I turn the water off so we can hear.
The room goes silent except for the hiss and hum of the ball game from the living room. No sound from the kids’ rooms. I wish I could make one of them cry for just a moment.
“I should check.” Denise dries her hands. “Give me a sec.”
She goes to her sleeping children. I pretend to wash the impossibly complex pieces of plastic cups.
When I hear her baby-talking Matty, I take the diamond ring from my pocket and drop it in the stew.
It’s up to Dario to understand what it means, if he even gets it in time.
CHAPTER 19
SARAH
In the morning, when I ask Timothy to take me to Massimo, I expect him to drive me to the office in the Precious Blood Rectory. Instead, he takes me to Brooklyn.
Orange skeletons rise like giants looking over the bay, which is wide enough to make the cargo ships in the distance seem as small as toys.
Timothy drives to a guarded gate, shows his ID to get past it, then past a maze of old buildings, parking on a wide, flat area built into the water. When he opens the door, I’m hit by the smell of salt and the sounds of huge motors churning and the lap of waves against the sea wall.
Massimo’s already walking across the pier, coat flapping behind him. He’s younger than me, but right now, he seems to have the burdens of a thousand years of experience.
“What are you doing?” I ask when he’s still ten feet away. Behind me, the car door slams as Timothy gets back into the driver’s seat to wait.
“Go home.”
“You’re really annulling us?”
He sighs, looking over the water, his breath a quickly dispersing cloud. “I have to.”
“Did you consider asking me?”
“After the other night? No, I didn’t fucking consider it.” He steps back and looks over the water. “Fuck!” Back to me, as if cursing at the orange giants got his head together. “Look. We’re not getting anything out of Lucari. There’s no gem of information that’s going to get our women back. That’s a card I can’t play. He’s leading us on. He’s going to drip information through you and, day by day, he’s going to draw you in. And then one day, you’re going to do something. I don’t know what and I’m not giving you any suggestions. But he’s manipulating you and you’re going to put me in a position to have to punish you. I don’t want to do that. You’ve been punished enough.”
His observation of my punishments has no compassion. It’s just a fact.
“So you’re going to annul us because you can.”
“Because you love him and people are starting to notice.”
The cold wind bites my cheeks and crawls under my coat cuffs. I am convinced I’ll never be warm again.
“I can’t do more to hide it.”
“I know. He’s dangerous. And he’s hard to get rid of if he’s married to you. So that is what it is.”
The conversation is over, but it can’t be. I am not a tool for my brother to use and put away when he sees fit. I need to use him for my own ends the way he’s using me, and that means taking the focus off Dario to uncover my brother’s deeper longings.
“And that means the first promise is valid,” I ask. “I’m Sergio’s.”
“If he wants you. If he doesn’t…” The sentence gets lost in the wind.
“He does and you know it. It strengthens his claim. Dario’s the only thing keeping Sergio out of Daddy’s chair.”
“And I can’t get rid of him until he marries you, because he’s an Agosti. Once he’s one of us and he makes a claim, I can take him out without starting a war. You won’t be with him too long.”
“Unless he kills you first. Then he’s fucking me forever.”
He holds up his palms to shut me up. I cross my arms. He doesn’t want to think about that part of it, but if he makes me marry Sergio, I intend to make him think of little else.
“Did you know what we were doing, searching all those papers?” Massimo asks a rhetorical question. He didn’t tell me, so I have no way of knowing. “You know those lists of names? They were women and girls, brought here on fucking boats. Traded for money. And right now, I’d cut off my arm to stop it. I need a place to put them right on this terminal and a safe way to send them back. So if you have to marry Sergio to give me the space to secure this ‘shipment’ before he does, then that’s what you have to do.”
I can almost be convinced this is a just plan—but it’s coming from a Colonia man.
“Do you think maybe Dario’s twenty-seven women are better off?” I ask.
“That’s different.”
“How?”
His frustration is palpable. He doesn’t like being questioned. But I’m not doing that. I’m asking him to explain our entire upbringing.
“They’re ours, and they were married. They’re better off. Ask any woman we know—she’s happy.”
It’s my turn to shake my head and look away. I don’t even know what I want from him. He’s not going to see the world differently in a lightning flash. Why would he? He has all the power. Changing his opinion means giving it all up.
“How do you think this ends, Goody? Lucari walks out on two feet?”
I laugh to myself. I haven’t even dared to strive for that because I have none of the power. Maybe I’m the one who needs to open my eyes and see a world where Dario walks out on two feet.
“You’re in charge,” I say. “You decide he walks out. You let him go. Do it in the middle of the night. Tell everyone you found out all the women were dead, so you killed him.”