I’d never seen Achille cry, not even over his son, until millions of dollars worth of drugs went missing. I saw him on the docks, talking to a paid-off foreman, pulling his hair, twisting around, cursing the sky.
Waaa. Waaa. Waaa. Waa.
His perfect life was imploding from within, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
That’s what happens when you try to catch a man you made into a ghost.
Months had gone by since our honeymoon, and I’d lost a substantial amount of property and money, but it was nothing compared to the payoff I received that had nothing to do with la moneta. I had fucked up a family that no one was able to touch before.
The Scarpones, led by the King of New York and his mad son, The Joker.
Word on the street was that the families who had originally decided to help them smoke me out, a man none of them could find, had actually pulled out because they wanted the Scarpone family destroyed. Their willingness to help had been a war tactic. They had agreed at first, but then they pulled out in hopes that I would take the Scarpones out. Completely.
A little more time, and the entire city of New York would owe me.
Movement made my eyes turn up. A shadow crept closer to the upstairs window, peeking out. Arturo had two wolf-hybrids as pets, and they didn’t even bother to look away from their treats. They lay at my feet licking the blood from the steaks I’d brought them. I ruled his house, even his dogs.
Yeah, come on down, we can end this here and now if you want, old man. Arturo was old, and any ruling he did, he did from his office. Achille had complete control of the body, except for the brain and the heart. He hadn’t been born with either.
As I stood underneath Arturo’s window, dressed in black, he couldn’t see me, but I could see him. I could even hear his wife, the blonde-haired bimbo with fake tits, talking to him. She came into the restaurant, too. And she was a fucking hoot. She was dumber than a sack of bricks. No wonder she gave birth to a joker when she was only seventeen.
No one would ever be able to replace my mamma. She gave Arturo a prince, and he destroyed her. He had killed her innocence. Slaughtered it. Then she killed herself because of it. He took something that was supposed to be unique, innocent, and turned it into something dirty.
My phone lit up. A picture of Mariposa and I from our wedding in Italy appeared on the screen. Not even a second later the song Mariposa and I danced to came through the speaker, the one that sounded like a song that should be on a Tim Burton soundtrack. My wife constantly changed her profile picture on my phone and the ringtone. So I started doing the same to her.
This time, though, she had caught me at a bad time. It was my own fault. I should’ve put the phone on silent.
Arturo was going to get curious, so I sent her to voicemail and silenced the phone. I quickly sent her a text.
Me: At work. You okay?
A second later her response came through.
Your wife (she programmed this into my phone): Fine, just lonely in this big house without you.
I grinned.
Another text.
Your wife: It’s nice to have a friend who stays home and watches old movies with me. I’ll make some popcorn and root beer floats.
The lights in the yard came on, and the dogs jumped up, going toward the back door. A second later, Arturo appeared, holding a gun.
“Who’s out there?” He narrowed his eyes. Then he called for his men to check the yard. He was getting too careless in his old age. He should’ve known. Send the men out first. One bullet and his life was mine.
Too fucking easy, though.
I was gone before his watchdogs even made it behind the tree.
My phone lit up again as I opened the door to my car. Snow covered the windshield, and the leather felt like ice. My breath fogged when I took another deep breath.
Your wife: On second thought. Can you stop and get marshmallows? We ran out. Since it’s cold out, hot chocolate will be better.
Me: You’re going to owe me.
Your wife: That was my plan.
Then she sent me a smiley face winking.
I sat in the cold for a while, staring at my phone. I clicked on the picture she had uploaded. We’d been sitting under the grape arbor, and I’d been rubbing her feet. The photographer had caught us in a candid moment. Mariposa loved it so much that she had it blown up and hung it over our fireplace. I used my finger to scroll through the other ones. Some of them I had taken in Greece.
In that moment, I was a liar. In my life, I had once done something that was not in my plans.
Her.
My wife.
She changed the entire course of my life.
She had been a surprise the first time, and again when she came back into my life. It would take a fool to think that fate doesn’t exist, that some things in this life don’t belong to us, no matter how much we fight them.
Mariposa Macchiavello was mine in every way. She had been since the moment I found her on a night like this one. Dark. Cold. Snowing. The air had been almost blue with cold. No stars in the sky. She’d been only five at the time. Only five. Her innocence had been a blow to my heart.
Her mother’s big bag had been pressed against her little chest as we drove away from the place Palermo had been hiding them.
“Where we going?” she had asked me in Italian.
“You’re going home, Mariposa,” I had answered in the same language. It was mostly all she’d spoken. Her father spoke mostly Italian at home, but on the streets, English. Her mother left Sicily and went straight to America. Her English was limited.
Her eyebrows drew in. “To your house.”
I didn’t answer and she continued to stare at me, her legs so short that they hardly reached the end of the seat.
“Do you know what Mariposa means?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “Non.”
Non ho capito. She didn’t understand.
“It means butterfly,” I said. “Farfalla ma in spagnolo.”
She thought it over for a minute before she nodded.
If the Scarpones found Mariposa, the game would be different. No longer would I have nothing for them to steal or to blow up. No longer would I be a ghost, but a man with everything to lose.
She was the one thing in this world that was worth something to me.
Everything.
She had been worth everything to me ever since that cold night in December when she’d asked me to color with her, when she had given me the rosary because she said that I was fidgeting. She had unnerved me the first time I saw her. Looking at her was like looking at my future, and unless she lived, the rest of my life didn’t seem to matter. It was like trading my evil so one ounce of good would be left in the world.
“Fucka me,” I breathed out. Where was I before I had gone too fucking soft? Mariposa fidgeting.
Her mamma, Maria, knew that about her, and instead of her giving her something childish, like a soft blanket or a stuffed toy, she had given Mariposa the rosary to caress when she was anxious. When I saw her doing it in church, after my grandfather’s funeral, it brought me back to when she was five, and I couldn’t help but question how much more Maria had instilled in her, even at that young age.
Get the fuck outta here, Capo. Thinking of your wife while on Scarpone territory is only going to get you killed.
Not yet.
I flipped the headlights on, snow swirling in their beams. I set the gears and pulled off. I’d go to a separate building before going home. I’d use the connecting buildings to walk to another one, and then take another car, leaving from a different exit. I’d know if they were following me. I tracked them all on my computers.