I slapped him on the arm and he hissed. “Don’t play with me, Capo. I’m not in the mood. And don’t call me cute! I’m not a baby cabbage.”
“Baby cabbage,” he repeated slowly. “Like a Brussels sprout.”
He told me where to turn a couple of times, and then he became quiet. He stared out of the window with a far-off look in his eyes. Every once in a while, a violent shiver tore through him. When the silence went on for too long, I cleared my throat.
“I remembered something, Capo. When we were at the house on Staten Island. I remembered you. The memories were in reverse, though. I remembered running out of the door, crying for you to come back after you left me with Jocelyn and Pops. I didn’t want you to leave me.
“You fell to your knees on the step so I could look you in the eye. Just like you did before those guys shot at us. I was standing at the very top. You were kneeling on the step below. You told me that I was safe. That you made sure of it. You would always look out for me. Then I gave you the rosary. I put it around your neck.”
I could feel his eyes on me. I had his full attention. “Your mother gave it to you to stop you from fiddling,” he said. “You slept with it at night. You were a nervous child. I was touched that you gave me the one thing that made you feel safe.”
I nodded, clutching the steering wheel. “Then I remembered being in a house. Hiding in a closet. You made me hide in there?”
“Yeah.”
“You gave me my colors and my coloring book. I told you my favorite color was blue. You told me to color the page with the butterfly. So I did. Then I heard some noises that scared me. A few minutes later, you came back for me.”
“Then I brought you to Jocelyn.”
“Then you left me,” I breathed out. “Don’t leave me again, Capo. Life is not worth living without you.”
It wasn’t anything money could buy all along. It was my husband. The love I felt from him.
I felt it, even if I didn’t know what it was then. No man sacrifices himself the way he did for innocence alone. They say it takes guts to do something like that, but I disagreed. It took love. Maybe what he felt at first was an innocent kind of love—I was only five—but as I grew into a woman, the same love grew and developed into something else.
He turned toward me, his hand sliding against my stomach. I could feel the warmth from his touch even though he was cold. For the first time, the baby fluttered. It wasn’t a hard kick. More like wings tickling me from the inside. It was the strangest thing I’d ever felt, but the most wonderful.
I smiled. “He moved. Just now.”
Capo pushed his hand against my stomach, trying to feel it, too. I told him it would take a while for him to feel it, the movement was as soft as wings. Then I glanced at him and what I saw in his eyes made me lose all focus. He seemed…excited.
“Shit!” I yanked the steering wheel in the opposite direction, a near miss with traffic from the other side. Goosebumps scattered on my arms, and not from the near miss. A box on the back seat had started to play music. “What’s that?”
“Keep your eyes on the road.” His voice was firm, back to being capo. He turned around and dug in the back for a second. Then he lifted his hand so I could see. It was the black wolf with the butterfly on its nose. “For his room.”
“You bought them?”
“They’re in the backseat, Mariposa.” He pointed out the obvious. “The owner of the shop was missing a few from the collection, so I called a shop in Paris and bought those, too. You have a choice. We can either pick them up or they’ll ship them.”
An explosive laugh mixed with an equally explosive sob burst from my mouth. Tears blurred my vision. Then I sobered up some after I realized. “You went there. To Dolce. After all that happened. If they would’ve seen you—”
“They didn’t. I know them, Mariposa. I know their habits better than they do. I could’ve slit their throats a hundred times since they killed me.”
“Why haven’t you?”
“I’m a ghost that won’t leave them alone. Once I kill them, it’s over.” He became quiet for a second. “I was in the shop when Keely parked across the street from Dolce. Achille saw you.”
“Is that why he shot the house up?”
“It’s a possibility. Or it could be someone else.”
“Someone else?”
“Cash Kelly’s made it clear that your friend belongs to him. He has a lot of enemies right now. He’s fighting for territory. Word gets around that something is important to him.” He shrugged. “They’ll destroy it to make a point.”
“And if Cash thinks the Scarpones tried to kill his—whatever Keely is to him—he’ll retaliate.”
“He’s not that strong yet, but he’s rising. He’ll just cause more trouble for them.”
“He’ll be a pain in their asses.”
“You speak so eloquently.” He grinned.
I grinned, too. “It’s the truth, right?”
“Yeah, the truth. They don’t want more trouble right now. I caused a lot of strife between all of the families. I made it look like the other was to blame. I’m a ghost, Mariposa. They believe I’m dead. Arturo and his son couldn’t tell the other families that they suspected it was Vittorio fucking with all of them. Even if it were true, why would I target my own family? They’d all know then, for sure, that Arturo had me killed. They’re all just starting to play nice again, since Arturo convinced them that an outsider started the wars. The Scarpones can’t afford longer battles. I’ve been stealing their shit.”
“You’ve crippled them.”
“Close to it.”
Yeah, he was Machiavellian all right.
“Right here—” He pointed toward a building. He hit a button on his watch and the garage opened. “There’s no time to look around. Stay close to me. We’re in and out.”
“What do you mean…out? Uncle Tito’s supposed to meet us here.”
We were already hustling to get inside of the building. Capo had grabbed the box with the baby’s figurines and was practically making me sprint. The building was plain but huge. It had a ton of mismatched shit in it. All of the stuff he’d stolen from the Scarpones, probably.
“Another place.”
“Your arm!”
“It’ll be fine.”
He wasn’t fine. He was bleeding. His shirt was pasted to him.
Three buildings down, at least, he led us to another garage. He hit the button on a massive off-road type of vehicle and told me to drive again. This time I really hauled ass to get where we were going.
Another warehouse.
Uncle Tito, Rocco, and Rocco’s brother, Dario, were there when we arrived. Before Uncle Tito started to get to work, Capo secured my watch around my wrist.
“You take this off again—” he narrowed his eyes “—you’ll be punished.”
“I—”
He shook his head, no excuses, and went to sit on the table. There were two in the room, one on each side. The entire room had been set up to look like a doctor’s office, or a small emergency room. Uncle Tito made Capo remove his shirt, and when he did, rivulets of blood ran down his chest from a hole. The bloody smell was strong, mixing in with all of the antiseptics. Uncle Tito assessed the wound and then instructed Dario to slip a blood pressure cuff on Capo’s arm.