“Why?” I ask. “If you’re going to kill me, get it over with.”
“You should take the drink,” Giraldo says, walking down the hallway, adjusting his wire-framed spectacles. He slides onto the stool at the other end of the bar, giving me an almost apologetic look. “I’m sorry about this, Angelo. But the Boston Italians, we had a meeting, and it seems the Albanians have more vision than your Family. You will understand.”
“I understand that you just crossed the future don of the De Maggio Family,” I growl. “I understand you just made the worst mistake of your life. Do you think my men will stand for this?”
“Your men?” Dujar snorts, knocking his whiskey back and walking to stand behind Levi. “Like this man here? This rat? Is this the ‘men’ we are talking about?”
“Leave him alone.”
But it’s too late. Dujar smashes the whiskey glass over the back of Levi’s head and then grabs him by the shirt, wrenching him to his feet. Glass flies everywhere, much of it specked with blood.
“You promised you wouldn’t hurt me!” Levi yells.
“No,” Dujar rasps, slapping my second across the face violently. Levi’s head snaps to the side as he spits blood. “I said I wouldn’t harm your mother, and I won’t. But you, rat, you betrayed the man you had pledged loyalty to.”
“Don’t!” I roar, leaping to my feet. But the Albanians step forward, the cold metal of their guns prodding me in four different places. I’m forced to sit.
I can only watch as Dujar drags a bloody Levi to the balcony and drives his gun into his neck, shoving him backward. It doesn’t matter if Levi betrayed me, not right now. Right now, he’s just the boy I ran the lemonade stand with, the boy I used to sneak cigarettes and cause mayhem with. My friend. My partner. Mi fratello.
I want to look away. But I can’t. I shouldn’t. I won’t. It is my responsibility to watch. My burden to bear.
So I don’t blink or bow my head as Dujar hefts him over the twenty-story balcony, dangles his body in the air space for a moment, then lets him go.
I can feel my heartbeat in the tips of my fingers. No one speaks.
The Albanian makes it all look sickeningly easy, and then strolls back over to me, smiling almost sadly. “I didn’t want to do that,” he says. “But you know how we have to handle rats, Angelo.”
Dimly, I hear the crash of Levi landing in the street below. A car alarm blares. I imagine his twisted, broken body crushing the vehicle’s roof like a soda can.
“He was your rat,” I say quietly. “What choice did he have? You’re a fool, Dujar. You know the police are going to be here soon, don’t you? Corpses falling from the sky won’t go unnoticed, you stupid fuck.”
He just smiles and walks back around the bar. “But I have thought of everything, my friend. Soon, it will all make sense. Just you wait and see.”
“For what?”
“Just wait, Angelo,” Giraldo adds. “And you should probably get comfortable with the idea that you’re going to have to cooperate with us. It will make things easier all around.”
I snort derisively, but there’s a look in both the men’s eyes I don’t like at all.
As if they know something I don’t.
28
Dani
I’m about to ask Artan what the hell we’re doing here, outside Angelo’s apartment building, when he pulls the pistol on me and points it at me casually. The man sighs, almost like he’s sorry. When I grab the door handle instinctively, he shakes his head. “That is not a good idea,” he says coldly.
“So you’re not an EMT,” I say cautiously. Fear runs through me as I realize how stupid I was to accept this partner I’d never heard of before without checking with my supervisor first. But I guess I was just distracted with—well, everything.
Anger underlies the fear. I wonder if I could grab his gun before he shoots me, but I doubt it.
“I was, back in Albania,” he says. “But here? No. I do not have a U.S. qualification.”
“So you’re a criminal,” I clarify. “My heart fucking bleeds for you.”
“We all must find our own path to the American dream, no?”
“How poetic.” I look up at Angelo’s apartment building. Then I glance around at the street. It’s not busy, but it’s not quiet either. Artan holds the gun low, out of sight. “What’s to stop me from making a scene?” I ask. “Are you really going to kill me in front of all these people?”
“Yes,” he says, sounding almost sad. “Of course, I would be incarcerated, but I work for some very dangerous men and incarceration is just a part of the job. So I would suggest that you just play nice and wait.”
“Wait for what?” I ask. I let anger into my voice to hide just how bone-chillingly terrified I am. Because when he said he’d kill me, I believed him. He sounds like the sort of casual killer you hear about in crime documentaries. “Well?”
He just smiles. “My employer is a theatrical man,” he says. “Apparently, it is not enough to slit a man’s throat when you are making a point.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“No? I just want to say, Danielle, that I have been very impressed with your work today. Whatever else happens, you are an extremely talented EMT.”
“Thanks,” I laugh bitterly. “Mind if I use you as a reference?”
“That is sarcasm, yes? Sometimes it is hard to tell with your accents.”
“Sarcasm, indeed,” I confirm. “What do you want? Money? Or Angelo? You’re going to use me against Angelo, aren’t you?”
“I am not going to do anything,” he says. “My employer, however, feels he has been disrespected by your lover. What he is going to do, ah, I can’t say. It is out of my hands.”
“Is there anything I could say for you to let me go?” I whisper.
“Perhaps,” he says like he’s actually considering it. “If you had my mother or my sister at gunpoint, yes, I think I would let you go then. But they are safe back home. In fact, I am going to use the money I make from this job to bring them over here.”
“You say that like I could give an actual fuck.” My hand is straying slowly to the door. His eyes are locked on mine. I wonder how long it would take for me to throw the door open and leap out. My seat belt is already undone, so I don’t have to worry about that. Maybe he will shoot, but will he kill me right away, or just hit me in the leg? But, shit, what if he hits me in the spine?
I keep moving my hand anyway, talking to distract him. “You want me to feel bad for you or whatever just because you used to be an EMT? Yeah, it sucks that you’ve gotta redo the training, but it doesn’t mean you have to start—”
My hand is almost on the handle when—crash—a body crumples the roof of a car a few meters to our right.
A body just fell out of the sky.
People immediately start screaming. Artan leaps from the car, tucking the gun into the back of his pants as he walks around to my side. He throws the door open and nods at the corpse, the car alarm blaring. “We are carrying that upstairs,” he tells me. “What is it you Americans say? Chip-chop.”