At the door, my dad found a buzzer and pushed it. He looked at his watch.
“Are we here in time?” I said.
He gave me a terse nod.
The door popped open but only a crack. Nothing else happened. I stared at that sliver of black in between the door and the frame. It seemed vast, as if an entire galaxy might be contained within it.
My dad pulled it open. We stepped inside. We had to blink until our eyes adjusted to the faint light.
But then I saw him clearly. Dez Romano. He wore a dark suit, black shoes and a blue tie with tangerine and white dots. He looked dressed for a wedding or some other fashionable social event.
“Isabel,” he said with a big grin. “Or I hear you prefer Izzy.” He waved his left hand, as if to say, It doesn’t matter. “You ran away from me that night at Gibsons. You won’t be running away from me tonight.”
I heard a gurgle behind me, sort of a half laugh, half clearing of the throat. I spun around, flinched. That Ransom guy. The guy with the fucked-up tattoos on his neck. He was smiling big at me as if he was really happy to see me. His lips were thick and moist and one of them had a couple sores on it. I tried not to make a disgusted face. But he must have seen it, and it only made him smile more.
He took a step toward us. I noticed he wore a walking boot on his foot, probably because of Mayburn running over it outside the nature museum.
“Spread your legs,” Ransom said. His words were the most sadistic I had ever heard-garbled and rough, as if he had stones in his mouth, but with a leer, as though he loved to say them.
When neither my father nor I complied, Dez Romano shouted, “Spread your legs. Both of you. Or I’ll kill little Charlie. In front of you. Do it. Right. Now.”
I snapped into action. My father was slower to do the same. I saw him shaking his head. Ransom went to him first, easily found his gun and tossed it to Dez, who looked at it, then back at my father. “I suppose I can let you get away with this. I didn’t tell you not to bring any weapons. But I did tell you not to bring any backup. If you did, the deal is beyond dead. And so are you two.”
Ransom stepped in front of me then and grinned, his mouth wide and wet.
He ran his hands over my arms first, then my waist. He took my ID and cell phone and tossed those at Dez, too. Then he dropped to his knees, the walking boot not seeming to affect his movements at all. He looked up at me, and I wanted to kick him in the face. I wanted to smash his nose and crush his windpipe with the heel of my shoe, but instead I let him grin, let him look up at me as if he was about to perform some sort of sexual act. He drew his hands up one of my legs, then the other. When he got near the middle of the left leg, he paused, then his hand kept moving up. It was horrible. I stopped my body from trembling, stopped myself from showing terror, and the monumental effort caused something to bubble up inside me, caused movement of the one thing I’ve never been able to control. My mouth.
“Just so you know,” I said, “I’m easy, but I’m not cheap.”
Ransom’s hand jerked away, and when I looked down, his face went blank. He looked over his shoulder at Dez, who started to laugh.
And then I couldn’t control it-I kneed him. Not hard. I knew I couldn’t get away from him, and I knew kicking him too hard would only bring more of his sick wrath upon me, but I couldn’t help but give him a firm knee into his shoulder when he looked at Dez, just so he knew I could do it.
The action didn’t make Ransom fall from his crouch, but it did make him pissed. He glared up at me with a snarl, his wet lips open in surprise, then stood and leaned over me.
“Oh, Isabel,” Dez said. “You really, really don’t want to make him mad. You wouldn’t believe what he wants to do to you already. Don’t make him want it more.”
His words made my stomach churn with sickness and fear. But I wouldn’t show it.
“Get away from her, Ransom,” Dez said.
Ransom licked his lips, but then finally moved behind me. I could feel his breath on the side of my neck.
Dez pointed to my father, using the gun. I flinched instinctively. Dez saw it and shot me a small smile, the way you would a little kid who’d done something adorable.
“You and I,” Dez said to my father. “We need to talk privately. In case that talk doesn’t go well, I’m going to let you say goodbye to your son first.”
“That’s not necessary,” my father said.
“Sure, it’s necessary,” Dez said. “I think goodbyes and that kind of thing are important.”
“Really, that’s not-” my father started to say.
But Dez interrupted. “Plus your wife is in there, too. I’m sure you’ll want to have a chat with her.”
We both froze, looked at each other.
Did he just say “your wife”?
Dez cracked a big smile now. “Ransom, let’s show these folks where the rest of the little family is.”
Ransom put a hand on my biceps and squeezed hard. Instinctually, I flinched and tried to yank my arm away, but then I heard a soft, distinct click.
I turned to look at Ransom. And found myself looking at the barrel-was that even the right word?-of a handgun. I forced myself to look away, to look at Dez. He was pocketing my dad’s gun, holding one of his own and pointing it at my dad. “Mr. McNeil, if you’ll walk down this hallway, we’ll just follow you.”
My dad did nothing for a second. Then he looked at me, and his mouth was open a little, his face flushing red.
Randomly, idiotically, I thought, I must get that blushing thing from him.
“Now,” Dez said, dropping his smile.
My father followed orders. We walked the dimly lit hall, our shoes silent on the concrete floor. We passed a few rooms with open doors. Entirely empty.
Ransom held tight to my arm, kept his big solid body right behind me, breathing wet sighs into my ear. I could hear saliva gurgling at the back of his throat. An alarm rang in my brain. Loud. And louder. I wanted to whimper every time I felt that breath, but I steeled myself.
Finally we came to a closed door. Dez shoved my dad against the wall next to it, putting the gun to his head. Then he opened the door and shoved him inside. Ransom heaved a wet sigh into my ear, his lips almost touching my skin. Then he pushed me inside, too, and I heard the lock click behind me.
69
My mother stared-with a deeply confused look on her face-at her former husband. The frown deepened the faint vertical crease between her eyes. Her expression was so bewildered she looked as if she had been thrust into a parallel universe where she recognized nothing.
Charlie, meanwhile, cocked his head and just stared at my dad. “Huh,” he said.
“ Victoria. Charlie.” My dad said these words as if he was trying them out for the first time.
Neither Charlie nor my mom said anything.
“This kind of thing is very hard to process,” my father said, gesturing a little with his hands. “Technically, the mind will take anywhere from five to seven minutes to catch up with any traumatic or shocking experience.”
He continued on, but I shook my head and held out my hands. “Dad, shut up.”
My mother’s glance snapped to mine, then back to her former husband. “What is going on here?” she said. Then again, louder, “What is going on here!”
Charlie and I both stared at her, surprised. My mother never raised her voice. Never. I had literally never heard her yell at us, never scream at anyone, never even laugh loudly. Victoria McNeil had a certain elegant, almost monotone voice that always remained at the same level and never shifted.
She moved back until she was near one of the walls. “I do not understand.” She enunciated each of her syllables distinctly as if by controlling her voice she could gain some control in this situation. But she looked around at all of us wildly, on the brink of losing it. And that was hard to see.
I stepped forward slowly until I was near her. She looked at me, fear in her face, but didn’t make any movements. I reached out and touc
hed her arm, then made a smoothing motion over her skin in the way she always did to Charlie and me when she wanted to calm us.
She looked down at my hand on her arm, then jerked her arm away, moved away from me.
“Mom,” I said. I glanced at my brother. “Charlie.” I took a breath. “I just figured out that dad was alive. Yesterday.”
Charlie’s eyes opened wide-or at least the one that wasn’t swollen shut. “Huh,” Charlie said again.
My mom shook her head. Laughed. Then she repeated the sequence over and over, staring now at my father, until the shake of her head turned into a nod, and she was just bobbing her head and laughing and laughing, a hysterical laugh with a horrible edge.
I didn’t know what to do.
But then just as quickly as she had started, she stopped. “What is all of this?” She drew a circle around the room with her hand. “I don’t understand.” She looked at her son. “Are you really a drug addict?”
Charlie shook his head. “Mom, I told you I was kidnapped.”
“I know,” she said, irritation in her voice. “And I believed it. Until this…” She pointed at my father, her expression shifting into one of horror, hurt.
My father crossed the room quickly to her, dropped to one knee and put his hands over his heart. “ Victoria,” he said. “ Victoria.”
A choking sound came from my mother’s throat, and she began to cry. Hard. Charlie and I stared at her in wonder. We’d both seen my mother cry on a few occasions, and when she did, it was always an oddly beautiful sight-a woman who rarely allowed herself to show emotion, letting tears fall like crystals from her blue eyes, letting them glide down the milky smoothness of her face.
But this was different. The choking sounds continued. She grasped at her throat as sobs wrenched her body. Her chest was heaving; her face turned deep red.
I wanted so badly to help her, to calm her in some way, but I recognized there was nothing I could do. Charlie seemed to realize the same thing. He sat down on the floor, crossed his arms, and looked down, as if to give them as much privacy as possible. I sat next to him.
My father stayed there on his knee, his hands one on top of the other over his heart, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“You used to do that,” my mother said, her words mere rasps between the sobs. “That’s how you proposed to me.” She pointed at my father, still holding the same position. “That’s what you did when you wanted to thank me for having your children.”
My father nodded.
“And then you left me. You died. But I never really believed you were dead. It never made sense to me. It didn’t seem real. I even took a job as a traffic reporter, flying in a helicopter every day so I would think of you, and I would know you were really dead. But I still didn’t believe it. And so I had to live my whole life knowing one thing was true but believing another.” She began to sob again.
My father stood. “I am so sorry, Victoria. I didn’t see any other way.”
He began to talk then. He explained about the Camorra, about trying to bring them down. He told her the Camorra had found him out when they lived in Michigan, had wanted to kill the whole family.
“Remember when all the police officers were around?” he asked my mom.
“Yes, but you said they were friends.”
“They were. They were also protecting us.”
But then his mother was killed in a car explosion, he said. It was a message, and my father knew he had to take action.
“It was either move all of us…” He gestured at the four of us. “Or I had to go.”
“You chose to go,” my mother said, squeezing her eyes shut, as if she couldn’t process her own words. “You chose to go?” she repeated, but in a question now. Then she moved away from him, and then my mother opened her mouth, and then she shouted, “You chose to go!”
My father could say nothing. He only nodded.
70
Dez Romano felt his body buzzing with excitement. God, he loved this moment. Manipulating it as he had.
He was in a room that had been used as an office in this building years ago. The only thing left in the room was an old metal desk. It was bulky and heavy. It would work.
A second later, Ransom opened the door and shoved Christopher McNeil into the room, handcuffed. McNeil looked distraught, Dez was happy to see. The family must not have known he was alive. That must have been a hell of a thing to explain.
Dez pulled out his handgun, a Sig Sauer P250. He rarely got to use it or even flash it around. He’d decided years ago to run his business the gentleman’s way. But even gentlemen needed a piece sometimes. And he had no idea what McNeil was capable of.
He pointed with the gun at the desk. “Cuff him to the leg.”
Ransom shoved McNeil again, who fought against the momentum, but with his hands cuffed, he fell to his knees. Had to hurt like hell, but McNeil’s expression never changed.
Ransom pushed McNeil into a seated position on the floor, undid the cuff of one arm and secured it to the leg of the desk. Dez nodded, then jerked his head at the door, indicating to Ransom that he could leave. He didn’t want anyone else to hear this conversation. If it went right, he would be one of the few people in the Camorra to have this information.
Ransom didn’t look happy at first, then a thought seemed to go through his head, and with a slight smile he moved toward the door.
Dez knew exactly what that smile meant. “Don’t touch the redhead,” he said.
Ransom stopped, looked at him.
Dez shook his head. “Not just yet.”
Ransom smashed his lips together, looking like a starving dog being held away from food. But he nodded and left.
Dez stood taller. He liked looking down at someone like McNeil, who seemed sickened and defeated by the talk of his daughter. “Who’s at the top of the System?” Dez asked him.
McNeil’s glasses slid a little down his nose and they cocked slightly to one side, making him look like a once-brilliant professor gone senile. “The top?” McNeil asked.
“You know what I mean.”
Earlier, McNeil had looked like a pretty fit older guy, but now his chest sagged toward his bound hand, which wouldn’t allow him to sit up much. “Jesus, is that what you want to know from me?”
Dez gave him a single nod.
“No one knows who’s at the top.”
“You’ve been fucking with the System for twenty years, pretending you’re a part of it but working for the government the whole time, right?” That was what his boss, La Duca, had suspected.
McNeil nodded, and Dez felt his first wave of triumph. He couldn’t wait to call the duke.
“So all those years,” Dez said, “and you don’t know who’s at the top? Why don’t I believe that?”
McNeil shook his head. He looked fatigued and ancient. “No one knows. If I did, I wouldn’t have to keep fucking with the System, as you said. If I had that bit of information, we could have shut the whole thing down. You know it as well as I do. The top likes the clans to war. I’m sure the top likes that you’re one of the clans now and that you’re fighting against the others, too. Maybe you’re not fighting in the same way they do in Napoli, but you’re still trying to scratch your way up.”
He was right. Every word of it. Dez said nothing, gave nothing away with his face. He tucked his gun in his waistband and withdrew an automatic switchblade from his pocket. “This is called a Bradley Mayhem, and-”
“I know what it is.”
He glanced at McNeil, then back at the blade, touching his finger to the tip. He kept talking, as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “I used to use a different blade when I was growing up. This one’s sharper. Much. I don’t like to use it anymore, but it does a good job-”
“Look, save me the tough-guy speech about how you’re going to cut me until I tell you who’s at the top. I’ve been tortured by better than you, and if I knew I’d tell you. I planned on telling you whatever you wanted. I’m done fight
ing you guys.”
Dez took a breath and steeled his eyes at McNeil. He ignored the comment about others being better than him.
“If you like,” McNeil said, “I’ll tell you who I’ve considered. Who I think it might be, especially given recent events.”
“Keep talking.”
“The second in command to the top is the one who gets the face time with the clans.”
“And who is that?”
“The brother to my sister’s husband. Paulo Traviata.”
Dez nodded. He’d heard of the guy.
“I’ve known of his position for…well, for a long time,” McNeil continued. “He’s kept his power ever since, but you could never tell exactly who he was answering to. For a long time, we thought it was Antonio Crispino. You know him?”
Dez nodded.
“Then we thought maybe it was Crispino’s cousin, the guy they call the Hammer. He got his nickname because-”
“I know how he got the name,” Dez said, and he felt thrilled that it was true. “But it wasn’t him?”
“No. We had a couple of other guys on the line, too, but truth is we’ve never been able to know for sure.”
“What happened recently?”
McNeil closed his eyes, swallowed hard. “My brother-in-law, Maurizio.” He blinked his eyes against something only he could see. “I won’t bore you with the details, but his body is about to be discovered. If it hasn’t been already.”
Dez felt his eyebrows rising. This was interesting news. He might be the first to know it, and to know it from the U.S. would be an accomplishment. “Did you do it?” he asked. “You killed him?”
McNeil glanced up at him with a pitiful expression, then looked back at the floor. Nodded. “Had to. He came after me. Knew where I was.”
“And you think that makes Maurizio the one at the top?”
McNeil nodded. “It makes sense with his brother, Paulo, being the number two.”
“If he was, why would Maurizio try to take you out on his own? Why not tell Paulo to have one of their guys do it?”
McNeil breathed out a long breath. “Because it was personal. Because it was me.”
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