by K. J. Dahlen
“Did you enjoy your birthday?” His eyes twinkle. Maybe he’s remembering the birthday dinner, which got particularly raucous for a family dinner, with twice the usual amount of wine passed around the table. My aunt Elena took it upon herself to make a raunchy joke about my manhood, as if I’d waited in celibacy for the age of twenty-one. I laughed until I cried.
“It was a good dinner.”
“Fantastic, I’d say.” He beckons me into the living room, pin-neat with modern furniture. I keep meaning to ask him if he had a designer do the house. Luca takes a seat on the loveseat and I sit across from him, on the sofa. “But none of that is possibly bothering you.”
Luca’s sweater is heather gray and his jeans are tight without being fucking ridiculous, and despite the nineteen fifties vibe of the sweater kind of outfit that would have women swooning over him the moment he steps outside, and he leans forward, elbows on his knees, to wait for my reply. “All of that was fine.” My answer treads familiar ground and he waits, with the infinite patience that I’ve only ever seen from Luca. I clear my throat. “We can skip all the bullshit, can’t we?”
He laughs, leaning back, arms crossed. “Of course. We all went through this, you know.”
I perk up. “You did?”
He shakes his head. “Every one of us. Even Vince.”
“Vince?” This is shocking on a level I never expected. Vince is the loudest, most bloodthirsty one of us all. The one whose brawn took him right into high-stakes security jobs. “I can’t believe that.”
“It should make you feel better, Gio. The guilt comes to all of us. It’s not like it was in the old days, but I don’t think our dear father knows that.”
“No, it’s not the same, but—” I wrestle with the awful vortex of shame and pride and, yes, guilt. “How did you...decide?”
“To get over it?” He looks to the side, brow wrinkling. “It weighed on me, for sure. But one day I woke up and I knew the truth.”
I swallow hard and wait. It’s not what I was asking, but obviously Luca assumes that I’ve carried out what I was sent to do. The fingers of my right hand buzz, and it’s as much of a warning as an airborne. I’m not going to admit anything. I was, but plans have changed.
“Family first,” Luca says simply. “Our father hasn’t asked much of me, but he asked for proof of my fidelity.” He holds his hands up. “How could I deny him that? I spend the rest of my life following the law, then we’re even.”
It was a low-level thug that Luca tracked and had killed by a slightly higher-level thug. My father celebrated his absence at the next week’s dinner. He’d been terrorizing several of the laundromats, targeting the women, and at the time it seemed like a great victory. But what if there was more to the man’s story? What if it was this kind of situation?
Something cold twists at the pit of my gut—a warning. I drop my head into my hands and take a steadying breath. When I straighten up, Luca is looking out the front window. “Thanks, Luca.” I sigh like my heart has been heavy with the truth of killing Alessia Ricci. “I’ll be able to sleep tonight.” I stand up as if to go and Luca stands with me.
“Have a beer before you rush away,” he says, putting a brotherly hand on my shoulder. “Now that you’re finally old enough.”
“All right,” I say, even though my skin itches to be out of here, itches to be back on the road. Something isn’t right.
Luca goes to the kitchen via the front hallway, and as he does I hear his phone buzz against the tabletop. I force myself not to look toward the car, not to give anything away. There’s the slide of a drawer opening in the kitchen, and soft, measured footsteps.
I turn toward the sound, ready to take the beer from his hand. “Luca, I—”
There’s no beer in his hand.
Luca holds a handgun, leveled at me, a vague disappointment on his face, as if he’s been told that it’s raining when there was supposed to be sun. “That’s her, out in the car.”
It’s not a question.
There is ice in my blood, ice freezing all of my veins. “Don’t do this.”
He gives a little sigh and turns the gun in his hand, testing its weight. There’s a click as he releases the safety. “I don’t want to, Gio, but it’s been asked of me.” He looks into my eyes. “Still, you’re my little brother. So I’ll count to ten.”
20
Sia
I’ve been trying to play it cool, but it’s really fucking hard to play it cool when you’re sitting in the front seat of a car with no phone. This neighborhood is so quiet. The spring sunshine filters down through the trees, growing out of a strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb. Classy. Classy as hell. Even my uncle’s neighborhood doesn’t have this kind of trees. A flash of pink to the right—a jogger. A jogger. She’s beautiful and trim, and her outfit is perfectly coordinated. I purse my lips, trying to find any possible flaw, and fail.
Gio bursts from the front door of the house, running as fast as he can, sprinting for the car.
I could snap in two from the tension. He jumps into the seat and I press backward into mine. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He murmurs the word like a prayer while he wrenches the key in the ignition and the car roars to life. He’s barely looking when he reverses into the street.
“Jesus, Gio, you could have hit—”
The woman jogging on the sidewalk flies straight out of my head. There, on the porch of the little house with its navy-blue shutters, is an older version of Gio. This version of him is more refined, with a certain elegance to the lines of his face. It’s like Gio’s rough beauty, but different enough.
He has a gun in his hands.
It’s pointed at me.
I clap my hands over my mouth as if my scream would be the thing to give us away and drop down in my seat, wiggling low.
He shoots.
The bullet hits the frame of the car with a low ping and a scratch as it digs into the paint. My breath catches in my throat and I stomp my foot uselessly against the floor where the gas pedal would be.
Gio floors it.
The wheels screech on the pavement and there is a vague scent of burning rubber. That’s how fast we’re tearing out of her. Form this low in my seat, all I can see of Gio is his knuckles, white on the steering wheel.
I gasp in a breath, open my mouth to speak, but there are no words.
Control. Control. I wrestle for control. At first, I only get a handle on my breathing. The rest of my body vibrates with nerves, but I start at my feet, pressing them to the floor of the car. Calming breaths. One inch at a time, like my mother taught me, back when I would cry so hard I’d be sick. But what will I do without you? My own broken voice fills my mind, but hard on its heels, I hear my mother, as clearly as if she’s here next to me. Relax, Sia mine. You’ll take it one minute at a time.
It seems like a thousand minutes before Gio speaks.
“You can sit up.”
I breathe down into my toes and relax my legs, then push myself upright into the seat as Gio steers the car onto the freeway on-ramp. The sight of the open road exhausts me, but it’s also a relief.
I watch him for a moment. His jaw is clenched tight, face pale, eyes locked on the road. Anger radiates from him, off his very skin, and fills the car. The radio is back on, more of the top 40 stuff I danced to in the club—was that last night?—and his rage is a stark contrast. “Gio—”
He slams a hand down on the steering wheel, and I startle but manage to hide it. “Fuck.”
What can I say? What can I do? Was it real, what I saw, or was it based on a lie? The only question that comes to mind is one that will give me clarity. “Your own brother?”
“My own brother.” He answers the question I was barely able to ask. I can’t force myself to say the word betrayal. It’s written in his eyes.
The pain in his face squeezes at my heart, and like that, all the time between us falls away. I see him. Gio. The patient kindness of him. The bravery of him. The loyalty of him. He never
left my side in school, not until he had to, and underneath the sharp facade of his family, that boy is still there.
Only now, he’s all man.
“Gio,” I say again, pitching my voice low. “If you need to—” I have nothing. I am moneyless, phoneless, IDless, everythingless. I’m wearing Gio’s clothes. “If you need to take me somewhere, I’ll disappear. I can make this easier. I know I can.”
He cuts a glance at me and snorts. “Are you fucking serious, Sia? You’re trying to make me feel better? I’m the reason you’re here at all. I took you—” He clenches his teeth together again. “I took you.” His voice trembles with hurt and rage. “You should hate me. You should kill me.”
“I don’t want that.” He swings the car quickly into the left lane and revs the engine, passing a white minivan driven by a woman with gloriously curly hair.
“What do you want, then?” He sounds on the verge of laughter, the kind of crazy laughter that only happens when everything has gone terribly, horribly wrong. For a while, after my mother died, I was so pissed at her for leaving me. I thought it was the ultimate betrayal. No. What’s happening to Gio is worse. Far worse. And though I’m not responsible at all—though this is not my fault, and I know that—I can’t dismiss the urge I have to soothe him.
By any means necessary.
“I want to be safe,” I admit, because it’s the truth. But there is something else that’s equally true. Something that burns alongside my need for safety. “I want to be with you.”
He glances at me again as he moves back into the right lane, and his eyes are disbelieving. “You do?”
“Yes.” I watch the road. One of us has to pay attention. “I did back in school, and I do now, and I’m willing to forgive you for fucking kidnapping me—” A driver in the left lane tears past us, horn blaring for no apparent reason. “—if you’ll make a plan with me, right now, about what we’re going to do.”
“A plan? What the hell kind of plan?” His grip tightens on the wheel, the sunshine vivid on his face. It’s noon. This day may as well be a year.
“I have an idea,” I tell him. “But you’ll have to trust me.”
21
Gio
“What the hell is this place?”
We took a roundabout way until Sia recognized the exit she wanted, and now she’s steered us to one of the in-between downtown areas of my own suburb. It’s a swell of the city like a little wave that peters out again before you get to the taller buildings. We’re across from a four-story place now.
“A hotel.”
“It looks like an office building.”
Sia cranes her neck up at the windows and shrugs. “Reasonable rates,” she says, as if we’re on a road trip and our biggest worry is not outpacing the housing budget. She straightens up in her seat. “And it has underground parking. Plus—” She squints, remembering. “We can’t be that far from your place.”
“Exactly.” I look up and down the street, ready to drive the fuck away. “That’s a problem.”
“No, that’s a solution.” Sia puts her hand on mine. “Nobody’s going to be looking for you this close. I’m sure your father has somebody watching the house, but this place? Nah.”
She has a point, but it’s a strange feeling, letting her steer the ship. It’s like I’ve entered someone else’s skin. Who is this person, who could be so betrayed by his own family? I don’t recogize him. But I know, as firmly as I know that the sun will rise in the morning, that I am with her now. It is me, with Sia, for better or worse. The moment my brother pointed his gun at me, he put us on the same team.
“How do you know about this place?”
Sia reddens.
“You came here with somebody?”
“I almost came here with somebody.”
The light turns green.
The car in front of me doesn’t realize it.
Probably on his phone, or something equally fucking stupid, but I jiggle my foot against the floor. Move, damn it. All we have to do is turn into the parking lot, and I can haul my aching self out of the seat.
I’m dying to know about the story, but I also have to take a piss. I’m starving. I’m tired. I didn’t sleep last night, haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday, and my own brother turned his back on me for not murdering a girl in cold blood. I should have expected it.
The front of the car dips and rises as we descend into the blessed cool of the underground parking. It is what it’s supposed to be—simple, concrete, uniform. I can feel it in my gut—there are no surprises in this parking area. I back into a spot two levels down and, like that, I’m one of them. One of the other cars. Nothing suspicious. Nothing to follow. Invisible.
It’s as anonymous as they come.
In the elevator, Sia looks at a brightly colored map against wall. “A department store.” She points to the big orange square at the end of the block. “Close by.” If we’re doing this, she’ll need clothes. Those kinds of details are beyond me at this moment, but soon—soon.
“I’ve heard it’s a nice place,” she says tentatively, turning back so I can see her face. Her hair, pulled back into a loose bun, is beautiful, shining and gold.
I can’t help it. A flash of that golden hair reddened with blood bursts across my mind. Jesus. It was a near thing. It was such a near thing.
I blink it away. “Okay.” I don’t mention the fact that we’re already in the parking structure, already in the elevator, we’re not backing out now. “Let’s get a room.”
“Your words, not mine,” she jokes.
I laugh out loud, forgetting for a moment that I’m about to explode. She’s joking. Joking. In the face of all this.
Sia is more than I bargained for.
22
Sia
Gio disappears into the bathroom the moment the door swings shut. I lock it, put the chain in the deadbolt, and take a look around.
It is nice. This hotel is full of suites, so the bedroom is separated from the living room by a diagonal wall and a full set of doors. On this side, there’s a wide window overlooking the street. The curtains are thrown open, filling the room with light. We have a cozy sofa, a coffee table that gleams like the housekeeping staff care about their jobs, and a television that looks too big for the space. A minifridge hums to the left, tucked into a miniature kitchen. Sink. Coffee maker. Cabinet. I open it.
Dishes for two.
I leave the dishes where they are and take a moment to survey the street down below. Traffic trundles by, one car after the next, and my heart picks up. Any one of them could be a Moretto brother. Or, worse, the Moretto father.
But none of the cars turn into the hotel. I let out the breath I was holding.
Gio steps into the living area, the bedroom door creaking behind him. He rubs both hands down over his face, and when he drops them to his sides, the afternoon glow illuminates the bag sunder his eyes. A soft ache blooms in the center of my chest.
“Why don’t you rest?”
He shakes his head, lips pressed together. “There’s no way. I wouldn’t be able to sleep.”
He raises a hand to stifle a yawn.
“It’s like you think I’m a total stranger,” I tease. “Come on. The bed’s huge.”
I take his hand and lead him into the bedroom.
Does he see my pulse pounding just beneath the skin? Does he hear the rapid thud of my heartbeat?
There are things Gio doesn’t know about me. There are things we never dared to talk about. Not as teenagers. Not like that. There are things we haven’t had time to talk about now. Fate tossed us together at knifepoint. It hasn’t been hte best situation for sharing.
I summon my courage and stretch out on the bed.
It is huge, king-size, with sheets so white I close my eyes against the light and more pillows than anyone can possibly use. It feels good, lying here, and while Gio lingers in the doorway I close my eyes.
I haven’t taken three breaths when the other side of the bed dips.
Gio’s here.
In the bed.
With me.
I open my eyes.
“You look good.” HIs voice is muffled by a pillow. He’s lying on his stomach, the long frame of him stretched out on the white coverlet, the pillow gathered under his chin. There’s need in his eyes, plain as day, but it’s clouded by sorrow.
What a fucking dick his brother was today.
“You look like hell,” I tell him.
Gio laughs and reaches out a hand to brush his fingers down the line of my jaw. “I’m sorry, Sia.” There’s real guilt in his voice, real remorse, and I know it’s real because I’ve heard it before. He was late, once, when we planned to do our homework. I’d know that pitch anywhere.
I savor his touch. “For what?”
The grin that splits his face makes him gorgeous, and my racing heart skips a beat. “You know.”
I close my eyes again, reveling in his gentleness and wishing for something more. Gio is quiet beside me. He drops his hand to my arm and moves it absently up and down the bone of my wrist.
When I open my eyes again, Gio is asleep.
23
Gio
The door of the hotel room, all the way in the next room, clicks shut.
I’m awake in an instant, groggy, scrambling for a weapon. Where the fuck is my gun? What the fuck was I thinking, leaving it in the car? I’m defenseless. Utterly defenseless. I’m done. This it it for me.
“Gio, it’s me.”
Sia.
It’s Sia’s voice, calling through the door, but the dread in my stomach doesn’t unclench. Who knows if she’s alone? I can’t wait another moment to find out. I lurch from the bed, muscles protesting, and march toward the bedroom door. She sounded fine, but an awful vision of her with someone else’s gun pressed to her head shoves its way to the front of my thoughts.