“Cosima, I have to go,” I said before hanging up the phone and dropping it into my purse.
My eyes were still trained on that red.
A deep red that was almost black.
The same color as my own.
Seamus Moore continued to stare at me through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the coffee shop with the faintly interested expression of someone considering a work of art.
My own expression, I’m sure, was filled with horror.
Seamus Moore.
The father I hadn’t seen in nearly six years.
I wasn’t surprised when fight won out for flight. There was a reason my mother called me her lottatrice, her fighter.
Mouth pursed against the force of the fury building on my tongue, I stalked through the café, burst through the doors, and turned to face my father.
Only to find him backing away with his hands in his pockets farther down the street, a sly smile on his face I recognized too well. When he ducked into an alley, I allowed impulse to rule me, and I followed.
He was leaning against the wall deep in the shadows of the narrow brick corridor. I took a single moment to stare at him, noting with disdain that he was still as handsome as ever despite living hard for much of his life. He was classically beautiful; his coloring striking and features finely honed. His hair was longer than he’d worn it when I’d known him, brushing the upturned collar of his black peacoat, and there was a thick, deliberately groomed beard over his jaw, but the sight of those gray eyes sucking up the shadows were the very same ones that had haunted me for years, even after he’d gone.
He watched me silently as I unfroze and stalked toward him, but I knew he wasn’t prepared for what I did next.
I punched him.
As hard as I possibly could, remembering my years of self-defense classes in the torque of my hips and the angle of the blow to the underside of his left cheekbone.
Pain exploded in my hand at the same time air burst from his mouth at the impact.
When I recoiled to do it again, fury blazing over every inch of my scream, he grabbed my wrist in an iron vise and yanked me closer so that I didn’t have the space to strike him again.
“My little fighter.” He had the audacity to chuckle in my face. “I should have known you’d hit me.”
“Not hard enough,” I hissed as I jammed the hard spike of my six-inch heels into his tender instep.
He cursed viciously in Italian and shoved me off. I staggered, then caught myself on my back heel, fishing in my bag for the pepper spray I carried with me religiously.
When I aimed it at Seamus, he blinked in total shock then slowly lifted his hands.
“Dai, Elena, it’s me. What the fuck are you doing?”
It was my turn to blink incredulously. “I’m protecting myself from a man who is a stranger now and a monster from my past. What the fuck do you think I’m doing?”
“I’m your father, Elena, put that shit down,” he demanded in that patriarchal way he had of ordering his children around.
It never worked, not then and certainly not now after years of negligence followed by years of abandonment.
It disgusted me how obsessed he was with being Italian, how he still punctuated his speech with it. He was an actor typecasting himself in a role he’d never fit.
“I’ll put it down when you tell me what you’re doing here.”
He barely resisted the temptation to roll his eyes. “Here in New York or here attempting to have a conversation with my firstborn?”
“Both,” I bit out behind my bared teeth.
It hurt to look at him, to see the resemblance on the surface and to know that his tainted blood was also inside me. He was everything I reviled in this life, and I truly thought I’d never see him again. When he disappeared after Cosima moved away to model at eighteen, I’d just assumed he would end up in some ditch somewhere, killed by the Camorra or some other wastrel he’d gotten too involved with.
Our reunion only served to emphasize that I’d actually hoped he was dead all these years. Even living and breathing in front of me, looking at me from the same stormy gray eyes as my own, he was still dead to me.
He dropped his hands in exasperation, treating me like an unruly child. I was reminded that he’d never favored me, not like he did Cosima for her beauty and Sebastian for his maleness, not even like Giselle who had appealed to him for the longest, holding out hope he might one day change. Seamus had never liked me because from the time I could cogitate, I was smart enough not to like him.
“I moved to New York shortly after you did, figlia mia. I wanted to keep an eye on you and your mother.” He ignored my uncharacteristic snort of disdain. “Before you hit me with that poison, you should know. Cosima made me swear not to contact any of you again.”
Every atom of my body stilled then burst into a flurry of movement as thoughts fell like dominos in my path of understanding.
“Why would she do that?” I spoke slowly through numb lips because I was almost there.
Almost at a conclusion my mind had been trying to draw for years, only I hadn’t allowed it because the truth was too eviscerating to acknowledge.
He pursed his lips, another characteristic I’d inherited. “Cosi, well, she offered herself to the Camorra in order to repay my debts. It was all her idea, you understand. I only found out about it after the fact and tried to stop her, but it was too late.”
His words had an echo, my head empty of everything but what his speech confirmed.
Madonna Santa.
Cosima had sold her body to repay our father’s gambling debts.
Bile surged over the back of my tongue, and before I could control it, I leaned to the side and vomited all over the back wall of the alley. The poison of the truth worked through my system, pulling everything from me in a toxic rush I spewed onto the dirty asphalt. Tears sluiced down my cheeks as I retched painfully, but I held myself up with one hand on the wall and closed my lids to hold on until it passed.
Done, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and leaned against the wall a few feet from the crime scene. My hand trembled as I brushed clammy sweat off my brow.
It was so atrocious. So unspeakable.
My poor Cosima, the most beautiful human I’d never known. I couldn’t fathom what she’d had to do in order to get us out of our Italian nightmare and into our American dream.
“Do you know who bought her?” I whispered, staring at Seamus through lowered lids, unable to bear the sight of him.
I didn’t believe for one fucking second that he hadn’t been behind the exchange. Narcissus himself had nothing on Seamus goddamn Moore. He would have no remorse exchanging anything for a chance at his own freedom and betterment.
He hesitated, licking his lips nervously. “Her husband, Alexander Davenport.”
Physically rocked by his words, I let the wall at my back anchor me. “You’re kidding.”
“Would I kid about something like this?” he countered with a raised brow. “Listen, it’s all turned out for the best. Your sister is wildly in love with the bastard.”
“She probably has Stockholm Syndrome,” I yelled.
He shrugged. “They were apart for years, so I don’t think so.” Watching me struggle, he sighed gustily and dragged a hand over his beard. “This isn’t why I wanted to talk to you, Lena.”
“Don’t call me that,” I snapped, settling my hand over my oceanic stomach to steady myself. I pushed off the wall to face him as I wanted to, strong, shoulders back, chin hiked high so I could look down the length of my nose at him.
“Elena,” he tried to cajole, hands widespread in surrender to my mood even as he took a little step forward and affixed that crooked smile to his face that was a facsimile of Sebastian’s. “I’m here because I don’t want you to get hurt.”
The laugh that erupted from my throat was all fire and smile, burning up my lungs and scorching my mouth. I laughed bitterly, a little manically at the thought.
&nb
sp; “How can you take yourself seriously?” I asked, genuinely interested. “You haven’t cared about any of us in years.”
“I care,” he countered, his features flickering like a bad TV connection between placid tenderness and curdled anger. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”
“Say what you have to say, then.” I waved my limp hand at him as I was hit by a wave of exhaustion.
Was this it?
Was this to be the pattern of my life forever?
Men fucking up my happiness?
No, not even that. I’d never been truly happy. They’d kept me from even obtaining it for longer than a fleeting moment.
And it all started with Seamus.
For the first time in my life, I understood cold-blooded violence, the desire to murder someone who felt like nothing more than a trivial decision akin to taking out the garbage.
Seamus was trash, and he deserved to be taken out.
If I’d had a gun, instead of a canister of mace, I might have.
He read the violence in my eyes, but instead of taking it to heart, he seemed challenged by it. His eyes went dark as steel bullet casings.
“I heard you were working for the Salvatore borgata,” he drawled, too casual, a fox lying still in wait.
I barked a hollow laugh that hurt my throat. “Did you?”
He cast me a sidelong look. “The entire underworld knows now that you’re the Camorra capo’s lawyer. It puts a target on your back, Elena. How could you be so reckless?”
My mouth gaped in furious wonder. “How you can ask me that with a straight face is beyond me.” Wrath ate at my incredulity, fueling me to stalk toward my dad once more, each step punctuating my hard-bitten words. “You sold my sister to repay your debts to the Camorra. I am representing a capo because you involved us in the mafia before we were old enough to speak. You do not get to tell me I’m reckless when all I’ve ever tried to do is get out from under the mistakes you’ve made that nearly ruined our family.”
Anxiety had plagued my entire childhood, wondering when the men with black eyes would come calling and I’d have to hide my siblings from their vicious intent. Hours spent cramped in the hiding space beneath the kitchen sink. Holding Giselle as she cried once when huddled in our shared room while someone beat Seamus in the living room for taking money he’d never be able to repay.
“You didn’t have to work for the bastardo. I had nothing to do with that,” he argued even as I reached for him and shoved a hand hard into his sternum, pushing him into the wall. He hissed at the impact, then leaned forward into my face to snarl, “Everything I do, I do for my family.”
“You don’t know the meaning,” I snapped. “Spare me the fatherly bullshit. I can fight my own battles.”
“Clearly, you cannot,” he countered, a smile twitching his upper lip. It wasn’t an expression of joy but one of calculated satisfaction. “How would you like to know that it’s your dad keeping the Irish off your back, Elena?”
“Let them come for me, then, dear old Da,” I mocked, my red lips pulled back over my teeth. “I’d sooner trust Dante Salvatore to protect me than you.”
Hurt flared through his features before he carefully stowed the expression behind his mask. His hands went to my shoulders, fingers curling into the trench coat and the flesh beneath it with a painful bite.
“You want to die, huh?” he demanded coldly. “Because there are worse monsters than the Italian mob in New York City, and all of them have their eyes on Don Salvatore and his crew. And you. They’ll take you and crack you open like a fucking piggy bank to find whatever treasured intel they can get on the Camorra.”
“I don’t know anything. I just represent him in court,” I said, but it lacked conviction because it honestly hadn’t ever occurred to me I could be risking my life for a man I hardly knew just by doing my job.
Seamus knew my face well enough to read the fear at the pinched corners of my mouth. “You should be afraid, cara. You’re in my world now, and the people who inhabit it are fucking cannibals.”
I wrenched from his hold and took a massive step away from him. I’d heard enough. Seamus was every bad part of me, the pride, the explosive temper, the inability to forgive, and the tendencies toward superiority. He lived in me more than enough. I didn’t need his presence in my life for him to take a toll on me, and I was done giving him the benefit of the doubt.
He would never love me.
I might not have understood adoration all that well, but I knew whatever Seamus claimed to feel for us was the antithesis.
“Don’t contact me again,” I told him in a deep voice that emerged from somewhere dark and low in my gut. “You do, Seamus, and I swear to God, I’ll kill you if that’s the only way to get rid of you.”
He laughed. Actually laughed at my threat, tucking his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels as if we were just having a lovely father-daughter chat.
“Little fighter,” he said again, affection in his tone. “If I don’t protect you, however ungrateful you may be, you’ll die.”
“A part of me died the day you introduced Christopher into our lives.” The words were wrenched from the fabric of my soul, and I found suddenly that there was wet in my eyes and a harsh tickle in my sinuses. “When you let him seduce a little girl who didn’t know better and again when you knew he hurt me, but you didn’t step in.” A shadow passed over his face, but I was too far gone to feel anything but rage. “Another part died when you took Cosima from us, when you disappeared even though we were better off without you. You killed my ability to love, Seamus, and you almost killed my ability to even live. Most of what plagues me is because of you, and that is the only legacy you’ve ever given me. If you care at all about me, you’ll leave me with the scars you’ve already inflicted and never bother me again.”
I turned to stalk down the alley only to flip my hair over my shoulder and snarl one last threat, a warning that wasn’t mine to make, yet I felt fully assured of its validity. I knew I wouldn’t tell Dante I’d seen my father, that he’d told me the truth about Cosima and Alexander, but I knew even if I never did and I had to cash in my warning, Dante would do it without question.
“And if you think to fuck with me again, the Devil of New York City himself will come for you, and I won’t stop him when he does.”
ELENA
The pre-trial hearing was successful.
In fact, it was almost ridiculous how easy it was to suppress Mason Matlock’s testimony. Judge Hartford wore a furious scowl on his thick brow during the entire proceeding, but there was no denying that Mason Matlock was an unreliable witness, and without him present to cross-examine, it was impossible to validate his testimony the night of the shooting.
It was brilliant to watch Yara Ghourbani at work. The legal profession was all about puzzles. Researching and cross-examining until you found the right piece to fit with the overall picture of what you were trying to present. It was finding the right words and the right tone, about knowing how different laws interacted with each other and how you might use one to cancel out the other. Yara, clearly, was a master dissectologist.
She parried everything US Attorney O’Malley said with calm clarity, used his own need to posture against him, and never for a moment forgot who her audience of one was and what he stood for.
“Your Honor,” she’d finished, hands folded before her, eyes locked on Judge Hartford’s even though her expression was deferential. “Without Mason Matlock present as a witness, it is impossible to determine where his loyalty to his uncle Giuseppe di Carlo ends and the truth begins. As we have presented to the court, Mason accepted an apartment on the Upper West Side from his uncle only a few years prior and used his connection to Mr. Stewart Sidney on Wall Street to get his first job in the market. If he was so willing to accept his uncle’s favors, it stands to reason that he would have no qualms about lying for his uncle and their family to the police and this court. Without his presence in your courtroom and your judgme
nt on his testimony and cross-examination, his statement should be suppressed.”
I smiled slightly at her subtle manipulative flattery. Even though I’d compiled all the research for the trial, it was like seeing it for the first time through the lens of such a powerful female lawyer.
Dennis sat at the opposite table with his lips pinched and hands crossed, unable to say anything because everything had already been said.
Judge Hartford too, seemed irritated by his lack of options. He shot USA O’Malley a quick look, then sighed. “I have read and listened to the motion to suppress objections, and the defense does have an…extensive argument for striking Mr. Matlock’s statement from evidence. Mr. Matlock is a problematic and prejudice witness due to his familial association with the deceased Giuseppe di Carlo. As Matlock has failed to appear, I have no choice but to rule in favor of the defense.”
The truth was, we had been sure going into the pre-trial hearing that we would secure a victory, but that wasn’t the only reason we had pushed to disallow Matlock’s statement. Going to court before trial allowed us to gain insight into how the prosecution was structuring their case and, potentially, what it hinged upon.
Even something as little as Dennis’s flatlined mouth gave away too much. It was obvious he was unhappy about the outcome, but he wasn’t fighting as hard as he could have to keep it. Which meant, probably, that he had something different up his sleeve to pin on Dante.
Yara thought it was another important witness.
I didn’t know why she was so certain, only that she’d emerged from a phone call with Dante in the office a few days ago and appeared in the doorway of the conference room I usually worked in to tell me so.
I didn’t pry. I was learning that the Camorra had their own ways of gathering evidence.
Which was why I wasn’t immediately on guard when Yara and I were leaving the courthouse, and Yara stopped me from getting into a cab back to the office.
“Have a coffee with me,” she suggested mildly as if we did such things all the time.
When Heroes Fall Page 14