“Mia. Mia…”
Enzo is talking to me, but it sounds as though his voice is coming from very far away.
When I speak, it’s in a voice which is so small and helpless I barely recognize myself. I look into his face and I whisper four words I never thought I’d ever say.
“I wanna go home."Chapter 14Enzo
You could say I didn’t expect the evening to go quite this way, but if there’s anything you learn in mob life, it’s that things never do.
“Find him,” I tell Emilio. My first responsibility is to Mia, and it’s about fucking time he did some grunt work to get back in my good graces anyway.
“Fucking great,” he mutters. “Would’ve done the damn dishes, Enzo. But instead, you got me—”
He takes one look at what I hope is my murderous glare, holds his hands up in surrender, and backs away toward the door.
I take a step toward him, ready to throw him down the stairs, but he’s gone. He’ll inform Piero, and when Piero calls me tonight, I better have the answer he’s expecting.
Yes, your girl is safe. No, no one hurt her.
No, no one fucking will.
Though Mia’s been raised in the family and she’s no stranger to the way we operate and who we are, Piero’s sheltered her from more than bills and responsibility. She stares at me unblinking, still frozen in place, and she’s white as snow.
I approach her carefully, my hands palm up so she knows without me saying that I’m not going to hurt her. I wouldn’t, and if she were in her right mind, she’d know that, but she isn’t right now. Right now, she’s operating on instinct and survival, and time will tell how she reacts.
“Baby,” I say, in my softest voice. It’s taking all my self-control not to run to her, pick her up in my arms, and cart her away from here. Where she’s safe, away from any danger that could come her way. Goddamn it, when I get ahold of whoever’s behind this, they will pay for this. I didn’t want this for her. I don’t, still.
Her lower lip trembles when I get a little closer. “Come with me, baby. That’s a girl,” I say, reaching for her hand and taking it in mine. It’s cold and clammy, and when I touch her, a tremor ripples through her. She shivers.
“You’re safe, Mia.” I tell her this because she needs to know this but I do, too. “You’re safe. Come to me.”
So slowly it’s as if she’s waking from a dream, she takes a step toward me. I draw her closer, to my chest, where it’s warm and she can hear the steady beating of my heart. She’s shaking so hard it breaks me.
I should have shielded her from this.
I should’ve protected her better.
She never should’ve seen that.
And while I hold her, my mind is churning with where we go from here. Davo, the fucking brainless idiot, played with the big dogs and got bit.
I’ve been on the other side of this. I’ve been the executioner, the one sending a warning sign. The one dealing with and executing severed limbs, fingers, tongues. Piero once found one of our own with his woman; that was a beating and execution he ordered me to handle that’ll haunt me until the day I die. I can still hear the fucking loser’s screams in my nightmares.
It’s clear as fucking day: you screw with the family, you pay, and violence is our language.
But now that I’m on the other side of the coin, what we do next isn’t as clear.
I could take her to Logan Airport, catch the next flight to Italy, and do exactly what the fucking cartel wants me to do. Run, with my tail between my legs. But I don’t operate that way, and it wouldn’t solve the greater issue. We’ve got men in every corner of Boston, from the Charles River to the Ritz Carlton. We’ve got business transactions that are the lifeblood of the family, associates and business partners. Leaving now would be a sign of weakness.
You threaten me, you pick a fight. You threaten my girl, you sign your death sentence.
So now I’ve got to keep her safe while I find who the fuck did this and handle them.
I hold her to my chest to still the trembling.
“Is he alive?” she asks.
If he’s still alive, I’ll donate my nuts to fucking science, but she doesn’t need to hear that now.
“Could be. They could be bluffing.”
“That wasn’t bluffing,” she says, shaking harder. “What if they...what if they cut his hand off or something. Can a person survive losing a hand?”
“Does Peter Pan mean anything to you?”
“Jesus, Enzo, this isn’t a time to joke.”
But she’s wrong. Sometimes you deal with the bullshit life throws at you by making light of it. You light a smoke over a body and toss some dice for the shoes. It’s how we deal with the more gruesome aspects of what we do. And I have to keep her spirits up, help her deal with her trauma. They very well could sever a limb.