“Of course, they aren’t twins,” he snapped. “How many times do I have to tell you? Quintino is the oldest of Bonafacio Concordio’s children. Then Bonafacio has a daughter…”
“Aurora. Yeah, I know. You told me.”
“Then what the hell are you doing asking me if Quintino and Enzo are twins? You should know they aren’t.”
“Then how the fuck am I supposed to recognize that Enzo is his brother?” I practically shouted. “You’re trying to fuck with me so I make a mistake.”
“The families won’t be as nice to you as I am if you make a mistake at the masquerade ball,” he countered. “Now, pay attention. Look.”
He turned the computer toward me and displayed two pictures. The first was the guy Dante just showed me, the one of Enzo Concordio. The second was the picture of Quintino Concordio that he showed me yesterday.
“Now do you see the resemblance?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I guess so.”
“You better be sure at the ball. Everything depends on you making a good impression.”
I sighed, and he turned the laptop his way again. He tapped some more and then turned it to face me. “Who is this?”
I looked down at another woman and froze. I definitely should know. Dante had shown me this picture at least four times already, but for the life of me, I couldn’t recall the woman’s name.
Was it Lidia Albertini? No, she had blue eyes. Was it Clemenzia D’Orazio? No, she was much older than the woman in this picture.
I wracked my brain, but nothing came to me. Finally, I threw up my hands. “I don’t know. Sorry. I can’t remember.”
Dante compressed his lips, and his eyebrow twitched. “It’s Bartolomea Ruscio. Pay attention. If you mess up again, I’ll have to punish you.”
I couldn’t stand this weighty tension any longer. “You’d like to punish me, wouldn’t you, Dante?”
He cocked his eyebrow even higher, and the formality of the last two days evaporated, but not in a nice way. “Imight like it, butyousure wouldn’t.”
My smile vanished under the intensity of his scowl. Did he really mean he would punish me—as in, hurt me?
He pulled up another picture on his computer and showed it to me. “Who is this?”
“It’s Cristiano D’Errico, son of Emiliano, Padrino of the San Francisco line of D’Erricos. Do we really have to do thisnow, Dante? Can’t we go outside for a while? We’ve been drilling these names for hours.”
“I might be inclined to let you go if you weren’t making so many mistakes. The ball is in six hours, and you still haven’t scored above sixty percent. Concentrate and get the job done, and I might reward you by giving you a few hours of free time before you have to start getting ready to go.”
My eyes popped. “You’re actually keeping score?”
“Unlike you. You’ve missed two out of every five pictures I’ve shown you. If you don’t get this right, it could mean life or death for you, not me. Remember that.”
He turned the computer toward me again, and I looked down at another man. My stomach dropped when I realized I didn’t know this one, either. I should definitely have known this one too because Dante showed me this one a lot.
This man belonged to someone in the Vittorio family, someone who worked in Atlantic City but whom Dante said had been spotted in Boston. Dante impressed on me that I absolutely had to be able to recognize this man, but I couldn’t remember his name.
I stared at the picture, not so much trying to figure out how who the guy was, but trying desperately to hide from Dante that I had failed again.
“You don’t know, do you?” That bite of disappointment in his voice sealed my fate.
“I’m really sorry, Dante. I just…”
A hard slap stung the inside of my thigh. I was wearing shorts, and Dante, in a lightning ninja move I never saw coming, picked up a ruler from the table next to his computer and slapped it hard against my inner thigh.
I jumped a mile into the air. “Ow! What are you doing?”
“I told you to pay attention. Take that as a warning. I’m going to make it worse for you every time you miss.”