Prologue
Sophie, age 14
The grave is empty.
That’s the fucked up part. We’re at a burial, but there’s no body in the casket they’re about to lower into the earth. No physical remains to mourn. The priest is up there doing his thing. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. But it’s all pretend.
Something’s wrong with me–I can’t seem to cry. Not a single tear. I just want to puke.
Without a body, the government doesn’t recognize my dad’s death, which I guess is a huge problem for my mom. Something about probate and life insurance. I heard the lawyer tell her it could take seven years before they’ll declare him dead.
Don Alberto says we’ll be taken care of, but my mom would rather stab a fork in his eye than be beholden to him. She believes he’s responsible for my dad’s disappearance.
Pauly, my dad’s capo, weeps openly. It’s weird to see a grown man cry so openly. Especially when the rest of the men in the Family appear stoic. My dad’s sister, my aunt Marie, also bawls loudly. My mom’s chin wobbles, but there’s murder in her eyes. She hates everyone here.
I wait for my moment to escape. The moment the casket’s in the ground and people start to move, I disappear, dodging behind a tall gravestone and sinking into the wet grass.
“Hey.”
I look up and see the crown prince–Don Alberto’s younger son. The beautiful one. I want to ignore him, but his presence is too much. He’s too gorgeous. Too commanding. He reaches a hand down to help me up, and even though I had no intention of moving, I find myself taking it.
“Want a ride?”
I’d rather the ground swallowed me up whole. I don’t want to be with anyone right now. Especially not members of the Family, but again, I find it impossible to refuse him. I guess riding with him is better than being near my mom right now.
Her rage and devastation are all-consuming. Being around her makes it even harder for me to function, and I already feel like I’m under water.
“Yeah. Thanks.” My voice sounds froggy. Maybe I am under water.
I follow him to his shiny black Mercedes convertible. It’s a two-seater, so I feel a bit like the funeral princess getting to ride with Family royalty. He holds the door open for me like we’re on a date. Like I’m not just the fourteen-year-old daughter of a guy their organization just offed.
Well, I don’t know if they offed my dad. But he died on their watch. Doing their dirty deeds. The only reason we even know he’s dead is that Don Alberto set up and paid for this funeral. My dad just didn’t come home one night. There was no call from a hospital. No visit from the police.
He just didn’t come home and when my mom called the don, he told her he was sorry.
That was it.
And I know because my mom has been ranting and screaming about Don Alberto and the LaTorre family non-stop in the seven days since.
“Where should we go?” Joey asks.
I look over, surprised. I thought he was going to drive me to his dad’s estate for the reception or whatever they call the gathering after a funeral.
“Anywhere you want. We don’t have to go to the house.”
For the first time in a week, something other than panic and grief shifts in my chest. It’s a sliver of gratitude. Suddenly, the tears that wouldn’t come during the funeral wet my lashes. “Then I’d say anywhere but the house.”
Joey pulls out, screeching the tires a little. He takes off, driving fast enough that I have to catch the door handle to hang on. The speed is pleasurable. A sensation that knocks away another chip of the grief I’m buried under.
I don’t know how long he drives. He doesn’t speak or seem to expect me to speak. He’s like the conductor on a weird journey. The one from my old life where I had a father to my new existence.
At some point, I realize he’s following the Jersey shore, and we end up at a lighthouse, where he parks and gets out, leaning casually against the hood of the car and staring out at the water like a model for a gentleman’s magazine. I sit in the car for a while watching him watch the sea, then get out and start walking. I walk straight into the water without taking off my black combat boots or lifting up the skirt of my long black dress. I walk until the cold water is at my waist, and I have to jump and bob with the waves that come in.
It helps. Like the speed, the change in physical sensation knocks another wedge of heaviness off my chest. I stand there for a long time, bobbing in the cold Atlantic, my teeth chattering, my skirt tangling around my legs.
When I walk back to the car, Joey’s still leaning up against the hood of his car, watching me. He offers no reaction to the state of my bedraggled clothing, nor the fact that I will now be climbing into his expensive car with a few gallons of seawater trapped in them.
He just pulls a packet of cinnamon Trident from his pocket and unwraps it, then holds it out to me. “Gum?”