“And you blame Haven for it.”
“It’s not her fault,” Vincent said. “She was just a child.”
Carmine laughed bitterly. “You think I don’t f**king know that? Of course it’s not her fault. Doesn’t mean you don’t blame her anyway.”
Vincent sighed. “Sometimes we suffer a loss and try to blame a single cause. Disproportionate responsibility is what they call it. Makes it easier to cope when you can channel your grief somewhere tangible so—”
“Cut the medical bullshit. It’s a scapegoat.”
“Scapegoat,” Vincent repeated. “You’re right. I’ve come to grips with it for the most part, which is why I felt it was safe to bring her here. But yes, I do still have moments where I slip back into that mind-set and wish she didn’t exist.”
Carmine could hear the disgust in his voice. “Was it Frankie who had her killed?”
Vincent nodded. “A few years ago, Sal told me Frankie panicked about your mother asking questions, said it was because the Antonellis’ son fathered the girl. He didn’t want his family’s dirty little secret to come out. It’s kill or be killed in our world, son.”
Carmine could feel the vodka burning through his veins. He ran his hand through his hair, cringing at the pain. His father frowned. “You must’ve been pounding on something hard.”
“Just had a small mishap with a mirror.”
“You should go to the hospital for an X-ray.”
Carmine held up his bottle of vodka. “I have all the medicine I need right here.”
He took another swig of it as his father muttered. “I pity your liver, heading straight for cirrhosis at seventeen. It’ll kill you if you keep it up.”
“We all gotta die at some point, Dad,” he said. “May as well go out for something I love.”
He brought the bottle to his lips for a drink, and as the liquid flowed, it struck him what he’d said. That was exactly what his mom had done.
31
The sound of the bell rang through the brightly lit room. There was a collective shuffling as the students gathered their things. Carmine closed his science book awkwardly with his left hand, his right wrist in a bandage, sprained from the incident with the mirror in his bathroom.
“Don’t forget to study, folks!” the biology teacher, Mr. Landon, called out. “Quiz tomorrow!”
Carmine grabbed his backpack before strolling to the teacher’s desk. Mr. Landon erased the board and turned, caught off guard to see him. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“I wondered if you could explain mtDNA.”
Mr. Landon pursed his lips. “We covered that at the beginning of the semester.”
“I know, but I’m a bit confused.”
Truthfully, he hadn’t paid a damn bit of attention. Carmine always relied on luck and common sense to pass his classes, and most of the time he had just enough of both to get by.
“Well, unlike nuclear DNA, mtDNA isn’t unique to us. We share it with our mothers.”
“So my mtDNA would be the same as my mom’s?”
“Yes, just as it’s the same as her mother, and her mother’s mother, and so on.”
“But can men be traced through it? I mean, say mine was tested. Who would it match?”
“People related to your mother. Whatever your mtDNA, it came directly from the maternal side.”
Carmine was stunned. He’d naturally assumed the test had something to do with Haven’s father and his connections to the mob, never considering it could deal with Haven’s mom.
“Is that all you needed?” Mr. Landon asked.
“Yeah.” He hesitated. “Actually, no. Do you know anything about GPS?”
“What specifically do you want to know?”
“Is there a way to disable a signal?”
“Well, there are ways to block them,” he said. “GPS chips need a line of sight to the satellite tracking them, so any big obstruction will keep the signal from getting out. Also, reflective materials like water or metal can cause the signal to bounce back.”
“Is it the same for tracking chips in people?”
Mr. Landon snickered. “That’s science fiction. Human tracking chips don’t exist.”
Bullshit. Just because the FDA hadn’t approved them didn’t mean they weren’t out there. “Hypothetically speaking. If a person had one implanted under their skin, is there a way they could keep from being found?”
“They could stay in a windowless room or learn to breathe underwater. Otherwise, it would connect to the satellite as soon as they stepped into the open.”
“So basically becoming a prisoner or drowning is the only way to disrupt it.”
“I’d think so, yes. There’s no way to say for certain, though, since it’s completely hypothetical.”
“Thanks.”
He turned to leave when Mr. Landon called his name. “Your inquisitiveness gives me hope for you, so keep it up.”
Carmine smiled to himself as he walked out. While his teacher was proud, his father would flip if he knew he’d asked those questions.
* * *
Vincent slowed the car as he neared the tall brick house, swinging a sharp right into the driveway. He parked behind the red convertible and climbed out, locking it and setting an alarm.
The neighborhood was decent, not too much crime in that part of town. He wasn’t worried about any of the locals, as they’d have to be foolish to step foot onto the property uninvited. Everyone around there was well aware la famiglia controlled the streets, just as they knew Vincent’s position of authority and the power he held. They respected him for it. Most of them didn’t like him, but he didn’t care about their personal feelings.
For the moment Vincent stepped into the streets, his emotions didn’t exist anymore. He had no compassion, no sympathy, no empathy, and no remorse. He couldn’t. And the longer he spent in Chicago, the colder he grew.
It was one of those warm spring nights that Maura had always enjoyed, where she could open all the windows and let the breeze blow through. He used to complain about how hot she let the house get. He’d been temperamental then, and many times he wished he could go back and erase his scathing words.
Del senno di poi son piene le fosse. Hindsight is 20/20.
He strolled to the front door and rang the doorbell before rolling up the sleeves of his light blue button-up shirt. The sound of high heels echoed inside before the door opened. The woman stood before him, a smile on her shiny red lips. “Hello, Vincent. It’s been a while.”
She moved out of the way to let him pass. He wordlessly made his way to the front room and took a seat on her black leather couch. She joined him, holding a glass of red wine. He took it, bringing the glass to his nose and inhaling, taking in the aroma. Maura always liked red wine.
“So, how long are you in town for this time?” she asked, taking a sip of her drink, while he just held his. He didn’t drink anymore, hadn’t for a long time.
“Until I’m dismissed.”
She wasn’t naïve to the lifestyle. She’d been born into it, a Principessa della Mafia. She knew he couldn’t talk about what he did, so conversation between them was kept to a minimum—no misleading and certainly no misconceptions.
“Are you hungry?” she asked. He gazed at her, his eyes roaming her body, admiring her snug black dress and thigh highs. Her skin was tanned, her hair dark brown, her eyes an odd shade of hazel with tiny flecks of green in them. The green reminded him of the eyes he had gazed into every night for years.
He looked away from her. “Sure.”
They ate dinner while she talked and finished off the bottle of wine. Vincent just listened and nodded at the right times. Afterward, he strolled to the window and gazed out as she cleaned up, the stars and moon shining brightly above her enclosed backyard.
The clicking of heels approached, the sound stopping right behind him as her reflection greeted him in the window. She smiled mischievously, running her hands up his back. She rubbed his shoulders, massaging them firmly. “You’re always tense, Vincent.”
He let out a soft sigh. “That’s why I come to you. You know what I need.”
She hummed in response as she ran her hands under his shirt, her manicured fingernails lightly scraping his skin. Maura never had fingernails, always chewed them down to little stubs—sometimes so much her fingers bled.
She undid his buttons, her lips pressing lightly against the nape of his neck. Her breath was warm, her kiss sticky from the color on her lips. “I think I know what you need now.”
* * *
Vincent said nothing as he redressed an hour later.
It was moments like these, when Vincent should feel at ease, that he often felt the full weight of the world he lived in pressing against his chest. If he could go back, he would change so much, but all he could do was go forward and make sure that what had happened to him didn’t happen to Carmine. He could make sure that twenty years from now, his son wasn’t the one f**king nameless women who meant nothing, trying to keep a grip when all he really wanted was to let go.
The clock on the car’s dash read midnight when Vincent backed out of the driveway and started toward Highway 290. He drove for thirty minutes before he pulled onto the long winding path that cut through the hillside, driving through the front gate: Mount Carmel Cemetery.
He turned off the car and climbed out, walking through the grass, past the graves of some of those who had lived his life and died. The Capones were buried in this section, dozens of other Mafiosi scattered throughout the cemetery. He’d be there someday too, buried in the plot beside his wife.
His steps faltered as he spotted the gravestone, his chest constricting. Kneeling in front of it, he ran his hand along the name on the cold marble marker.
Maura DeMarco
April 1965–October 1996
“Ama, ridi, sogna—e vai dormire”
“My sweet Maura,” he said. “I know it has been months, but I haven’t felt like I deserved to visit you. How disappointed you must be.”
He sat down in the grass, eyeing the sentence that aligned the bottom. “Ama, ridi, sogna—e vai dormire,” he said, his voice a strangled whisper in the darkness. “‘Love, laugh, dream, and go to sleep.’ That was how you lived your life, and I’m trying to follow your lead. I got her, you know. I finally got her for you, and you’re not here for it.”
He laughed cynically as tears slipped from the corner of his eyes. “You were probably angry at me when I locked her in her room, as upset as you must’ve been that day all those years ago when I . . . I . . .” He trailed off. “You know what I almost did, what I tried to do that night . . . the night I killed them. I know you were watching, and you were the one who stopped me. Even dead, you’re still saving her. I could imagine you standing there with your forehead wrinkled—how you used to look when you got mad. I hated disappointing you, but what I wouldn’t give to see that face again.”
He paused, shaking his head. “The girl’s okay, I guess. We all are for now. I’m trying to figure out how to keep us that way. She’s growing and coming into her own. It reminds me of you, and that’s harder than you could imagine.”