That double-crossing cazzo of a magician, Harte Darrigan, had ruined everything when he’d taken the Book from her in the bowels of Khafre Hall, leaving Viola looking the fool. Because of him, the Devil’s Own had viewed her with suspicion shining in their eyes after they’d discovered that the sack she’d carried contained nothing of value. And there was no way to fix her mistakes. Darrigan had taken any hope of recovering the Book with him to his watery grave when he’d jumped from the bridge.
If that wasn’t bad enough, on the bridge, Viola had made everything worse. She’d known that Nibsy suspected Esta of being in league with Darrigan. She had specific instructions to make sure neither of them got away, but when Nibsy raised a gun to Esta’s throat, Viola had acted without thinking. She’d attacked the boy to save Esta—because it was what Tilly would have expected of her. And because it was what her own instincts screamed for her to do.
But her actions meant that she couldn’t return to the Strega, not so long as Nibsy Lorcan had the loyalty of Dolph’s crew.
Without Dolph, Viola had no one to stand between her and the dangers of the Bowery. Without the Book, she had no leverage with the Devil’s Own. She certainly couldn’t trust Nibsy to forgive her for skewering him.
Not that she particularly cared. She’d never liked the kid anyway.
But the Strega had been her home. The Devil’s Own had been a family for her, one that had respected her skill and accepted her as she was. Perhaps the Book was gone, but she would do what she must to prove that she had not betrayed their trust. Even without the Book, she could finish what Dolph started. She would do everything in her power to destroy the Order.
To do that, she would need help. There was only one person she could think of who could protect her from the patrols—her older brother, Paolo. Going to Paolo had an added benefit: There were whispers in the streets that the Five Pointers were doing the Order’s bidding now as well as Tammany’s.
Paolo wasn’t likely to forgive Viola for abandoning the family, and especially not for escaping his control and working for Dolph, a man he considered an enemy. Still, if her dear brother could help her get closer to the Order, she would suffer what she must. Which was why she had come to this place, to wait for her mother, the one person who might be able to protect her from Paolo’s wrath.
Viola handed the pear she’d just purchased to a dirty-looking urchin on the corner and ran to catch up to her mother. “Mamma!” But the title was tossed around the streets of the Bowery so often that her mother didn’t react, not until Viola used her first name:
“Pasqualina!”
Her mother turned then, at the sound of her name being shouted over the din of the street. It took a moment before her mother’s dark eyes registered understanding, and Viola could read every emotion that flashed across her mother’s face: shock, hope, then realization . . . and caution.
After murmuring something to her companion, who gave Viola a brooding, distrustful look before heading on her way alone, Viola’s mother frowned at her. But she stopped walking and waited for Viola.
Her throat tight with a tenderness she thought she had long ago killed as surely as any life she’d taken with a blade, Viola approached her mother slowly until the two of them were standing an arm’s distance apart.
“Viola?” Her mother lifted a hand as though to caress her daughter’s cheek, but she did not finish bridging the distance between them. A moment passed, long and awful, and then her mother’s hand dropped, limp at her side.
Viola nodded, unable to speak. For all her family had done, for all the anger Viola still felt, she’d missed her mother. Missed them all. Missed, even, the girl she had once been with them.
Her mother’s expression faltered. “What do you want?” Spoken in the Sicilian of Viola’s childhood, her mother’s words sounded like a homecoming. But her mother’s tone was like her eyes—flat and cold.
Viola had expected this. After all, she had committed the cardinal sin—she had abandoned her family. She had betrayed her brother and refused his authority, and maybe worst of all, she’d dared to claim a life that was more than any good woman would want for herself.
It didn’t matter that Viola had long since considered herself a good woman. Her mother’s judgment still stung. She had been on the receiving end of that same expression a hundred times as a girl, but she, who had learned to kill without regret, had never grown immune to it.
Viola dropped her eyes, forced herself to bow her head in the show of the submission expected of her. “I want to come home, Mamma.”
“Home?”
Viola glanced up to find her mother’s thick brows raised. “I want to come back to the family.”
At first her mother didn’t speak. She studied Viola instead with the same critical eye she often turned on a piece of bruised fruit at the market right before she haggled for a lower price.
“I was wrong,” Viola said softly, keeping her head down, her shoulders bowed. “You were right about me—too headstrong and filled with my own importance. I’ve learned what it means to be without your family.” The words tasted like ash in her mouth, but they were not a lie. Under Dolph’s protection, Viola had learned what it meant to be without the expectations, demands, and restrictions her family imposed upon her.
“More like you got yourself in trouble,” her mother said flatly, glancing down at Viola’s belly. “Who is he?”
Viola frowned. “There is no man.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You see what’s happening, no? The fires, the brawling in the streets? I see now how stupid I was to think I could go without my family—il sangue non é acqua.”
Her mother’s mouth pinched tight, and her eyes narrowed. “I tell you that your whole life, and now you listen? After it’s too late?”
“I’m still your blood,” Viola said softly, forcing a meekness into her voice that felt like a betrayal to everything she was.
Viola hadn’t understood the truth of that phrase until she’d tried to leave her family behind. No matter the life she’d tried to claim for herself, she was always Paul Kelly’s sister—and she always would be.
No, blood wasn’t water. Blood left a stain.
“Why do you come to me? Why not go to Paolo, as you should? He’s head of the family now,” her mother said, crossing herself as she looked up to the sky, as though Viola’s father might appear sanctified on the clouds above. “You need his blessing, not mine.”
“I want to go to him,” Viola said, twisting her hands in her skirts, making a show of nerves, and hating herself for it—not for the lie, but for the display of weakness when she had promised herself to always be strong. “But I’m not sure how to make amends for what I’ve done. Paolo listens to you, Mamma. You have his ear. If you tell him to forgive me, he will.”
Her mother’s jaw tightened, her face flushing red. “I see. . . . You come back to me because you need my help? After all you’ve done to us . . . to me—” Her mother’s voice broke. “You make me a disgrace.” Shaking her head, Viola’s mother turned to go, but as she took a step down from the sidewalk into the street, she gasped and nearly tumbled to her knees.