I lifted my arm, making my jacket fall back, exposing my wrist. My expensive watch lit up the darkness and the wolf on my hand. “Time.” I motioned toward the Panerai. “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”
She narrowed her eyes at me when I spoke those last words. “What do you know—”
Before she could finish, two big goons I didn’t recognize stepped out of Dolce. Patrizio ran it, but it was just a front for the Scarpones. One of the goons smoked a cigarette. The other one had his hands stuffed into the pockets of his leather jacket, collar pulled up to his ears. Each man took a spot next to Angelina.
“I’ll only say this once,” I said.
“Say what?” Cigarette said. His Irish accent was light, but I caught it.
“Move.”
“Or?” Leather Jacket said. He was Italian, but not a man I knew.
I said nothing, staring at them, giving them the chance to retreat without me having to use violence.
“The baby’s not yours,” Angelina blurted.
It took me a moment to break eye contact with the two goons and concentrate on her.
“I can’t marry a man who doesn’t love me,” she continued, and I could see how the two fuckers standing next to her made her feel brave. Confident. “I hate that we have to part on these terms, but I promise to bring you flowers. It’s the least I can do.”
My eyes moved with the two fuckers next to her, who were moving closer—not to me but to her.
“After all these years you didn’t learn a fucking thing from me, did you?” I said.
“I learned enough to know that you’re not capable of love. You’re too fucked up to even attempt to feel it. Noemi—”
“Keep her name out of your mouth,” I almost growled.
Even with the two next to her, she knew she had gone too far, so she changed course, cutting right to another quick. “Do you honestly think I’d have a child from you? I want the Scarpone blood, but not from you.”
“You’re stupider than I gave you credit for,” I said.
She went to take a step toward me, no doubt to land the slap that she couldn’t before, but my brother took a step outside, wrapping an arm around her waist.
“Come now, sweetheart,” he said. “Don’t you think my brother’s having a rough night as it is? Go easy on him.”
“Achille,” I said. “I hear congratulations are in order. You’re going to be a father.” The pieces easily fell into place—her confession and his presence.
His smile came slow, turning up the corners of his mouth like the fucking Joker. “She told you?”
“In not so many words.” I returned the smile.
He shrugged. “We both know it doesn’t really matter.”
Angelina looked between the two of us, confusion warring with the stoicism on her face. I saw her throat bob when she swallowed hard. “Why didn’t you just kill her, Vittorio?” A brief show of remorse joined the battlefield of emotions she tried to hide.
“Yeah, why didn’t you kill her, Pretty Prince Vittorio?” Achille mocked. “Not that this would’ve turned out any differently, but you made it so, so easy to convince Pop that one of us had to go. He was all set on giving you the kingdom one day—beautiful wife, beautiful home, beautiful offspring to carry on the family name, and all that belonged to him—and there you go, fucking it all up by betraying him.”
“We both know it doesn’t really matter,” I said, repeating Achille’s words. It summed up everything so perfectly. All I needed was a bow to wrap things up.
Achille tucked his nose deep into Angelina’s hair, breathing her in, his eyes shut tight. “Thank you, Angel,” he said. “For everything, but it seems your loyalty to my side was unneeded. In the end, my brother put the nail in his own coffin. You just gave him one more thing to regret. Who needs a woman like you when a man is better off in the bed of a viper? Treachery is an unforgivable sin, sweetheart, no matter who in my family you cross.”
Her eyes froze and her breath came faster as he slid his nose up higher, along the skin of her face, placing a soft kiss on her cheek. He whispered something in her ear, and she closed her eyes, a lone tear falling. The light of the restaurant caught its slow track.
Achille finally opened his eyes, gave me a wide smile, and then shoulder checked me on the way out. The two goons next to Angelina took her by the arms; at the same time, four men came up behind me, one holding a knife to my throat. Angelina started fighting, screaming at Achille to come back—“How could you do this to me!”—before she started screaming for me to help her.
You want to scream for me now, Princess? After you set me up to be slaughtered? The words were on the tip of my tongue, but they’d fall on deaf ears. Instead of screaming for me, she should scream for God, the only force strong enough to stop this. No one was getting out of this alive. Not if the king wolf had ordered it and there was no angel to stop it.
Mariposa
Present Day
Only the truly poor know the difference between being hungry and being starved. My stomach made an obnoxious noise, reminding me of how starved I was. How long had it been since I last ate? One day? Two? I had scraps here and there, crackers from some fast food restaurant that they left out with the ketchup and other condiments sealed in plastic, but that was about it.
My stomach made an even louder noise, and I mentally told it to shut up. It should’ve been used to the neglect.
It wasn’t easy making it in a city that easily chewed you up and spit you out. I’d never lived anywhere other than New York. Dreamed about it, but I never had the means to leave. Funds meant freedom, and I was not free by any means.
Even sadder than the state of my growling stomach was the fact that once I faded from this place called earth (or for some of us, hell), there would be nothing of me to truly leave behind.
“What is this, Mari?” I said to myself. “A pity-fuck day? This is your own fault, and you know it. You shouldn’t be standing here.”
I couldn’t help myself, though. As poor as the streets of New York could be, there was another side to it that was every bit the definition of opulent. It was hard to overlook the draw, the richness, the sheer absurdity of it all. How some people were barely making it, eating week-old bread and wearing someone else’s (too small) shoes to keep their feet clean, hustling for their next dollar, while others were wasting thousands of dollars on ass implants and clothes they’d never wear.
It wasn’t that I begrudged them these things—who am I kidding? I do fucking begrudge them these things. Especially the ass implants when my stomach hosted a pack of hungry wolves howling to be fed.
Yeah, New York had chewed me up, but it had yet to spit me out. There was no doubt, though, that I was close to becoming dumpster trash one of these days. I’d probably end up with the wasted food I’d love to eat.
I sighed, long and hard, fogging up the glass window of Macchiavello’s. The name was done in gold and looked elegant. It was the kind of restaurant that you probably needed to make a reservation for months in advance. On the opposite side of the shiny glass, expensive suits and fancy dresses dined, most of them getting the steak. They usually did.