I can swallow. Breathe. Blink. I can do all the things a body does without thinking. But I can’t use my mouth to tell him to fuck off.
“Yes, yes. Prima, prima. It’s almost worth keeping you alive to watch you suffer over the thing you didn’t do first, hm? Or whatever you’re crying over. Prima, prima. I almost had the nurses tape your mouth shut.” He takes my face in both hands and turns it toward him. He’s got a long face, wide at the temples and pointed at the chin, with a thin brown moustache that has only flecks of the gray that he’s taken over most of the hair on his head. “I’ve been waiting so long to meet you, Mister Lucari. And now that you’re here”—he lets go and sits back, crossing ankle over knee—“and helpless, I’m a little frustrated that you’re so darn valuable to so many people. It limits me.”
He regards me, squinting his dark brown eyes and crossing his arms.
The stark concrete room is bright. The caged bulb above my head is one of three. The light hurts my eyes.
The room has one exit. A metal door with a square window. One bed. A panel of medical instruments. Cabinets with absorbent things next to sharp things.
The plaster on the wall to my left has a smoother rectangle in the center. They bricked in a window there, yet it’s freezing in here.
This is how Nico died. Cold.
“You don’t know where you are. Last thing you knew, your brother was in a box, your men were getting mowed like a lawn. So I heard. None of them made it back here.” He uncrosses his leg and leans his elbows on his knees. “Your brother came in after all our brave Colonia men. They almost forgot to get his body out of the back of the truck. Fucking morons.”
He shakes his head. My brother died sculpted from ice, and he’s irritated by the display of incompetence.
Connor. Danny. Remo. All dead. Have to be.
And Nico. They left his body in the back of a refrigerator truck.
I should have brought him home when Oria demanded it.
I wish the doc would scratch my nose, because my entire face has gotten itchy. My head is one big mosquito bite. It’s worse than pain.
The doctor stands.
Is he going to leave without telling me where Sarah is? I can deduce what happened to most everyone else, but he hasn’t dropped a single breadcrumb I can follow to her. I exhale past a tight tongue, making a long sss.
“What’s that?” He bends, hands on his knees to meet my gaze as one would a child. “You’re trying to say something?”
“Sssaaa…” The rest comes out like a long nnn, and I hear her inside the sound. N is for noble. N is for night song. N is for north star. N is for the nick of time.
“Sorry, I don’t hear well out of this ear. Go again?”
His smirk implies he knows exactly how desperately I need the answer, but there’s no recognition of what, exactly, I’m asking.
N is for nothing. What I have without her.
N is for never—when I’ll see her again if I don’t get my shit together and think.
The strategic part of my mind wants me to shut up. Don’t say her name. The rest of me picks up the bludgeon of love and uses it to beat the strategist to death.
“Hm,” is all he says. I have no idea what he means by that.
I swallow and try again, only to make the same strained sounds. The full force of my panic isn’t enough to push her name from my heart, through my throat, and into the world.
“We don’t have any of that.” He sits next to me again, relaxed, legs crossed, and one arm slung over the back of the chair. The itching spreads to my neck. It’s torture. “Whatever it is. What we do have—let me tell you—is time. Lots of it. Was it you who killed Peter Colonia? These apes brought him in here with his guts trailing on the floor like a bag of dead snakes. I could have put that mess back together, but you got his heart. Nicked it just enough. The strength it must have taken to pull the knife up like that.” He pats my shoulder to commend me for a job well done. “Well, I’m just a humble trauma guy. I’m no heart surgeon. All I could do was keep him alive long enough to notice his son was nowhere to be found. Called Massimo a worthless pussy and that wasn’t even the strongest term. His own son. Imagine.” He pauses to let me imagine giving a shit. I can’t. “Then… last breaths… he put Sergio Agosti—who’s not even one of us, really—he put him in charge. So, the great thing… for us? You and me?” He leans his elbows on the bed to whisper close, points at me, then back at him. “None of them have time for you right now. It’s just Dario Lucari and me, in a room.” He glances at the IV tower above me. “Morphine’s out. You should have a nice case of the itchies by now.”
Casually, he scratches my nose. It’s the nicest thing anyone has done for me. Then he reaches down to my right side.
I can’t see what he’s doing. Playfully poking? Gently prodding? All I know is the pain is like a vise crushing the bone. It travels up my spine and lights my brain on fire. I can’t even scream.
He pulls back and puts his hand under his chin, staring at me like an artist before his masterpiece.
At least my face stopped itching.
“You took someone from me, many years ago. I need to know where she is. My name is Doctor Rosario Palmeri.” He pauses again, scanning my expression. I’m paralyzed. I can’t tell if my face betrays that I know the name, and I don’t have the control to hide it. “When you can move your face, we’re going to talk about my daughter, Rosemarie.”
CHAPTER 2
SARAH
Dario’s Buick Skylark smells like raw meat and gunpowder. My brother Massimo’s in the back seat. He’s not screaming anymore, but he’s grunting loudly or breathing in that way that makes a noise come from his throat. Sometimes he says words like fuck or why?
I wish he’d be quiet so I can think. I’ve had one driving lesson in my whole life. My fists are clamped around the steering wheel at ten and two, slipping on sweat when I turn around the curves of the narrow road, trying to keep close to the yellow line in the center.
There’s a white SUV in the rearview. Are they following us?
What do I do? What would Dario do? Would he pull to the side, get the rifle from under the seat, and shoot them? Massimo’s handgun is in my lap. It was easy to take from him while I got him in the car, but I don’t think I should shoot anyone with it.
The road goes straight for a while. The SUV swerves, crosses the yellow line—which went from solid to dotted—and speeds forward.
“Massimo,” I gasp as if he can help me. He can’t. He won’t. I put my hand on the gun in my lap. “Are they yours?”
“Who?” he barks. “Sarah, what did you do?”
I glance back at him. There’s blood all over the seat. “Who came with you?”
I face forward. The white SUV slows down, swerves, and comes astride me. A woman leans out the passenger window, brandishing her middle finger.
“Learn to drive, you fucki…”
The rest of an insult that Willa taught me is lost in the wind as the driver takes off. The back tires spit dust that clicks on the Buick’s windshield.
“No one,” I exhale. “No one came with you. Right? Not them at least?”