Page 59 of Stolen Sin

“I’m going out the back and over the fences. I’ll be there soon.”

“Good luck, brother.”

I hang up and shove my phone into my pocket before racing upstairs. “Grab some things,” I say, ripping a duffel from the closet and shoving fistfuls of clothes inside. I’m taking things that are random. “We’re leaving.”

“Simon?” Emily looks terrified. She’s pale and shaking as I pull her to her feet and get her moving. “What’s going on?”

“We’re running. Take the necessities, we’ll buy anything you need later. Do you hear me? We have to get out right now.”

She stares at me, her eyes wide, her mouth trembling, and I press my lips to hers and kiss her hard, almost knocking our teeth together, and I hold her against me for a brief second. That seems to snap her into motion, and when I let her go, she flies to the dresser and adds more random clothes to my bag.

Ten seconds later, we’re sprinting down the steps. I steer her to the back door, a finger to my lips, and I open it as quietly as I can. We slip into the back yard and pause at the edge of the house.

I hear voices from the street. They’re closer now. Boots on my porch steps. I usher Emily over to the tall, wooden privacy fence we had installed a few years back, and suddenly it doesn’t seem like such a good idea. I motion for her to be quiet before making a basket of my hands to boost her up. She takes a deep breath, puts her foot down, and I hoist her to the top. She grips the edge, scrambles a bit, then she slips over and away.

I tighten the strap of the duffel across my chest, take a few steps back, and pause.

The sound of the front door smashing open cracks the stillness of the afternoon.

That’s the sound of Dad going too far. That’s the sound of my life changing.

That’s the sound of the whole Famiglia splitting in half.

I sprint at the fence and jump.

Chapter 36

Simon

I land on the other side hard. I feel the impact in my knees and shins, but quickly shake it off and spot Emily crouching next to a bush, her face drained of color. I grab her hand and pull her behind me, running to the next fence, as the sound of men shouting drifts out from my house.

“Who lives here?” Emily whispers, looking around at the neat little yard. There’s a patio, some lawn chairs, and a manicured flowerbed.

“Empty,” I say, gesturing at the fence. “Up and over again. Davide’s three down. This next one’s Laura, but don’t worry about her. I doubt she’s even home. Then another empty, and then Davide. Ready?”

More shouting from my house. Emily scrambles into position and I get her up again. This time, she manages to slip to the other side with a little more grace as I back up and take a flying leap. I hit the edge, barely grab on, and grunt as I pull myself over, trying to do it as fast as possible. For the brief moment that I’m at the very top, I can see the tops of heads moving around in my back yard, men milling around my fucking home, strangers Dad sent to capture me and my goddamn wife.

Rage flows into me as I land on the other side. This is too fucking far. Even if my dad thinks I’m trying to overthrow him, the asshole could just have a conversation with me instead of invading my home. I know he’s a mess, but I don’t know how I can possibly start to forgive him for this.

“Uh, Simon?” Emily’s voice comes from my right. She’s standing a few feet away, staring at something straight ahead in the yard. “What the hell is all that?”

The grass is long and scruffy like it hasn’t been cut in a while. The beds are strewn with overgrown bushes and weeds. And lying in the middle of the yard in patches of bare dirt where the plants have been destroyed over time, are enormous wooden hands.

They’re big, around four or five feet tall, and a few feet wide. Some of them are whole, sculpted in extremely fine detail down to the little hairs on the back of a knuckle, while some of them are dismembered, missing fingers, making rude gestures. There are eight of them in total, plus a dozen or so severed fingers with little stubby knots of bone sticking out and strange, oozing layers of blood.

“Laura’s an artist,” I say, dragging Emily past the big hands.

“But, what the hell are they?” She can’t stop looking at the sculptures, and I can’t blame her. They’re fascinating, actually very beautiful, ranging from divine to grotesque, and somehow, they represent the full range of human expression. One hand is angry, another is sad, another is joyous. They’re evocative, some of them insanely detailed and realistic, others more like the impression of a hand, blocky and cartoonish.

“Hands,” I say and gesture at the fence. “Come on, one more.”

Emily hesitates. I can tell she wants to ask more. But unfortunately, even if we had an entire week to stand here and gaze on my sister’s works, there’s no fucking way I’d ever make sense of them.

Some things have no meaning. Sometimes, a hand’s just a giant hand with lots of blood and scattered fingers.

She gets up and grabs onto the top. This time, I give her a little push to help her legs swing over, but she makes a yelping noise as she loses her balance, and she plunges down to the other side and hits the ground hard.

“Oh, shit,” she says, cursing loud enough to make my skin crawl.

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