Page 42 of His Passerotta

It’s dark beneath the door.

I press my ear against the wood, listening for any sound coming from inside Corey’s apartment, and when I hear nothing, I shove the spare key into the lock and turn.

All the shit my brother has lying around, beer bottles, clothes, trash, junk, casts shadows across the apartment, making it eerie in the dark. I flip the light on when I get to the kitchen, my eyes trained on the table, but the stack of papers are gone, and a pizza box is in its place.

“Shit,” I grumble while my gaze dances around the room. I open several junk drawers and quickly sort through the contents but find nothing.

What if they took everything with them?

I do another scan of the room for the box that the bombs were in but don’t see it, which is not a great sign.

My chest fills with a frustrated breath, and I press my palms to my temples, tilting my head toward the ceiling.

Something catches my eye on top of the fridge, and I squint that way, slowly lowering my hands.

There’s a piece of paper sticking over the top.

I slide a chair to the fridge and climb on to get a view of the top, and when I see the folder, thick with papers, my lungs deflate.

“Yes!” I swipe the folder and hop down off the chair, shoving aside the pizza box before scattering the papers, just as Josh had earlier.

A tiny voice in my head telling me I don’t want to know whatever is in here makes me freeze, my back muscles coiling. I see my brother in my mind, only he isn’t the greasy thug he is today. He’s a thirteen-year-old boy with his face contorted as he desperately screams while the police officer tries to pry him off me. My hands are cuffed behind my back, but if they weren’t, I’d hug him. I’d get on my knees and beg for his forgiveness, but the officer at my back prods for me to go.

Corey’s knuckles are white clasping my shirt like the minute he lets go, I’ll be gone forever, and that’s damn near what happened. I had no money to bail myself out of jail, and he was removed from my custody even if I did. The social worker of course never brought him to the trial.

I didn’t see my little brother again until he was nearly a man, and by then, the tattoos had already started. His lip was pierced. He had scars on his chest he didn’t want to talk about and refused to take showers, screamed the one time I tried to make him.

I thought things couldn’t get worse back then. I thought the wounds—some physical, lots psychological—would heal, but the medicine he chose to use was worse than the symptoms. Violence, meth, more tattoos, more piercings, more thugs for friends, then more violence.

It got to where I was afraid if I looked into his life, I’d stop seeing the thirteen-year-old kid. Stop seeing the brother who needs me. Stop seeing the one that I failed.

And I refused to do that, too terrified I’d turn my back on the man he’s become. Terrified I’d be disgusted, or worse, ashamed of who he is.

And now, staring down at his table, that tiny voice is reminding me of this. Reminding me what’s at stake.

The problem is, I’m afraid there’s even worse at stake than morphing my view of my brother. If he’s involving himself with the mobs, he could get himself hurt. He could get himself killed.

I blink at that thought when my eyes sting and focus on the papers. My brow furrows as I study the sheets of numbers, then brush them aside. There are designs, like plans for a building, and I lean down on my forearms to study one. It’s… My head tilts.

A grocery store?

I pick the paper up and set it aside with the numbers. There’s so much here, and so far, I’m not making sense of any of it. Not until I spot a calendar of sorts with one slot circled about ten times. I lift the paper up to inspect it, frowning when I see the words circled. ‘La Divina.’

“What?” I mutter, roaming my gaze around the page. It’s a schedule. There are like ten things listed, and when I see Settimo’s name, my frown deepens. Is this Anthony’s?

I search for the time La Divina is listed… Eight. The stove clock says it’s eight, but I’m pretty sure it’s an hour off, so … seven.

Why the fuck does Corey have this?

I move on to the other papers, most of them nonsensical, but when I find a set of plans that matches La Divina, my legs get heavy, and I slink into a chair.

My eyes move between the manically circled entry and the plans. Then I remember the bombs.

My hand flies to my mouth as I gasp, and I jump up so forcefully that the chair falls backward, crashing on dirty, chipped tile.

“No.” I look toward the door, wracking my mind for some logical explanation for why Corey needed this information, but all I can think about is him asking me about La Divina’s security the night I broke in.

He was curious… But was he overly curious?

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