Page 55 of The Mafia's Surprise Gift

“But… someone else died that night. Someone who was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Someone you knew?” I looked back at Rocco, and his face was shadowed with sadness.

“Your father, Mae. When I was in New York, I saw the incident report. Your father was caught in the crossfire that night.”

Coldness bled into my limbs like a trickle of freezing water.

“No.” I shook my head. “No, my father was killed by a carjacker. By… by some asshole who wanted his keys.”

“No.”

Rocco’s touch became crushing, and I snatched my hand away.

“Mae, I’m so sorry. My father went with that story because it was, as he called it, a clean kill, so he left it to the authorities.”

“A clean kill?” I asked numbly. “What does that even mean?”

“No other witnesses. No pain. Just… dead.” Rocco’s voice was suddenly far away as my pounding heart rose to my ears.

My father… was killed by the Mafia? Accidentally or not, suddenly, everything I knew about one of the worst days of my life was a lie. He had died because of Mafia assholes trying to kill each other, treating the city like some kind of fucking playground!

“Mae?” Rocco moved to the edge of his seat. “Mae, I’m so sorry. Usually, civilian casualties are dealt with by our family. We take care of those left behind, but?—”

“Left behind?” I snapped suddenly as the pounding in my ears became so unbearable that I wanted to claw out of my own skin. “You and your fucking… war or whatever you want to call it, you take people away and then act like we were just left behind at a train station!”

“No, Mae, that’s not what?—”

“My dad was a good man,” I ground out, hot tears flooding my eyes and blurring the world around me. “He was a good man and he died because…”

Emotion choked my words. Static fizzed behind my nose, and my chest tightened.

Back then, it was my father. Earlier this month, it was me.

All I could picture was two months down the line and my son being next.

“My family is just collateral damage, huh?” I stood swiftly, sending my teacup scattering across the table. “Stay away from me and my family.”

“Mae!” Rocco tried to rise and reach for me, but I slapped his hands away. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe.

“No! You stay away. You stay away from me!”

23

MAE

“Mommy?” Zack placed his hand on my arm and patted me gently. “You’re doing it wrong!”

“What, honey?” I glanced down at the puzzle piece in my hand and realized I’d been trying to fit the wrong piece into the wrong slot for too long. “Oh, you’re right. I’m sorry. Mommy’s tired.”

“You should go to bed earlier,” Zack replied matter-of-factly, then he leaned over the table and resumed his intense scrutiny of the jigsaw box.

He was right. I did need to sleep earlier. I also needed to stop thinking about what Rocco had told me a couple of days ago, but I couldn’t get it out of my head. It replayed on a loop like an ear worm, consumed my dreams when I tried to sleep, and wove into every song I tried to drown out my thoughts with while cleaning.

My father had died because of the Mafia.

Not directly, and not as a target. He was just an innocent bystander, a man trying to get into his car at night. He’d been gunned down, and for the past few years, I had built a venomous hatred toward the carjacker responsible. Now I knew it was some Mafia goon, and everything settled in my chest had flipped itself around.

Wrong place, wrong time.

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