Page 55 of Vows in Violence

I'm not sure what has happened until I hear the sound of sobs by the greenhouse door. I turn to see Vivi sitting beside Eduardo’s body, holding his gun. She’s hiccupping as she cries, the gun shaking in her hands.

"I... I had to," she stammers. "She...she was trying to hurt you."

I rush to her and pull her against me, wrapping her in my arms. Someday, I’ll have to give her a talk about the risks inherentshooting at someone in hand-to-hand combat. But not now. Gently, I take the gun from her hands and tuck it into my own jacket.

"I had to," she repeats, her voice breaking.

"I know, baby," I whisper, holding her tighter.

"I didn’t want to," she sobs, her tears soaking through my shirt.

"It’s fine, baby. It’s fine," I soothe, my heart aching for her. The first kill is always the hardest for most people, especially for someone like Vivi, who shouldn’t be on the front line of a war. She’s shaking, and as I keep her tucked against me, I glance around.

The chaos continues. Gunshots and screams fill the air, but I hold Vivi close, shielding her as best as I can. For a moment, it’s just the two of us in our own little world, a small bubble of calm amid the storm. A part of me doesn’t want to move as I tell myself she’s alive, she’s safe. For a moment, when I had heard the gunshots, I had feared the worst. I press my lips against the crown of her head, knowing I would give up this entire world for her.

She is the only light in my darkness.

I love her.

It’s a strange feeling for me. I rise to my feet, keeping Vivi shielded by my body.

"We need to move," I say softly but firmly. "We can’t stay here."

Here in this parking lot, we are sitting ducks, and I won’t allow any of them to win that easily.

Chapter 21

Vivi

It’s a horrible, awful,sunshiny day, and I hate it.

In all the movies, rain drizzles steadily down during funerals. The lighting is somber and muted, a fitting accompaniment for sadness and grief. People hover on the fringes of the cemetery, shivering in dark coats, veils, and black umbrellas. Slow, instrumental music plays in the background, or maybe an old pop song that speaks of loss.

Funeral days are always dull, grim occasions.

The weather today, though, the day we bury Eduardo, seems to mock the event. Birds flit overhead. The sun shines with an unbearable joy that hints at laughter rather than tears. The sunbeams shining down upon us aren’t the hot, stifling ones of July and August…they’re pleasant, instead, warming the chill away rather than causing discomfort. A soft breeze plays alongthe leaves of the trees and caresses the memorial flowers on the graves, then drifts close to play among the strands of my hair.

It’s not funeral weather. It’s not a funeral kind of day, and yet here we are, dressed in black and strolling through a cemetery, burying our dead.

I file alongside Ivan, my gaze cataloging but barely tracking my surroundings. Damon, Lulu, and little Giorgia are on my other side.

I don’t lift my head until the asphalt path beneath my feet morphs into the heavy velvet cover surrounding the casket. I have to look up, then, and find my seat. Rowan sits on the opposite side of the casket, sending me a sad smile across the expanse of white lilies and roses that drape the polished wood.

“Eduardo wasn't a Valachi by blood.” I look up as Damon begins to speak. “He wasn't even Italian. He started off at the bottom of the ranks, just another guy that Don Valachi had hired. The bullet Eduardo took for Lulu more than a year ago was not the first one he had taken for the Valachi family. He had already earned Lorenzo Valachi's trust by taking a bullet for him years earlier, as well.”

A stifled sob rises from the people standing around me, but I don’t look back to see who it is. The sound is enough of a reminder: Eduardo had people who loved him. People who valued him, outside of our immediate family.

Damon continues. “After that incident, Eduardo became part of Lorenzo's personal guard. Eventually, he fulfilled that role forthe entire family, protecting each of Lorenzo’s children as if they were his own.” His gaze travels to Lulu and then lands on me, solemn and heavy. “He loved you as his own, and if there’s one thing I’m absolutely certain of, it’s that he wouldn’t have done anything differently had he known how his life would end.”

My fingers tighten on Ivan’s.

I know.

I took my first shaky toddler steps with Eduardo watching protectively in the background. He wiped my tears and threatened to crack skulls when my first crush broke my heart.

He dropped me off and picked me up from school and events more routinely than my own parents had ever done. Sometimes, I would search the crowd in such an event for a familiar face, and it was him I’d see, rather than any member of my family.

He was my family.

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