Page 72 of The Enforcer

29Alfonso

My motheronce told me everything I touch turns to ashes.

I remember that day like it was yesterday. Of course, I remember the way her face crumpled and the tears that ran down her cheeks when she realized what she said. I know she regretted it, but I still remember those words.

I remember how I felt when I heard them; how they answered some question about who I was that had been hiding deep inside me. I hadn’t understood who I was before my mother told me, and after that, I hadn’t been able to think of myself in any other way. So, of course, I hear her voice when I see Andrea Fanulli prowling around the beach.

I recognize him from the amateur boxing league that I sometimes visit. I told Giulio I went to scout new talent, but now I know it’s because I needed the hit. Literally. I needed the shot of adrenaline from a fist hitting my jaw and making my teeth rattle. I needed the sting of split skin and bone against bone and blood flowing into my eyes.

Andrea always fought like poverty was biting at his heels, and he has that hungry look in his eyes when I see him today as if when he finds me, he’s going to swallow me whole. Knowing him, I think he’ll try.

He won’t succeed, but that’s not the point. I don’t want him coming at me while I have Zoe by my side.

“Stay here,” I tell her.

I step into the Russos’ grocery, a place where I practically grew up, and see Giovanni. “Prestami il tuo scooter,” I bark at him.

“Hey,” Zoe calls to me. “Be nice.”

I roll my eyes and turn back to Giovanni. “Per favore,” I say and then glance over my shoulder at her.

She nods.

Giovanni hands his keys over the counter. “È tua moglie?”

“Stai zitto,” I hiss and stomp back to Zoe.

We have to walk up the road to a bank of scooters parked along the side of the road. Giovanni’s scooter is all black with red rims. I was there when he painted them.

I throw my leg over the bike and then turn to Zoe, nodding to the backseat. She’s clutching our duffel bag to her chest, looking at me with wide eyes. “What’s happening?” she asks in a fluttering wisp of a voice that makes my heart and dick throb.

“Whoever is coming for Salvo has found us. Let me get you somewhere safe.” I see her arms tighten around the bag. She looks left and right, her eyes wide with fear. “Solarità, per favore. Please.”

She looks at me with big, vulnerable, wet eyes. “Okay.” And then she climbs onto Giovanni’s scooter, the bag pressed between her front and my back. Her arms are wrapped around me. “Okay,” she whispers against my neck.

“Okay.”

“It’s not better on the way down. I cannot believe this.”

Zoe complains every step of the way to my parents’ home. I would complain right back at her, but I’m preoccupied, and I use her whining just to confirm that she is alright.

The relief I feel when we enter the family garden is too much to even enumerate.

“Zoe, mi amore. Bentornate. Bentornate.”

“Welcome,” I tell her.

“Yeah, I figured,” she says, just before my mother pulls her down into a hug.

I want to stay here. In a perfect world, I could stay in this space where my mother is happy that I’ve returned home but doesn’t feel the need to ask me more than a question or two. But I do not live in a perfect world. I live in a world where Zoe is still grasping at the bag of our clothes. Where my mother is murmuring to her in an Italian that Zoe cannot understand that everything will be alright, even though she doesn’t know that for certain. I exist in a world where Ugo is watching me with hard eyes. This is a world where I have to leave Zoe without any assurances that I’ll return. That would be cruel.

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