Page 12 of Where Quiet Hearts Scream
But there was one insight that stunned me with its accuracy. She suggested I might have lived two lives.
You could slice a knife through the middle of my timeline and the two halves wouldn’t recognize each other. The first half was about survival—making it through the night without a blade in my temple or barrel in my mouth. The second is about ruling everyone and everything that once upon a time held said blade and barrel. My dead father’s men, the government, the fucking South Boston gangs.
The first lifeishistory. The second is gonnamakehistory.
I settle back in my seat and as I replay the conversation, my chest begins to heat. It’s a liquid sensation that flows through my veins into the muscle tissue lining my arms and abdomen. She mentioned people coming into my life who’lltransformme. Love and obsession, endings, beginnings. I know of at least one ending—the man who stood by my father’s side as he turned an eight-year-old boy into a killing machine. And I know of at least one beginning—a renewed relationship with a long-lost brother. And hopefully a second—an alliance with New York’s ruling mafia family.
That’s why I’m here, after all. I’ve taken Providence already, keeping my name and face out of the action. I don’t want Benito, my brother, to know I’m so close. Not until I’m ready to show my hand, and I won’t be ready until I’m confident I know everything I need toknow about the Di Santo’s. And when I do, I will make it known what I want.
I want Boston.
I want to exterminate the gangs that have ruled the south of the city for too long. I want to build wealth there, create a legacy that outlives me. I want to show everyone who once had a connection to my father thatIrule it now. And I want my brother to rule it with me.
Of course, there’s a chance he won’t want that. There’s a chance he might be bitter about the fact I haven’t shown my face in a decade. I can explain that the reason I let him believe I was dead for so long was to fool my father’s connections so I can annihilate them when they least expect it. He might choose to hate me anyway.
Either way, Serafina was right in saying something’s about to change. I know it is, becauseI’mthe catalyst.
I breathe steadily, impressed at her ability to interpret my chart with such accuracy, and warmed at the familiarity. Her commentary echoed the one I heard all those years ago. But hearing Serafina’s conclusions, the ones she’d drawn using her own knowledge, understanding and intuition, lit me up.
Her interpretation was spot on.
And she sees me for who I really am. But I could tell, through her stuttered words and shy glances, she doesn’t want to admit how closely she just grazed the truth.
I finish my water and go to stand, but something in the hall outside the restaurant catches my eyes andstiffens my shoulders once again. I crane my neck and narrow my focus. It can’t be. Not again.
A thin man dressed in a bad suit, with a cigarette hanging from his lips, walks past the restaurant. I step to the side for a closer look but he’s disappeared around the corner. My heart pounds against my ribcage, at first with something that feels like terror, but that’s just the child in me. I’m not that child anymore.
Striding quickly, I make my way out to the hall, my gaze searching for the man. It can’t be him. It’s not possible. My father was killed in a gang shoot-out eight years ago in the Bronx. As far as I know, he was buried beneath a parking lot, no headstone to his name. This thought alone lifts me as I quicken my gait. I push past a couple moving too slowly and follow the man’s footsteps through the lobby and out of the main exit.
In the blinding glare of sunlight, I stop short.
The man is standing a few feet from the exit talking to the valet. It’s nothim. Emotions flood out of me. Hatred, bitterness, rage…vengeance.
Cool, hard emotions with nothing to take them out on.
Because my father is fucking dead.
Six feet under, where he belongs.
Serafina
I shift awkwardly in front of the mirror, trying to tug the bodice of the dusky pink dress a little higher without making it obvious. My phone is propped against a bottle of perfume on the vanity, and my sister’s face fills the screen—grinning, radiant, and eager as ever.
“Turn around! I want to see the back!” she says in a sing-song voice, clapping her hands together.
I roll my eyes but oblige her, turning slowly, my arms stiff at my sides. “Are yousureyou want me to wear this one? I’m really not sure I have the right figure for it. Maybe Tess or Bambi would be better—they’re both slim.”
“Oh, stop. Youareslim. You just have a little shape, that’s all. It hugs yourcurves in all the right places.”
“That’s exactly the problem,” I mutter, glancing at my rounded hips. “I feel like I should be on the cover ofBridesmaid Monthly: The Body Issue.”
She laughs with a lightness that only seems to have emerged since she met Cristiano. “Well, the groomsmen will love it.”
I narrow my eyes at the screen. “Is that some twisted matchmaking attempt? You know I amnotinterested in becoming a mafia wife. No offense.”
Her face falls. In recent weeks it’s become a bit taboo in our family to use the word ‘mafia.’ No one mentions it anymore. It’s been reframed as ‘business.’ I guess that’s what comes of joining the ‘firm.’
No one says anything about how Trilby’s fiancé’s last name comes up in newspapers more often than weather reports. But she’s happy. The kind of happy that makes her cheeks glow and her eyes flash like she’s found the sun and has decided to marry it, even if it scorches her a little.
