Page 128 of The Killer Cupcake
"You breathe now. Good American. Breathe for Minh."
The ropes held as Matteo thrashed, screaming himself raw?—
He surfaced from hell on his hands and knees, apartment floor beneath him. Rain was slashing inside through the window. Shattered. When had he fallen to the ground? Sounds from the street caused him to look up. Something was wrong.
He crawled to the jagged opening of a shattered window. He staggered to a standing position.
Street scene from hell greeted him: José broken on pavement, rain pooling blood around him. Debbie's knees giving way, her scream ascending. And Junior—his boy, just a boy drowning in rain—staring up at the window with naked horror, finger pointing, mouth open in accusation that needed no words.
The past and present collided, leaving only the truth:he'd brought the war home, and now everyone he loved was a casualty.
The beach stretchedempty except for two figures. Matteo had shed his shoes, sitting just beyond where the waves could reach—close enough to taste salt, far enough to stay dry. Junior, beside him, tears falling freely as the story ended.
Matteo had confessed it all. No euphemisms, no excuses. The bottle that became his closest friend after Vietnam was gone. The needles that promised to quiet screaming ghosts withheroin were gone. How many times had Debbie found him broken, cleaned him up, and believed his promises? How José had covered for him, carried him, forgiven him—until that night when forgiveness ran out.
The cruelest legacy wasn't his own suffering but the horror he'd gifted his children. Junior, his sweet baby boy, was watching his father become a monster in a window frame. That image carved into a boy's psyche, shaping every year since.
Matteo reached out tentatively, hand trembling. His son—this man who'd grown up without him—turned and collapsed against him, holding his chest. So many years of absence bridged by shared grief.
Part of him wanted to join Junior's tears, to mourn José properly at last. But prison had taken that from him, too. Fourteen years of concrete and regret had cried him empty. All those nights replaying José's fall, Junior's scream, Debbie's collapse—he'd grieved until grief became just another fact of existence.
"I'm sorry, son. I'm so sorry. I did it. It’s all my fault,” Matteo sighed.
Junior's response was silence, but his presence was answer enough. They sat holding each other while the tide pulled back, taking nothing with it but time.
CHAPTER 48
AFTER THE PAIN
Present.Sandy blinked in the darkness. Nicolas walked around the room with practiced memory, turning on lamps that cast pools of amber light. As her eyes adjusted, she realized she stood in some kind of private gallery. The walls were covered with sketches—beautiful, lifelike, all depicting the same subject at different ages.
A little brown girl.
She frowned. She stepped closer to the nearest drawing. Why had he dragged her down here to look at—? Her breath caught.That dress.A sailor’s dress with a white collar and navy stripes. A dress her mom had made. She wore it in a picture sitting on her grandma Brenda’s lap. It hung in the house in Harlem. She knew that dress.
"When he died, I finally got the key to this room from Uncle Matteo.” Nicolas's voice came from behind her. "The one room in the whole house I could never enter. I expected to find money, guns, the medallion—hell, anything but this."
"What is this?" Sandy's voice came out smaller than intended.
"It's you,” Nicolas said with exasperation.
She turned slowly, taking in the progression. The earliest sketches showed her at three or four—gap-toothed smile, pigtails, eyes that hadn't yet learned wariness—the drawings aged with her, documenting years she couldn't quite grasp. By the time she reached the far wall, the girl in the pictures was nine, maybe ten.
An easel stood apart from the others; this portrait was rendered in color. Sandy approached it with growing dread. The girl—herself—sat alone in a sterile room, staring at a window. But it was the helmet that made her knees weak. White plastic and metal, covering her head like a cage.
"That one caught my attention, too." Nicolas moved beside her. "That's after your accident. When everything went sideways."
"Why am I wearing a helmet?" The question emerged without thought.
"Seizures. Bad ones. The helmet was protection—it kept you from cracking your skull when you fell." He studied the painting. "My mother said they had to take you to specialists in Canada. Experimental treatments."
The word 'seizures' triggered something. A flash—falling, can't breathe, Mom's face above her, scared?—
Sandy shivered. "I don't?—"
"Everyone knows the story of the Ricci brothers and the Freeman girls. Everyone." Nicolas's tone carried bitter amusement. "You're his kid. He and Aunt Kathy went to war over you. I knew it the first time I saw you two together, the way you held his hand like it was the most natural thing in the world." His voice dropped. "What I didn't know until a few years ago is I'm not his son. Somehow missed that little detail growing up."
"I'm sorry, but these drawings don't prove anything." Sandy forced steadiness into her voice. "My mother and Carmelo were close, yes. But I knew my father. Ely Brown. This is just... art."
