Page 36 of Sapphires and Snakes
“I should have never let your mother go ahead with it.” His face softens, and it reminds me of when I was a child, when he’d comfort me after a skinned knee or bad cut.
But that’s not enough for me. Soft eyes and non-apologies won’t close the distance between us. Too much has happened over the last two months. I don’t allow a single muscle to shift on my face, in my posture. “Again, I ask, which part?”
And that softness disappears.
His jaw ticks. Maybe he thinks I’m being obstinate or that I’m a spoiled-rotten princess of his own making. Either way, hurt lances my heart. Did he even mean those words, that small concession? Or is he manipulating me again?
I release a resigned sigh, and with it, the hope that a genuine, honest apology might fall from his lips. “Why are you here, Father?”
“Come back home, Zarina.” He tries to soften his face again, but I can’t read it as anything other than a mask. His plea ringsempty to me, a script rehearsed and performed without any emotional connection to the character.
He throws out a hand. “I can’t believe I’m about to eat Thanksgiving dinner without your pie?—”
“Nona’s pie,” I correct.
He ignores me. He always ignores me. “I can’t believe you’re a month away from marrying that?—”
“Watch it.” My voice is a low growl that rips out of my throat. “I’m not in a very merciful mood.”
“Woman.” He sidesteps my wrath just barely. “She’s a gangster, for Christ’s sake.”
“Do you have a point that you’ll be getting to? Or are you just here to insult me and my fiancée? Because I’m not hearing the word sorry, nor any accountability for the mess we’re all in, nor any solutions to that mess, Father. So, if you’re only here to waste my time, I’d rather end this earlier than later. Dinner’s waiting.”
Dangerous cold washes over him. The same look I remember seeing before he ordered a snitch’s tongue carved out of his mouth and delivered to the police. It should inspire fear in me, but all I feel is a deep well of disappointment that threatens to swallow me.
“This mess is not my fault. Your mother—” He cuts himself off.
I force my expression to remain bland, but internally I’m frowning. Growing up, I watched the multitude of times Father made the wrong decision, invested in the wrong business, struck poor deals that barely benefitted the family. Always, Mother had to swoop in to fix it or offer better terms. And then Father would take her suggestion, claiming it as his own. Over and over again.
What are they hiding?
Father ventures a step forward, shortening the distance between us but not closing it. He glances to the door I walkedthrough, where Tamayo and Darius wait, and back to me. “Tamayo isn’t trustworthy, Zarina.”
The well of disappointment rises further. I shake my head. “Waste of my time.”
“She has a past, too,” he pushes. I blink at him, indifferent. He steps closer again, each step tantamount to begging me to listen. “Have you ever asked her how she became a boss at age, what—twenty-six?”
I don’t know when she became boss, or how. It never occurred to me that it might be anything more than a violent crawl over dead bodies. The usual ascent. And I’m not sure what it matters to our current predicament.
Father takes my silence for what it is—a denial. “Who did she steal from to rise so high, so quickly?”
“God, Father, you might as well be some old white dude complaining about immigrants stealing our jobs.”
He tilts his head. “Is that not what she is?”
And that cracks my facade more than anything else. I narrow my eyes, allowing the full force of my unimpressed resentment to flood my body. “Not any more than you.”
Father steps backward like I slapped him. He studies me, head to toe, and hardens the more hesees. His lips pull into a grimace. “She was a Gallo once.”
“What?” I half-scoff, half-frown at him.
“Before she was a gangster, Andrea Tamayo was a Gallo.”
“That’s not possible,” I murmur. But I glance to the photos behind him, to the one of Darius and Tamayo on the steps, mean-mugging the camera. It’s the same one Rita showed me in her personal album the first time I visited. Taken months after Tamayo left for a year and came back barely breathing.
“Ask her. See if she tells you the truth.”
I whip my gaze back to him, hot anger burning under my skin. “Like you tell me the truth?”
