Page 7 of Irish Brute
It’s hours before I fall asleep. I use my phone to send a couple dozen messages, instructions for my men, who already know how to keep my empire running when I’m not breathing down their necks. I send a couple of messages to my staff at Kelly Construction, for good measure.
I leaf through the books on her nightstand, a mix of gritty thrillers and mysteries that look like they’d give most people nightmares. I take a quick survey of her closet, her dresser, her nightstand. A man should know what’s in the room where he sleeps.
There’s a gun safe in the back of the closet, a small one, for some sort of handgun. She’s got a dozen designer suits to match the one she ruined in the snow today, jeans on hangers, and casual tops to match. All of it is black or white or gray, like I’ve stepped into an old-time movie.
She folds her panties around her bras, keeping matching sets together. Black and white there too, without a scrap of lace.
She’s got a handful of mass cards shoved beneath her jewelry, and a pewter medal devoted to Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes. There’s a chain of foil-wrapped johnnies at the back of the nightstand drawer, along with a bottle of lube and a canister of pepper spray.
When I turn out the light, I wonder if she’s staring at the ceiling in the living room. I think about opening the bedroom door, giving her a chance to change her mind, but she didn’t sound like she had any doubts when she sent me back here.
Her bed smells clean, like wind over ice. I bury my face in the pillow and listen to the howling storm and wait for morning, pretending to be a better man than I am.
3
SAMANTHA
Igive up pretending to sleep and sit on the couch, hugging my pillow. It’s well after midnight, and the storm outside is finally letting up. At least the snow has stopped; the wind continues to blow, buffeting the double-pane windows in strong blasts that make my fingers clench.
He killed her.
He actually fucking killed her.
Every time I close my eyes, I see Eliza’s face—her dark curls, her hot-chocolate eyes, her strong nose that could have been the model for any statue of Caesar through the ages.
Elisabetta and Giorgia and Gianni and me—four cousins crowded into the Canna house on Gateshead Court. Four children growing up amid the casual cruelty of Philadelphia’s Mafia crime.
Eliza’s father, my uncle, was one of Don Antonio’s favorite capos. From the moment Eliza took her First Communion, she knew she was promised to the Mafia boss.
Don Antonio spoiled her. Sent her to Sacred Heart Academy. Paid for piano lessons, and when Eliza hated those, for voice lessons, and painting lessons too. He bought her an Arabian gelding and hired someone to teach her to ride.
I was jealous, but I knew not to argue. I was a ten-year-old orphan, taken in by my aunt and uncle. I still had nightmares about my parents’ car exploding, blowing out all the windows of our home, even mine on the second floor.
To this day, I have scars from the glass—a tangle ghosting my hairline, on my right temple. I’ll never forget waving to my parents as they headed to the opera. My mother looked back for one last air-kiss as my father started the engine.
Even when I was ten, I heard the whispers. My father was a rat. My mother was a whore. They got what was coming to them. They knew the rules.
Sitting on my couch now, I close my eyes and Eliza is laughing the way she did when we were little girls, hunting for Easter baskets on a chilly spring morning.
She’s crying with me, for me, the night my parents died.
She’s stern with me, earnest, helping me to flee That Night.
She’s begging, pleading, praying for Don Antonio to spare her life.
He shot his way into the room where she was hiding. Was the muzzle of his gun still hot when he shoved it into her body? How fast did she die? How long did her neurons fire in unimaginable pain?
I press my thighs together and bury my face in my pillow and try not to think anymore.
The knocking wakes me—urgent and loud. I scramble for the pepper spray in my nightstand drawer before I realize I’m sprawled on my couch. The sun streaming through my living room windows is blinding, the sky a brilliant, knife-like blue.
The banging turns steady—solid, determined blows like someone is taking a battering ram to my front door. My pulse rattles my eardrums as I peer through the fisheye peephole.
Fuck.
I don’t recognize the man slamming his shoulder against my door. I don’t know the two guys behind him either, the ones with their hands suggestively reaching across their bodies, to shoulder holsters beneath their coats.
But I know their type.
