This is the only concession I’m going to get from this guy, so I turn and leave before I have to see him sitting behind my husband’s desk another second.

  Santino and Armando aren’t back in time for dinner. I join Celia and Loretta in the downstairs cucina to prepare it amidst the stink of the coal furnace. I’d hoped to have my zia with us by now.

  “He’ll be back before you know it,” Celia says, chopping an onion. “He’ll come in hungry and barking orders. I can feel it.”

  “I feel it too,” Loretta adds, rummaging around the industrial refrigerator. “But most of the time, I had a feeling Elio wasn’t coming back, and he did.”

  “What about the time he didn’t?” I ask.

  “Funny thing about that.” She shrugs, closing the fridge door with an armful of cheese. “The future isn’t written on feelings.”

  Celia grumbles, and Loretta pats her cheek and kisses it before dumping the cheese on the counter. Loretta is pissing in Celia’s Cheerios, but she’s right. Intuition predicts nothing about the world—but it can tell you who you are. Feelings are the weather vanes of the heart. Do these instinctual, predictive feelings force your attention to what you hope for? Or what you fear? Which of those winds blows strongest?

  He’ll be fine.

  He’ll come home victorious.

  I try to feel it so strongly it becomes a future fact, but I can’t. The opposite belief doesn’t move the vane either. Inside me, the air is hopelessly still.

  My father is a grocer. My mother works at the store. My sister goes to school. I am a child too young to understand what it means when someone asks me how old I am. I will say quattro until I’m told to say something different.

  If the wind is blowing a certain way, the early morning rumble and whistle of the trains coming into and out of Napoli Centrale wakes me. In the bed next to mine, Rosetta sleeps like a stone right through it all. So I lie in bed and listen until either Mamma comes to wake me or the sun comes up and it’s too bright to pretend.

  Nonna put us to bed last night. Mamma and Papino were out. So I’m happy when my father’s coughing wakes me. He just got back from the hospital a few days ago. He says his lungs aren’t clear yet. I imagine them obscured by a veil of snot and green goop. After a loud, throaty growl from my father, I hear my parents whispering in their room.

  Without the sound of the trains, I’m bored. Rosetta sleeps openmouthed, dead to the world, even when I poke her nose.

  Dragging Raggedy Ann behind me, I pad barefoot across the hall, looking for company. Instead, there’s something strange on the other side of my parents’ open door. Not dangerous or scary but odd. There’s a box on the floor. It’s as tall as my toybox but not as long. It’s dark, but the wood looks bitten and old. There are metal straps belted around it and all over the edges. Is it for me? My birthday isn’t for a long time, but maybe I was so extra good I get a surprise present?

  In her pajamas with her hair down, Mamma is sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the box. The yellow hat she wore to their favorite restaurant—the one where they wheel the menu around on a school blackboard—is on the dresser. Papino’s chair is opposite her. He’s leaning over with his elbows on his knees, still wearing his day clothes and the shadow of a scratchy beard.

  The way they look at each other is frightening and awe-inspiring. I move behind the wall, watching them in the tiny space created by the door hinges.

  “Did you ever wonder,” Mamma says, “what it would be like if this thing didn’t exist? Who you’d be?”

  “I’d be myself.” Dad shrugs.

  “You’d be the same big piece, eh?”

  “Yes. And you’d still be mine.”

  “Is that all I’d be? Do you ever wonder what I’d be? What I could be?”

  He slides off his chair and kneels on the opposite side of the box from her, folding her hands into his. She pulls away her hands, but he grabs them back and kisses each.

  “Do I not take care of you?”

  She yanks her hands back as if he’s insulted her. My father must see this as a challenge. He takes the box by the metal handles on each side and snaps his hands away.

  “Cristo santo.” He shakes his hands and looks at where they touched the handles. “Did you have this by the stove?”

  “Idiot,” Mamma says, standing. “Send this monstrosity away. Send it so far away, we can’t even see it if we want to. It’s evil. Even having it here in the house, I can feel the horns.”

  “My brother will kill for it no matter where it is.”

  Daddy has two sisters in America. Zia Madeline and Zia Donna. They bring us Pop-Tarts and Fritos when they visit from the other side. But a brother? I never saw a brother. Maybe he’s in America too?

  I’m scared now. I don’t want the box, even if it’s a special present or it means I have a secret uncle.

  “If he grows the stones to kill you…” She looks away with a face turned inward on itself—blank from reading the thoughts it’s created as if they’re new.

  I’m sure I’m hidden, but she stops, frozen, and I realize that though I’m definitely behind the wall, Raggedy Ann isn’t.

  “Violetta.” Her voice is stern and commanding. It’s the tone she uses when she’s about to get really mad. “Get in here.”

  I do as I’m told, trying to stay small and far away.

  “I’m thirsty.” This is the first lie I remember telling.

  “Come,” Papino says, holding out his arm for me.

  I don’t move.

  “When your father says something,” Mamma growls. She is so, so, so very mad.

  I’m shaking in terror already, but I can’t go to my father. He’s right near the box, and the box is not a gift. The box is evil. The box has horns. I am overtired and convinced the box will get Mamma and Papino dead.

  There’s no way out.

  I’m between the anvil and the hammer.

  I start wailing, tears falling, breath hitching with sobs as I shake my head no, no, no, no…

  The early morning rumble and whistle of the trains coming into and out of Napoli Centrale is not what wakes me. It’s the silence. No birds. No bugs. No Santino breathing at my side. Again.

  This will be the second day without him. The first went by quietly. During the evening, we heard pops and cracks from the south. I went to the windows facing down into the city, but it’s partially blocked by trees and shrubs.

  “He’s probably grating them into cheese,” Remo says with a shrug of confidence in the king. He puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes before taking it away. “Don’t worry. He has this.”

  “A lighter isn’t going to save him twice.”

  “Tough people are tough. Like you. I didn’t think you’d end up here, but I ain’t surprised you’re good at it.”

  “I wasn’t tough in school. I wasn’t anything.”

  He scoffs. “Sure. You came right into the boys’ gym class and told Mr. Hamlin if he ever called your sister fat again—”

  “I’d show him what a pound of flesh looked like.” I shrug. “That’s not tough. That’s choosing enemies carefully.”

  “And Dina Marchesi? On the basketball court?”

  I touch the back of my head where repeated contact with the pavement left a scar. “She won that fight pretty easily.”

  So many of my brain cells got shattered on the pavement that the memory of the incident is made of the stars in my eyes and Dina’s twisted face bordered by sky.

  “But you kept coming back. She was two years older and bigger and a lot stupider, but you kept coming at her. That’s tough.”

  “I don’t even remember what we were fighting about.”

  “She said your father died like a Castellano wannabe.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “No clue.” He shrugs. “Figured you did. Anyway. Hold tight. Dario’s a big piece in New York. We’re safe up here.”

  “Yeah.”

  Santino’s probably doing the job he does best, and he needs to have faith that I’m holding down the fort while he does it.

  I stay out of the way like I’m told, but I won’t be able to for much longer.

  After dinner, Celia washes the dishes while Loretta and I wipe down the tables.

  “He’s okay,” Loretta says, apropos of nothing.

  “This is a feeling you have? Or real information?”

  “A feeling.”

  “I have the same wish.”

  She’s done nothing wrong, but I can’t stand the presence of her hopes. They’re not real. I need facts, and it’s taking all the energy I have not to jump out of my fucking skin.

  An engine rumbles. It’s not a hum but a high-pitched reer interrupted by put-puts. Not a truck or train. I can’t see where it’s coming from, so I go into the hall and climb the stairs to the cupola. The sky is orange on the west side and navy blue to the east.

  I know why Santino didn’t want me up here. I can see everything in all directions, but I can be seen the same way. With the right gun, I’m a target, and I don’t care. I want to find the source of the noise.

  “Mrs. DiLustro,” Dario calls from the bottom of the cupola stairs.

  Sure, I feel protected from outsiders, but not from him, even with the gun pressing against my armpit.

  He appears from the stairway. I back up. Just then, in the corner of my eye, I see a single line of light coming up the twisting road, and the sight of it becomes one with the sound.

  “It’s a motorcycle,” I say.

  The road leads to one place. Here. Whoever’s driving that bike, they’re on their way to us. Nothing about the way it’s moving is a sign that it is—or isn’t—Santino.

  “It’s a moped,” Dario corrects.

  “Don’t try to get me to go downstairs,” I say, distracted by the light coming up the hill. I’m not afraid, and yet… I have a feeling so strong it’s as good as fact.

  “Good. You finally understand where you belong.”

  He disappears down the stairs.

  “And don’t tell me to stay either.”

  He probably didn’t hear that last sentence, but it doesn’t matter. I was reminding myself that I can do what I want, for any reason I want.

  Santino tried to lock me away so many times and failed. He knows it’s not possible or desirable. That isn’t his order. My husband knows I can’t stand to be sidelined, and at this point, I’m so strung out on constant panic that sitting in the cupola another five minutes would be like a life sentence.

  I run downstairs and onto the lawn. Remo runs across the lawn with three other guys, all armed with rifles. I follow them to the gate where Dario waits. Bright security lights illuminate the area outside the gate, leaving those of us on the inside in darkness.

  “No!” Dario shouts at me. When I pass him, he grabs my arm. His eyes blaze, lighting up the darkening night. “Inside.”

  “He’ll kill you for touching me. And I’ll let him.”

  “If you get hurt,” he says over his shoulder, “he’ll try to kill me anyway.”

  “I won’t let him.”

  He scoffs as if he’s met my husband. Which he has. But he hasn’t met the Santino I know.

  The dim beam of light points upward, cresting the last ridge, and comes straight for us. The man driving it is no more than a silhouette, but he’s too big to be Santino. There doesn’t seem to be anyone behind him. How much of a threat could he be?

  He keens to the left. Rights himself before falling. Comes straight for a bit before swaying left again. This was the struggle to stay in a line on the way up.

  Just before the moped enters the circle of light, Dario makes a sound with his tongue and throat. The men raise their rifles. I hold my breath.

  The moped comes into the light and falls sideways, spilling the bloody driver onto the dirt.

  It’s Armando.

  19

  VIOLETTA

  Dario holds me back. I twist against his grip. I punch him. I make threats I intend to keep. But he won’t let me near Armando.

  “Let me go!”

  “He could be wired.”

  “He could be dying,” I snap.

  With Dario between the gate and me, he lets me push him off.

  “What hap—?” Celia says from behind me, brought out by the commotion.

  “Get the first aid kit and sheets.” She’s already halfway to the house when I shout the last command. “And alcohol. A lot of it.”

  Celia passes Loretta, who follows her to get the supplies. Dario gives up on me and climbs the ladder to the top of the stone guardhouse.

  Armando’s on his back just outside the gate. Vito crouches about six feet away from him while the other guys hang back.

  “You sure, Mando?” Vito takes a bent step closer. “They didn’t plant nothing on you?”

  “Something.” Armando’s booming voice has been reduced to a breathy scratch, and there’s something wrong with his speech.

  “What kind of something?”

  “It won’t hurt you.”

  “Show it to us,” Dario calls from above.

  “No. It’s…” He shakes his head and swallows with difficulty. “Only Violetta.”

  “They using you to get us to open the gate?” Vito asks.

  “Just a message.” He’s talking as if he’s weak and in pain, but even past that, he sounds as if he’s talking with a new mouth.

  “We ain’t gonna let her near you. Not before you’re checked. You know that.”

  “Then check me, stunad.” Armando groans in pain. “Get to it.”

  Vito takes a deep breath and scurries to Armando, opening his jacket. “Oh, Jesus fuck.”

  Dario calls from atop a stone pillar, “Faster!”

  “I’m sorry, man,” Vito says, gingerly patting down Armando’s body.

  I’ve been daring to get closer, but now I’m at the gate, and the angle has changed enough to reveal what upset Vito. Armando’s shirt is gone, and his torso is a mess of blood and tissue. His gut has been cut open.

  Blood loss.

  Shock.

  Infection.

  I know how to stabilize him, but I’m not a doctor. I’m not even a nurse.

  Face covered in nervous sweat, Vito bolts up to standing position. “He’s clear!”

  The men jump down from the posts. The gate opens.

  I rush through. “Armando!”

  He kind of smiles. He’s missing two teeth, which explains the sudden speech impediment. “Good to see you.”

  The men pull him up and bring him inside the gate. It closes. They’re about to drop him, which means they’d have to pick him up again.

  “No!” I shout, and they all freeze. “Inside. The dining room table.”

  They look at each other like a bunch of clowns.

  “Do it,” Dario barks, and they listen, making a disaster of the transport—but these are the men we have, so this is what it is.

  Unencumbered, I run ahead into the dining room. The table has a candleholder in the center surrounded by shoeboxes of mismatched dishes and silverware. I throw off everything but the tablecloth.

  “Here,” I say, tossing aside the last box as Armando’s brought in. They lay him down. “Hello, Armando, how are you doing?”

  Gingerly, I check the damage. The space between his navel and his open waistband is meat. A bullet ripped him open from one side and exited the other. I’m overwhelmed. I don’t know how to fix this.

  “I have a message,” he says. The effort sends a spring of blood upward.

  “I found this.” Celia drops a red bag with a big white cross onto the table, and I wake up. It’s the super deluxe first responder kit, and I have never been so thankful for anything in my life.

  “Sheets and towels.” Loretta drops a pile onto a sideboard.

  “What’s the message?” I open the bag and dump it onto the card table. “Open all the gauze. Don’t touch it. Rip the sheets into strips. Someone, get me the alcohol.”

  The guys do exactly as they’re told.

  “Listen.” Armando coughs. “Violetta.”

  “You shouldn’t talk.”

  “They got him.”

  The sounds of tearing fabric and shuffling feet get far away as I’m sucked into a sensory tunnel where nothing exists outside Armando and me.

  “Who?” I’m not stupid. I know who, and I also know asking this man to say a single unnecessary word is cruel and dangerous…but I don’t know how to believe it without his confirmation.

  “He’s alive, but…” In Armando’s eyes, past the pain and fear, is an apology.

  Why does he look like a man who’s about to console me through his own excruciating pain?

  No. Whatever it is, I don’t want to know.

  The tunnel widens and disappears. I’m in the dining room again.

  “I have to get you stable first. Where’s the fucking disinfectant?!”

  Loretta puts a gallon of Smirnoff on the table. “It’s what I found.”

  “Inside pocket,” Armando says. “Jacket.”

  I unscrew the bottle and hold my hands out to Loretta. They’re shaking. “Pour it.”

  She dumps a stream of vodka on my hands. I rub them together, ignoring Dario, who’s rummaging through Armando’s jacket pocket.

  “They want the crown,” Armando gasps. “Even my sweet Gia.”

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “They ambushed us.”

  “Oh, fuck,” Dario says when he takes out what’s in the bottom of Armando’s pocket.

  “Gia… She’ll trade his life for it.” The wounded man doesn’t have the blood flow to sob for his love, but the sadness and disappointment are unmistakable. “For the crown.”

  “Disinfect, Loretta,” I continue to anyone who’ll listen. “Where’s the gauze?”

  Remo has ripped open a blue paper envelope, and he’s ready to dump the gauze inside into a dish, but he’s stuck in place. I follow his gaze to Dario, who’s holding a ziplock bag. The plastic is cloudy with condensation, as if something warm and wet was put inside before it was sent into the cold night.