Page 283 of John + Siena: The Complete Duet

“Don’t. Okay? Just don’t. Focus on all the good because you are going to have more than enough bad moments in your life to focus on at a later date. Right now, just focus on all the good you remember.”

Her sister nodded. “Okay.”

“Back to bread?”

Both girls agreed.

Siena made quick work of breaking the dough into three chunks. She passed a piece to Greta and Giulia before pushing the bowl of flour over, too.

“Put a little on your hands, but not too much,” she said. “Keeps it from sticking. We’ll knead it a bit more, and then put them in bowls to rise for thirty minutes to an hour.”

“Okay,” the girls echoed.

Siena continued chatting with her half-sisters while they worked just to keep them occupied in a verbal way. At least then, she hoped their attention would not go back to darker places in their thoughts.

Or … that was her hope.

In the background of their work, the television played through breaking news on the major news network Siena liked to keep on daily. The news was always depressing, but in some ways, it also reminded her that her life could be a hell of a lot worse in ways.

Unfortunately, she also kept it on for another reason. Her family—and John’s, at times—seemed to be the focus of New York related news a lot lately. Organized crime was making a comeback; not that it ever went away, the idiots. The streets were bloodier than ever between the crime families, and rivaled the Chicago War from two decades earlier.

Attention was never good in their life.

It hindered business.

Siena slowed in her work as a shot of a street came into view on the television.

“Some sort of explosive device was detonated on …”

Siena blinked at the reporter’s words. Not because of what the woman said, but because of what she saw on the television. She recognized the street they were showing—a Brooklyn street full of small businesses. Mostly restaurants, but a few other vendors, too.

And then the shot changed to a building. Windows blown out, and a door ripped off the hinges. The front charred from fire, and smoke still billowing out from the broken, gaping holes of the business.

Explosive device.

“A restaurant that was undergoing renovations and owned by—”

“Darren,” Siena said quietly.

Her sisters looked to her, and then back to the television screen. They, too, stopped in their work to take in what they were seeing on the news.

The reporter continued talking. “Sources tell us prior to the incident, they had witnessed several men entering the restaurant at different times. The police have, so far, suggested it looked to be a meeting of sorts between the Calabrese and Marcello crime families. As you know, Gordon and Marney, there has been quite a bit of news about those families lately.”

The shot switched back to the anchors at the station. A man and a woman with their makeup pressed with powder, and their hair perfectly coifed back with not a strand out of place. Siena always thought they looked sort of like dolls in a way.

Fake, and unrealistic.

Unmoving, and unfeeling.

“We have reports of deaths on the scene, too, don’t we?” the woman asked.

“At least two.”

Siena held her breath.

She wondered …

She feared …