Page 204 of Made in Love and Blood

“This changes nothing,” Vanna replied, “Carmen is still mine.”

“We know.”

“And I love her, still,” the woman added in a whisper. “Everyday.”

She didn’t mean Carmen that time, but they all knew how much Vanna loved that little girl, too. Enough that she fucked a monster to sleep every night and then crawled into her daughter’s bed to stay until daylight, so she always knew where both were, every hour of each day.

Those deals with the devil? They never stopped paying.

“She knows,” Salvatore returned eventually.

Vanna swallowed thickly, eyeing the body on the floor and then the macabre painting Nico had made throughout the hallway. “And my husband...?”

“Don’t go in there, okay?”

She nodded once.

“You should pack a bag,” Salvatore repeated. “Now.”

“Where should I go?” she asked.

“Wherever you want.”

Once the woman left, Matty returned shortly after. He stood in the doorway long enough for Salvatore to listen to him explain that the house had cleared of guests, the remaining staff from the party had started cleaning up and would also leave soon, and no one seemed to be any wiser to the situation upstairs.

His original plan would have worked.

This was fine, too.

Salvatore lifted the gun again, pointing it at Matty.

The enforcer blinked, hand twitching like it might reach for the piece at his side. Only then did Nico seem to realize something else had started happening around him.

“Sal, don’t,” Nico mumbled. “He helped—”

“If he’ll do it to his boss, he would do it to me.”

He pulled the trigger for a third time.

Nico promptly vomited.

Salvatore peeled open Nico’s hand to find a deep scratch heavily bleeding. Probably from the struggle. “I should cut your palm, and make you swear on a saint like your father did to me. That’s how you make a man who deserves it.”

“Life made me,” Nico whispered brokenly.

“Maybe life played a part,” Salvatore agreed, but then he told Nico the same thing Giorgio did him all those years ago. “But I own you now, kid. You’re mine.”

26. — birds fly...

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Staten Island, New York

Frankie, Private Airport

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Frankie worked on chewing the edges of her sharpened red fingernails as Larkin maneuvered the four-door Ram pick-up truck down a desolate stretch of road she didn’t recognize in the darkness. Larkin wasn’t like everybody else. He wouldn’t tell her to stop, and if he even noticed her anxiety playing out in the rear passenger bench seat, he didn’t make her aware.