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I nodded, the ringing in my ears fading.
His hands and gaze ran down my body, checking anyway, but I didn’t feel it because all I saw was the drip, drip, drip of red. Anguish tore into my chest, cutting my consciousness down to only emotion. I pushed Nico’s hands away.
“Get off me!”
“Stop.” He gripped my wrists. “Everyone’s all right.”
I blinked numbly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He ran a thumb across my cheek. “Breathe.”
I inhaled a steady breath, and it was then that I heard their voices. They were all checking in, and I hadn’t been able to hear it over the horror of that dripping blood.
Benito was the one bleeding. He groaned, “Son of a bitch,” while holding his arm. “The same fucking arm.”
Papà spit Italian over the phone and Mamma was crying. Adriana sat up, surrounded by broken glass and disorder. Just as sirens sounded in the distance, the restaurant fell into silence, as though the shift in the air touched everyone’s skin.
And then my sister stared ahead and muttered two little words that would change both of our lives forever.
“I’m pregnant.”
“The die is cast.”
—Julius Caesar
SOMETIMES THERE’S NOTHING TO SAY.
Sometimes words will only clutter a space already filled with an unpleasant truth.
I sat next to my sister on the couch while we both numbly watched an episode of The Office.
The funny moments, all the “That’s what she saids” passed without even a smile.
My mamma had taken a bottle of wine and a Xanax up to her room, and she hadn’t made an appearance below stairs in hours.
After we gave our vague statements to the police—we’d been schooled on how to talk to cops at age four—we came here and hadn’t left the living room since. Our Uncle Marco and Dominic, his son, were both in the house, but since the incident at Francesco’s, the rest of the males in the family had been absent.
Red.
It was now dripping somewhere other than my uncle’s restaurant.
And I felt no remorse about it, just numb.
It was two a.m. when they decided to show up. The light in the living room flicked on, and the sound of steps and voices filled the foyer. Weight pressed down on my chest.
Papà came around the couch. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and his suit jacket was off, which he was never seen without, even on sweltering days like today. Not a good sign. I swallowed when I noticed the blood splattered against his white dress shirt.
Marco, Dominic, Manuel, Tony, Benito—who must have discharged himself from the hospital—Luca, and finally Nicolas filled the room. My gaze followed Nico, but he didn’t give me a glance. He still wore the same outfit from lunch, and his expression was unreadable as he leaned against the TV stand.
His fiancée had been impregnated by another man. Any Made Man would take that as a personal and grave insult, but as he finally flicked a thoughtful gaze to me, for some reason I wondered if that was even what was on his mind.
Eight men stared at my sister. They were going to try to intimidate the name right out of her.
“Phone,” Papà barked.
Adriana sat cross-legged on the couch in the white dress she’d worn to lunch, while I’d changed into shorts and a tee. She didn’t even look at our papà or acknowledge his demand. That had him grinding his teeth.
I grabbed her phone that sat on the couch between us, stood, and handed it to my papà. We’d already deleted every speck of Ryan’s existence from it.
