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Two
Death or distance soon consumes them: wind
What most I may eye after, be in at the end
I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.
—Gerard Manley Hopkins,
from “The Lantern out of Doors”
The light from the streetlamp barely touched Lorenzo Capecce’s heels as he stood on the stoop of the Mancari house. He pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. Before him stood the door with its familiar stained-glass window, friendly colors glowing. Behind it waited people desperate for good news—Mama Rosa, Little G, Sabina.
Sabina.
An hour ago, he’d stood in front of prison bars with the Mancari patriarch waiting on the other side. Lorenzo had gripped the handle of his leather attaché case and just stared at Manny for a long moment—his godfather. Father not only loved this man like a brother despite no shared blood but respected him enough to treat him as a patriarch, maybe even a king. Manny not only ruled the Mancaris, but the Capecces too. Every aspect of Lorenzo’s life had been dictated by this man. He loved him—how could he not? Manny’s care for the family couldn’t be faulted. He owed him everything.
But this.
Lorenzo had only ever demanded one thing. One…blasted…thing. Before he accepted a dime from Manny to go to college or law school, he’d stood in this very house, in the study full of masculine woods and leathers, and made himself stand tall. He’d clenched his hands until they stopped shaking, swallowed back the cough that wanted to rise against the cigar smoke circling the room. He had summoned every last bit of his courage to say, “I want to be a lawyer, not a priest. But I won’t work for you, Papa Manny. I need you to know that—I need to know you’d never ask me to. I want out.”
To this day, he could still remember the surprise on Manny’s face, and the matching expression in his own father’s eyes. They’d all assumed for so many years that he felt a call to priesthood just because he took seriously the lessons of their Faith. They’d talked about it, made plans, made connections for him, never bothering to ask if it was what he truly wanted. They’d encouraged him to learn from his cousin Teo, who had taken his vows and was now Brother Judah.
It had only taken one word to explain why the priesthood wasn’t his calling. Sabina.
But his interest in the law had taken the older men aback. He’d watched the thoughts roll through both sets of eyes—confusion, then calculation, then pleasure. A lawyer, he could see them thinking. That could be handy.
But he would not be used like that. He would sooner choose another profession, and he’d made that clear from the start. Manny had sworn—sworn—that he would never call on him. Yet there he’d stood, opposite his imprisoned godfather, named as his official attorney on the record books. He hadn’t been able to work a single word past the fury in his throat.
Manny had sighed and shaken his head. “I told her not to call you.”
That did nothing to ease his mind. Because she had called. Sabina’s voice had filled the phone line and, for one bright moment, lit joy in his heart. One moment, before she sobbed out what had happened to her father and asked him to help. He couldn’t refuse. He’d always known he wouldn’t be able to, if they asked. That’s why he’d made them promise to keep him out of it. But here they were.
And here he was, on the front stoop of the house he knew as well as his own, his second family waiting for him to come and bring them hope. They would expect him to say Manny would be out of prison within days, that the charges couldn’t stick, that there would be no trial. He couldn’t make those promises.
He’d gone through years of law school, yes, but that didn’t give him the ability to rewrite facts. Manny was guilty of all they accused him of and more. How much more, Lorenzo had never wanted to know—but the facts were against him.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Why couldn’t he have been born into a different family? Or rather, why couldn’t his family have lived a different sort of life? One where a Mafia boss wasn’t his godfather, where his father wasn’t Manny’s best friend and lieutenant, where he didn’t have to choose between his blood and his convictions?
With a long sigh, Lorenzo rubbed his eyes and finally lifted a hand to the door. He hadn’t even finished knocking before the knob turned and the door opened under his fist. Lorenzo smiled down at the teenager standing in the opening. “Hey, G.”
Giorgio Jr. dug up a small grin. He was turning into a handsome boy at thirteen, though still gangly and awkward. Unfortunately, if Manny went to prison, Lorenzo suspected Little G would think he had to become the man of the family—a role for which he was still far too young. “Hey, Enzo. Have you talked to Papa?”
Lorenzo nodded and stepped inside, casting his gaze around for Sabina and Mama Rosa. He heard their voices in the parlor directly to his right, where a fire crackled behind its grate despite the warm June day. He and G turned into the room. The women’s conversation halted.
When he’d last seen Mama Rosa two weeks before, she had looked young and fresh and as beautiful as ever with her dark hair framing her unlined face. She had aged twenty years in those two weeks—probably in the last two hours. Shadows circled her eyes, her skin had lost its usual glow, and wrinkles he’d barely noticed before now looked as deep as the underworld. She stood when she saw him, eyes pleading and hand outstretched. “Enzo. Tell me he’s being released.”
Lorenzo went over and gripped her hand, kissed her on the cheek. His apology came out with a sigh. “Mi dispiaci, Mama Rosa. Not yet. I’m doing all I can, but it’s going to take more than an hour to get him out of this one. O’Reilly did his homework.”
Mama Rosa’s brows knit together. “O’Reilly?”
“Roman O’Reilly—the Prohibition agent who’s been working undercover.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw Sabina wince and turn her face toward the fire. Lorenzo tapped his fingers against his leg. There was more going on than he could see, that much had become clear when he met with O’Reilly. He wasn’t sure exactly how the man had gotten so deep into the Mancari family, but he had. Lorenzo recognized him, so Sabina had to have known him. She would feel the betrayal just as her father did.
Even in her distress, she was beautiful. So very beautiful. The fire lit her dark bobbed waves with red and cast a glow on her already-golden skin. He had made a work of memorizing her profile, but he never tired of gazing upon the perfect slope of her nose, the purse of her lips, the angle of her jaw. Her beauty always took his breath away, even though he tried not to dwell on it, lest it lead him into trouble—or worse, made Sabina think he only loved her because she was gorgeous.
He moved to the sofa where she sat, took the seat beside her, and reached for her hand. That innocent touch was enough to make emotion pound to life inside him, which was why he didn’t allow himself even that much contact very often. “How are you holding up, Bean? I heard O’Reilly used you as a hostage.”
