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A WARNING
1902—Little Naples Cafe
By the time Viola made her way from Little Africa over to the Bowery, night had long since fallen. Her brother’s place, the Little Naples Cafe, looked oddly quiet. When Paolo had been running things, raucous noise would have spilled out through the open windows and doors late into the night. But Paul was sitting in the Tombs waiting for a trial, and the lights of the Little Naples had remained low, its doors closed to those who weren’t Five Pointers ever since.
With Paul still in prison, Johnny the Fox had stepped effortlessly into her brother’s position as head of the Five Pointers. But her brother had made his bed, and now he could lie in it as far as Viola was concerned.
But Torrio had made a mistake. By aligning himself with Nibsy Lorcan, he’d chosen his side in the ever-churning battleground that was the Bowery. And by sending the Five Pointers after Cela? He’d made himself her enemy as well. If any harm at all came to Cela Johnson, Viola would make him regret it.
She watched a little longer as Razor Riley and another man scurried toward the Little Naples like the rats they were and disappeared inside. It didn’t worry her none that they were there. Better to make it clear to all of them at once that she was done with their games.
Gathering herself, she crossed the street and gave the door a vicious kick. A knife was already in her hand as she stepped into the room, and without hesitation, she let it fly at the first of the Five Pointers dumb enough to charge her, pinning him to the wall through the meaty part of his arm. Then she let her affinity unfurl, felt the beating of every heart in the sparsely filled space, and brought them all down. Pulling at her affinity, she slowed their hearts until they fell unconscious, one by one, until it was only Torrio staring at her with undisguised hatred from across the room.
He stood to attack, but she sent a pulse of her magic through his blood until he too stumbled and fell back into his seat, clutching at his chest.
“Where is she?” Viola demanded as she stalked across the room. “Where have you taken her?”
“Who?” Torrio gasped, grimacing against the hold Viola had on him.
“Cela Johnson.” She took a step forward, increasing the pressure slightly until Torrio’s eyes widened. “I know you have her. You can tell me where you’ve taken her, or we can finish this now.”
“I don’t have the girl,” he told her.
“Lies.” She tightened her hold on his blood, not caring that his lips were turning blue. “I know you have her. And I do not care if I have to kill every one of your men before you give her up.”
“I told you, I don’t have her,” Torrio said, his eyes desperate and his hands still grasping his chest as he spoke through gritted teeth.
“You were watching her for Nibsy Lorcan.”
“I was,” Torrio agreed. “But these two idiots let her slip away.” He nodded toward Razor and another man.
Viola eased her grasp on Razor Riley’s heartbeat until he groaned. She kicked his leg as she drew another knife from her skirts and commanded him to get up. Razor staggered to a sitting position and then to his feet slowly, leaning on the table for support.
“Where is Cela Johnson?” she demanded.
Razor glared at her, but he didn’t speak, so she pushed more of her affinity into Torrio.
“Tell her,” Torrio growled, his voice rough with the strain of what she was doing to him.
“Gone,” Razor said, hatred burning in his eyes. “I told Lorcan already, someone else got to her first.”
“I don’t believe you,” she told them. She couldn’t believe them. Because Cela had to be with them. They had to know where she was. The alternative was unthinkable. “If you can’t tell me the truth, you’re useless to me.”
Torrio groaned as she tightened her hold on him, but he sneered up at her. His face was colored with the same hatred as Razor’s. The same disgust that her own brother often turned on her. “You can’t kill me.”
She pulled his blood slower, pressed at his heartbeat. “Certo?”
He gave her a leering smile. “You won’t. Not if you ever want to see your mother again.”
Viola’s hold on her affinity slipped a little as the meaning of his words hit her, and she heard another moan come from the men who’d fallen. She had not thought of her mother in the weeks after the Flatiron Building. Pasqualina Vaccarelli had made it quite clear that she preferred her son and would side with him no matter what he had done. But Viola had not considered what that might mean with Paolo in jail. She’d simply assumed that with Paolo in prison, her mother would remain in her apartment close to the Italian community on Mulberry Street and that her mother’s life would go on as always, the daily cycle of mass and market and martyrdom that characterized the lives of so many women in the Bowery.
She’d been shortsighted not to consider that Torrio would see their mother as a pawn in his play for power. She should have expected that he would take their mother into his keeping. Not to protect Pasqualina, though that’s how he would make it appear. But as insurance. In case Paolo was freed from the Tombs and in case Viola herself had any thoughts to meddle with his affairs. Because Torrio knew that neither of them would put Pasqualina’s life in danger.
“Paolo would gut you if you laid a single finger on her,” Viola said.
“Your brother’s currently indisposed,” Torrio told her. “And if you kill me—if you touch any one of my men, nothing will protect her from what I can do.”
Her heart was pounding, and panic was churning through her as Torrio pushed himself up to his feet, struggling against the power of her affinity. “I told you: I don’t know where Cela Johnson is, and frankly, I’m finished taking orders from maggots.”
