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Stefano called me an idiot and said I got what I deserved for trying to push Kessa toward me when I could have just asked her out. Raniero thought it was a keen bit of manipulation. Mateo volunteered to track the guys down and used a handful of members of the Valenti family and a couple of guys from the Kings Of Carnage MC. Between the half dozen or so men he had working the case, it still took two weeks to find the bastards that threatened Kessa and shot me.
“I don’t know if we can kill one of these guys,” Mateo adds after a few moments of silence. “He’s related to Mayhem from the KOC. He’s, like, a second cousin or some shit. That’s how they were able to find him so quick.”
I clench my jaw and feel a bolt of pain in the side of my face. “If it’s the one that shot me, Mat, I swear to God.”
Mateo is quick to reassure me that it’s the one I had no actual contact with. “He was sort of doing what he was supposed to,” he says with a hint of ambivalence in his tone. “I guess he fucked with a few of the other people at the store. Basically, he was kicking dudes in the ribs and asking ladies to lift their skirts or something, but he didn’t do anything too objectionable.”
I don’t like that he was harassing women, but I guess he could have done worse. He could have been like the piece of scum that wanted to get handsy with Kessa. “Alright. If someone’s gotta live, it can be him. But I’m personally beating the shit out of the guy that shot me. I don’t care if he’s related to God. He’s getting his ass beat, and there’s no stopping that.”
I’m going to curb-stomp the shit out of him. I don’t care if he spends the rest of his life eating through a straw. I gave him a plum assignment that involved scaring a bunch of people, getting a lot of money for it, and then going on their way. He took it too far, and now he has to pay the consequences. I’m sure he’d rather spend the rest of his life in prison than face me, but this is the choice he made instead of going to the cops.
“How’s it going with Kessa?” I hear Mateo get in a car. The door shuts behind him a few moments later, the radio turns on full blast. He quickly dials down the knob, and the music shuts off.
“It’s everything I’ve ever thought it would be. We’re perfect together, man.” And in a week or two, when my sling comes off, she’ll head home, and we’ll go back to being just friends.
Mateo makes a few sounds on the other side of the phone before telling me that I need to lock this down. “No more games, Cesare. No more fucking with her boyfriends and shit like that. Just ask her out. You guys have been attached at the hip since you killed Peter. Just make it official already.”
It sounds good in theory, but I’m not sure if it will work out like I want it to. Francesca and I almost dated again once in college after a drunken hook-up before she met her husband. The next morning, she regretted sleeping with me and made me promise that it would never happen again. If she hadn’t met Peter a few weeks later, maybe we would have found our way to one another again.
“I’ll do my best.” The words sound hollow as they come out of my mouth.
Mateo scoffs. “If you don’t make it happen, Cesare,I’llmake it happen.”
I don’t know what he means by that, and I don’t want to find out. “Give me a few days. This isn’t a job, Mat; it’s my life.”
“If you say so,” he adds skeptically, “but you’re doing a shit job running it.”
He isn’t wrong. A smarter man would have avoided all this drama by asking Francesca for a second chance years ago. But I never claimed to be intelligent.
7
FRANCESCA
I’ve been home pretty sporadically over the last three weeks. I drop by every few nights to water the plants and grab more clothes. Sometimes I grab a spice from my cabinet that Cesare doesn’t have, or I run back over in the middle of the evening to pick up some paperwork I need for an upcoming meeting at work. For the most part, it feels like I’ve moved into Cesare’s.
His house is nice and open, whereas mine is a little older. There’s no open-concept living room and kitchen for the family to socialize in. My galley kitchen is closed off from the dining room, which narrowly opens to the living room a few feet away. It’s refreshing to be at Cesare’s, where I can see who’s coming from a mile away. I’m a naturally paranoid person, and I’m convinced that one day someone will break into my house, which is why I’ve mapped out an exit from every room of my house. But where there are dark nooks and crannies a stranger can hide in at my house, the same can’t be said about Cesare’s.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t move back home a week ago when Cesare returned from his doctor’s appointment and said he’d be out of his sling in a week or two. I knew he was already taking it off to drive and using his arm when he wasn’t supposed to. Reasonably, I could have returned home because I knew he didn’t need my help anymore. But dragging all the stuff I’d brought to his house back to mine felt like a massive undertaking. I just decided to stay until I wassurehe didn’t need me anymore.
If I had gone home sooner, maybe I wouldn’t be on my kitchen floor spiraling out of control.
* * *
I’ve been paranoid for as long as I can remember. My mom used to tell me that professionals called itanxiety, but I just assumed it came from watching horror movies at a young age. I think it helped me cultivate an understanding of the dangers that were out there. Your home could be broken into, you could be kidnapped, you could be tortured, you could be killed in your sleep. Anything is possible in horror movies, and watching them helped me prepare for what I’ve always believed was inevitable.
I don’t think I ever really thought someone would break into my home to torture me, though. Not until I saw him standing in the living room with a black mask on and holding a letter.
Him.
The fictional villain from all my nightmares and racing thoughts.
Him.
The real-life person now sitting on my couch with an envelope in hand.
“I was hoping you’d be here today.” I can hear the smile in his tone. “You’re a tough chick to track down.”
My first thought? This has to be about Cesare. It’s the robbers from the grocery store. They found out who I was and tracked me down. They’re doing this to get back at Cesare for beating the shit out of their friend.
