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Luca sits, sprawling comfortably in the chair. “I don’t want a drink.”
I sit down in the chair beside Luca’s, ignoring my father’s irritated expression.
After a moment, he recovers and continues. “I’m sure you heard about the trouble at the Pits. I wonder if you might be able to lend your assistance in the police investigation? It would mean so much to the family. To my daughter.”
Luca glances down at his shirt and flicks a bit of nonexistent dust from his lapel. “I would do anything for Carina.” As my father begins to celebrate, he looks back up. “It’s she who wishes to speak to you, actually. I’m just along for the ride.”
“Oh?” Agostino—Father—looks at me. I smile, aware that it doesn’t reach my eyes.
“You don’t like that, do you, Father?”
“What are you talking about?” he grumbles. “I don’t have time for nonsense, so speak plainly, girl.”
“You don’t like that you have to pay attention to me now. I can see it on your face. You don’t want to, and you don’t like that Luca is here, and you feel compelled to. You don’t like feeling compelled to do anything.”
He leans forward over his desk, eyes flinty. “You’re right about one thing. I don’t want to. If you think I’ll sit here and listen to the whining and complaining of a weak-minded female, you’re as bad as your mother. I should’ve left you in California—”
Quick as lightning, Luca reaches across the desk and grabs the back of my father’s skull. He pulls his head forward and down like one would a lever, bringing his face into the wood surface of the desk, hard and without forgiveness. “It’s time you shut up and listen,” he says when Father raises up, blood running from his nose.
“Thank you, baby,” I say admiringly. “Stellar idea.”
“Anything for you, wild one.”
Father looks between the two of us and eases back in his chair, silenced.
“Anyway, Father, as I was saying.” I stop, putting a finger to my lips. “What was I saying? I lost my train of thought. Oh, yes! I’m actually really thankful to you for sending me to California. Sal Fiorelli was amazing. He showed me what a father should be to a daughter. Taught me all sorts of things a girl who wants to be a Mafia queen needs to know. Did you know I can shoot a man in the eyeball at a hundred yards?”
Father shakes his head, and I grin.
“I can, it’s true! And in the last year, I more than tripled Fiorelli’s net gains by reinvesting and trimming the fat. I impressed myself, let me tell you.” His eyes widen, especially when I pull a Beretta 92FS from beneath my shirt and a silencer from my pocket and begin screwing the two together. “You really should teach your mennotto underestimate women, Pops. It’s fucking insulting.”
“Carina…I…what—”
“Ah-ah-ah. You’ve been yapping in my ear my entire life. It’s my turn. You haven’t been listening to me, Dad. So, listen up. You need to hear, for once, why you’re simply a misery. You killed my brother. My twin. My other half. You bet on his life because you’re a fucking asshole, and you put him in a situation that guaranteed his death, and you didn’t even care. That’s one. It would be enough, but there’s more.”
“I’m sorry—”
“You don’t get to apologize. You created that awful place where you put him in the first place. The Pits. What the fuck even is that, Dad? Did you watchMad Maxone too many times or something? It’s an abomination! The people down there…in the cages like animals…and today—the fire.” I raise the hand holding the gun and slap it against the side of my head softly. “I don’t even understand how I could come from you. You’re a monster.” I pause to draw breath. “Why would you do that, Dad? Why would you kill your cash cow?”
He shrugs, the gesture helpless. It reminds me of when I asked him about Francis and the Pits. It enrages me.
“You don’t get to do that,” I say softly. “You don’t get to shrug and say, ‘I don’t know.’ I want an answer.”
His fist comes down on the desk. “You weren’t getting the results we needed, damn you! I sent Geno D’Aquino to break into his apartment to find something I could use to press the issue.” He tries without success to stem the blood flowing from his nose. I don’t think he realizes that his nosebleed doesn’t matter. That the tiny bit of blood coming from that is inconsequential compared to what’s coming. “He found something, all right. Found that stupid computer with every fucking thing on it. Took my hacker a few hours, but once he got into it, I saw that Luca here wasn’t far from figuring out I was the one behind the Pits.”
“So you burned them.”
He shrugs and sits back in his chair. “I did what I had to do. It’s business.”
I’m silent for a minute, shocked despite myself. Then I shake my head. “Well. There’s that. I guess the only other thing is that you’re just such a goddamn asshole where I’m concerned. Did I shit on you when I was a baby or something?”
Beside me, Luca’s shoulders shake with silent laughter.
“Was it a personal offense for me to be a girl? Do you not like vaginas, because…I don’t know…a lot of folks think they’re pretty cool—”
“Stop! Just stop!”
“Why should I stop?” I ask the question coolly, as if I really want to know the answer. I don’t, though. The time for reparations is past. “You cast me aside, Father. Or maybe I should just call you Agostino. You’re no father to me. You killed my brother as surely as if it was by your own hand, and then you tossed me away. And then, you had the nerve to drag me back here and want to pimp me out for your own personal gain.” I lift the gun. “No. I think we’re done here.”
