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“Grazie, Damon.” She pats my cheek, and I capture her wrist and place a kiss on the back of her hand.
“You are welcome.” I lead her back to her seat.
“Can we eat now? I’m half starved,” myziagrumbles, and my mother reminds her sister to have manners.
My sister, Evie, and a few of our cousins trickle in just in time for our meal to begin making its way from the kitchen to the table in front of us.
A traditional meal of arancini and seafood risotto is served. I’ve been away for a time, stuck tending to business matters in Ireland, and I’d all but forgotten how good the food here is. The fragrant odors remind me, and my mouth waters as I wait for Mother to say grace over the meal. At last, we all start to eat. Silverware clinks against china, music plays softly in the background, and cars move along the road below us. All the sounds and smells bring back a million memories of my childhood.
There’s always a niggling awareness, though, that hugs the fringes of my consciousness. I find myself glancing around, searching for any potential threat.
There’s nothing, of course, but I still have to forcibly remind myself to relax.
Nonna places the brooch back in the white box, and I watch as she winds the blue ribbon around her fingers before placing the box safely in her cardigan pocket. It’s too warm for a cardigan, but her illness thins the blood in her body, making her cold even on the hottest days.
“How is Marcus?” My youngest cousin, Sofia, asks. Her hair is pulled up in pigtails—a bit youthful for her fifteen years. She’s so like her mother, making us, without a doubt, related. She isn’t as sharp-tongued, but she doesn’t hide her feelings, either. For example, her dislike for my brother.
I often wonder what he ever did to her. I can only hope it was like nothing he inflicted on me. For a while there, when we were young, we were each other’s champions. Allies against the brutality of our world.
He changed, though, at some point. My stomach curls with bitter acid, and I force my demons down.
I force a grin. “He’s doing great, I’m sure.”
Evie joins in. “It’s funny. I was just speaking to him, and he asked about you,” she teases our cousin. “Wanted to know if you’d outgrown those pigtails yet.”
Sofia rolls her eyes and reaches for her glass of wine, which is acceptable to drink at her age here. In Ireland, that would not be allowed. In Italy, though, we’re given wine once we turn ten, so we rarely drink to abuse it. It’s simply an extension of the meal for us.
“I’m sure he was,” she mumbles into her glass.
My mother’s soft laughter is like music to my ears, music I missed badly while spending so much time away from her. She never laughed like that in our youth. Her laughter grew and blossomed oncePadrewas killed, and it was like a bell ringing to signal the end of a war. My body reacts on its own accord, and my shoulders slump slightly.
We make eye contact across the busy table as the chatter continues around us, but it fades as my mother mouths, “Grazie.”
I know she means the brooch. Nonna’s jewelry will pass to us, the children of her eldest son, when our grandmother dies. Evie always adored the brooch, in particular—she used to play with it when she was a little girl—so I’ll make certain it’s given to her for her wedding. It’s a family heirloom that I’m determined to keep intact.
The noise of the traffic grows louder as my mother turns to my aunt,who’s saying something I can’t hear. A car sputters below the level of the restaurant, and that little niggle of awareness heightens…turns to tension. I frown while rising, trying to put my finger on what’s causing this sudden churning in my gut.
The feeling is inexplicable.
Formless and instinctual.
Without context or meaning, the sound of an exhaust backfiring causes a visceral reaction of my senses and has me moving to investigate.
A flowerpot hanging over our heads shatters, raining a million terra-cotta splinters across the table, and my instinct gains form. It’s not an exhaust backfiring but gunshots.
Fucking gunshots.
I dive as screams rend the air, and I retrieve my gun from where I keep it tucked in my waistband.
I’m scrambling along the legs of the table, trying to keep my head beneath its surface. Sofia falls to the beige tiled floor alongside me, covering her head with her hands. Her eyes are tightly closed; her knees drawn up into her belly as another volley of ammunition is fired.
The sound of gunfire sputters to a stop.
I get up, my gaze sweeping the chewed-up table, where food and drink litter the white expanse of the tablecloth. My heart races as red wine turns to blood, and without thought for my safety, I’m up and running, rushing around the table.
Have to check… Have to see…
Faces flash in my mind’s eye. Madre. Evie.Nonna…even my aunt and cousins. All of the most precious people in my world.
