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I rake my teeth over my bottom lip. I can hear my breathing, but it’s reassuring. Gabriele shifts how he’s holding my hand, so ours are facing opposite directions. He curls his fingers around my hand and brings the back of it to his lips then his cheek. I close my eyes and find strength in him just being there. I know he’s listening, but he’s not asking anything of me.
“I found out they were at a farm about thirty minutes outside of Providence. We lived in the suburbs, but on the other side. I tried to wake my dad up, but he took prescription sleeping tablets. He never, ever abused them. But they worked well. I could have woken him up if I really tried, but trying to make my day special after learning what Delaney did exhausted him. He also spent the day getting ready for Christmas. My birthday is the twenty-third. By now, it was Christmas Eve. I was fifteen. I knew what I was doing was so totally illegal, but I figured it would be fine as long as I was careful. I grabbed my dad’s keys and went to get her.”
I close my eyes and curl into a ball on my side. I just have electrodes and a pulsometer clipped to my finger. No IVs or anything, so I can do that. My eyes spring open when Gabriele lets go of my hand.
“I’m not going anywhere, little one.”
He walks around the side of the bed and drops the rail. He climbs on and spoons me. It’s like having the most enormous teddy bear curled around me, but there’s nothing soft about him. I want this story over with, so maybe I can fall asleep with him holding me.
“I made it across the city, avoiding all the highways. It took me forever. By the time I got to the farm, everyone was gone. But I spotted Delaney. As dark as my hair is, hers was that light. Like almost white-blonde. It was her natural color, and pretty much the only thing about herself that she didn’t want to change. She was completely passed out. It took me forty-five minutes to get her to wake up enough to get her in the passenger seat. She was breathing, so I didn’t call an ambulance. I didn’t want the cops to come.”
I pause because the hard part is coming. I take Gabriele’s hand that rests near my belly and draw it up to my chest. He kisses my shoulder.
“Because I’d never taken Driver’s Ed or driven on anything but fields, I didn’t know bridges ice over faster than surface roads. That applied to the causeway, too. The roads were fine on the way there, but it was even colder by the time we headed back. We were halfway across the Scituate Reservoir Causeway when she woke up. Seeing me pissed her off, and it didn't thrill me to see her either. But I focused on the road. Nothing prepared me for her to lash out at me. She slammed my head against the part of the door just in front of the window when she punched me. It was just as we went over a patch of ice. I jerked the steering wheel as my head hit the door. We spun out. I was trying to push her away while getting control of the car again. She kept hitting me and swearing at me. She didn’t know who I was. She thought I was some junkie who stole her stash. She didn’t know where she was or anything. Even stoned, she was stronger than me. She used both hands and slammed my face into the steering wheel. She broke my nose.”
I run my finger of the slight ridge that I have as one of several keepsakes from that night. But I never look at my other scars. Ever. They’re way more than skin deep.
“I couldn’t see straight when she finally let go of my head. She did that because we plowed into the guardrail, crumpling her door enough that she wouldn’t be able to open it. I tried to correct the spinout and point us back in the right direction. I just wanted off the causeway. We were halfway across at this point. Thank God there was no oncoming traffic. I thought she’d stopped when we started moving again. She’d blacked out for a moment. We hit another patch of ice. I tried slamming on the brakes, but that only made it worse. She woke up and started flailing around, saying I should be the one who died. She even unfastened my seatbelt. It was freezing out, but I had my window open, hoping the cold air would sober her up. It saved my life. We hit the guardrail again, except this time, we went through it. I hadn’t gotten my belt refastened.”
Gabriele’s cologne is spicy and masculine without being gross. I don’t know what it is, but I like it. He draws me tighter against his body, and I haven’t felt this safe since before my mom got sick.
“We went in the water, and I was completely disoriented at first. I somehow held my breath just as we plunged in. I tried to get to Delaney, but she was fighting me as I reached across to unfasten her belt. She grabbed my hair and tried to hold my head down. She didn’t seem to realize what was happening. She wasn’t doing anything to save herself. She wasn’t trying to undo her belt. I raked my fingers across her face as I fought to get loose. I pulled away and got the belt off my arm. The car was full of water, and it was pushing me into the car when I was trying to get out. I reached out the window, and one hand grabbed the top of the outside of the door. She grabbed my legs and tugged. I kicked as hard as I could. I didn’t want to die. I got my second hand out and pulled as hard as I could while I kept kicking. I got free of her, then I kicked and pushed off of anything my feet landed on. I got to the surface because the car wasn’t sinking as fast as it felt when we went in. But we were over a deep part. I grabbed onto the broken part of the rail that had bent all the way into the water.”
I need a breather. As though this part wasn’t bad enough. The part that Gabriele read about is coming up.
“I pulled myself out, but I didn’t know up from down once I rolled onto the road. I just laid there. It was a State Trooper who happened to find me. I almost died from hypothermia. I’d gotten too hot trying to drag her into the car. I took off my coat, then just sucked it up with the window open while I drove. If he’d been another few minutes, I would have. I told him my sister was in the car and that he had to get her. He wrapped me up and put me in the back of his cruiser. There are a lot of gaps after that. I remember my dad getting there. I remember him screaming when they told him Delaney was dead. There was no way she wasn’t. I remember him holding me as I sobbed, telling him everything that happened. They took me to the hospital for my nose and the other cuts I had from fighting with Delaney and the actual accident. While I was there, they scraped under my fingernails. I didn’t understand why at the time. I do now. The next week was horrific. They dredged the lake and did an autopsy on Delaney. They knew she was stoned and drunk. I didn’t know she’d been drinking, too. But I was fifteen and a day when it happened. People knew we’d fought and what I’d said on my birthday because she told them.”
This is the part that takes me from despondent with sadness to stark raving mad with rage.
“They indicted me on voluntary manslaughter in the first to be tried as an adult. We both know that's still considered murder in the third degree. I knew the dangers of driving underage, but I did it. They claimed that was a blatant disregard for human life. They used the skin they collected from under my nails to claim I attacked her and lost control while it happened. They claimed I broke my nose during the crash. They claimed I ran us into the guardrail on purpose and hitting her side of the car was my first attempt to kill her. They knew about the stolen money and said that was my motive. My father stood by me. He testified to everything Delaney had put us through. The psychiatrist who saw us after mom died testified on my behalf too. The court psychiatrist stated I exhibited borderline personality disorder and sociopathic tendencies. She claimed my stoicism in court was proof of it. I was too terrified to do a single thing but barely breathe.”
I roll over to face Gabriele, and he kisses my forehead, my nose, and my lips as he wraps his heavy arm over my waist.
“Because they were trying me as an adult, and they set bail at an amount no bondsman would pay. They detained me with real adults. I learned a lot really fast during those two months the trial dragged on. Part of the reason I’m good at what I do is because they incarcerated me in gen pop. I know first-hand how things work. I figured out how to stay under the radar after I got jumped my second day there. It released every bit of suppressed grief, which included rage. I beat the shit out of the woman. I’m lucky they didn’t add aggravated assault. But they caught everything on camera. It was clearly self-defense, but I was probably four punches away from killing her. I would have too. I still don’t regret it at all. It wasn’t my only fight during those two months, but it was the longest. I learned to carry a shiv. It’s not like I was in some super max prison. I was in the county jail, but it didn’t matter to those women. Plenty of them had been to prison. Recidivism. But I was lucky my attorney was as good as she was. She got the acquittal. The state apologized for questioning me without a parent, poor evidence collection, and detaining me as a minor. I was exonerated, and all of it went away. But not before the news covered the trial every day we were in court. We moved that summer, and I went to a different school. It helped, but people still knew. It was a lonely two years before I graduated and escaped to Mount Holyoke. What you saw was a photo taken at the party Delaney was at. It got printed in a New England newspaper. You read only one of the articles. After that, I decided I would not only become an attorney, but I would be the best because I’d had the best. My lawyer is a senior partner at the firm I’m at now. She happens to be from Rhode Island, too.”
I sigh, the weight of the world lifting from me. At least for now. I watch Gabriele, but he says nothing. I get nervous until he tucks me against his chest.
“Whoever did this will never do anything like it again. Don’t ask me any questions,piccolina. This time, I really will blow someone’s world up.”
ChapterThirteen
Gabriele
Sinead’s asleep, and I don’t know what to make of half the story she told me. I remember what I was doing at fifteen, and I lived with the guilt of killing people. But it was nowhere near the same thing as Sinead. What I did was premeditated. What I did was to save my family and our interests. It didn’t take one of my loved one’s life. I escaped being caught and tried as an adult. Though I should have been. I should be serving multiple life sentences with no possibility of parole. She did nothing and lost so much. She was a naïve fifteen-year-old trying to do the right thing. My naivety disintegrated when I was twelve and started carrying a knife because our rivals carried them too. I was the same age as her when I was involved in an enormous melee among the syndicate members in high school.
It's utterly fucked-up, but we went to school together. Members of the bratva, mob, Cartel, andCosa Nostrawound up at the same party one night. Maria stood up for her friend who liked one of theTres J’s, but he was being a douche. He called Maria a flat-chested bitch. One of the Kutsenkos heard and got in the brothers’ face. Maria came and told Carmine and me. Next thing I know, guns and knives were out. Anyone not associated with a syndicate got the fuck out of there. No one died. Somehow. I truly don’t know how. But none of us came away without injury. I have a bullet scar in my left arm from Misha Kutsenko shooting me. It stopped being about Maria and became a turf war.
To this day, I have never seen Uncle Salvatore so angry. He couldn’t decide what language to yell in. It switched between English, Italian, and Itanglese— a combo of Italian and English —by the word. Even after the shit with Luca, Carmine, and me and the bratva woman who wound up injured, then kidnapped because of us. After that shit show with Anastasia Kutsenko, he took a turn with us and broke Luca’s arm before he exiled us to Sicily for several months. The vineyard owner resented Uncle Salvatore sending us because the man owned him a favor. The guy beat us daily. We could do nothing. But I digress.
My mind’s wandering because part of it doesn’t want to process everything Sinead told me. Because they tried her as an adult, they wouldn't have sealed her record. Anyone who dug a little would have found it. The photo is super incriminating because the angle doesn’t show the girl’s hair color. I didn’t know it wasn’t Sinead, and I’ve been looking at her for days.
Shit happened between a soccer coach and me when I was fourteen. I swore I would never be that vulnerable again. It was also when I knew I would be loyal to Carmine for the rest of time. He came into that locker room just in time to stop the guy from forcing himself on me. After that day, I started working out twice a day. I was the same height I am now, but I was half my weight. By the time I turned fifteen, so Sinead’s age when this shit with Delaney happened, I was three quarters of my current weight, so one-hundred-and-eighty pounds. If they'd sent me to jail, I would have been bigger than most guys in county. It would have been a different story in federal prison, but I already knew how to protect myself. Sinead had to learn among women who’d already committed plenty of crimes. She didn’t have anyone to teach her. She carried a fucking shank and used it.
As I watch her sleep in my arms, I could get used to this. I want to protect her and ruin whoever did this to her. I want to know who the fuck dug around, who the fuck sold the story, and who the fuck the reporter and editor are. Journalistic integrity my fucking ass. If they got the photo, then they got the rest of the story, too. They purposely did this to be prejudicial to any jury. As it said, there’s going to be an ethics review.
And that’s fucking stupid in and of itself. When they admitted her to the New York State Bar, they did a full background check. If I fucking got admitted, with my obvious family ties, then there shouldn’t have been a problem for her with an exoneration. Belonging to a sex club isn’t against any rules for attorneys. They tossed that in for the sake of sensationalism.
Being with Sinead right now, knowing I shouldn’t leave her and don’t want to, is the only thing keeping me from tearing the city apart to find out who did this. She didn’t deserve this just because she signed on to be my attorney. This is more extreme than I expected, especially this early in the case. To have some asshole bugging her place and a story like this planted, someone is working overtime to fuck with us.
