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“It’s the same, but it’s only been a week. Don’t go getting me married off with a picket fence quite yet.”
“Fina’s turning me into a hopeless romantic.”
“Ha. Only for her.”
Carmine waggles his eyebrows before growing serious.
“Go back in there and talk to her. Decide what happens next, and I’ll keep you posted when I find anything.”
“Thanks.”
We embrace, and I turn back to the door. He’ll wait out here until Maria and Auntie Carlotta join him. When I step inside, I hear three voices laughing, and I feel way more at ease.
“You should have seen him. There he was on Carmine’s shoulders while I was on Matteo’s. He’s like eight inches taller than me and like twenty times stronger than me when we were eleven. I knocked him off Carmine’s shoulders. He came up looking like a drowned rat. I kept my undefeated title as the Chicken Queen.”
I hear them laugh again. Maria is shockingly good at playing chicken in the water. It doesn’t matter how much bigger or stronger her opponent, she always manages to knock them off their partner’s shoulders. She’s wily and strategic.
“I seem to remember tossing you a good four feet across the pool after that.”
I step around the curtain, and Maria giggles.
“And I loved that way more than you did having me beat you.Again.”
“Rematch. Any time, any place.”
“Care to put your money where your mouth is? In the water or on dry land.”
She thrusts her hand out while winking at Sinead. All the guys can carry me if they have to. But a fireman carry over their shoulder is way different from me sitting on their shoulders and shifting around. She knows that. But I shake anyway.
“I’m starting rounds in half an hour, but I’ll try to swing back before they discharge you.”
Auntie Carlotta pats Sinead’s legs before she and Maria say their goodbyes and head out.
“They’re super sweet. Maria’s hilarious, and Carlotta reminds me a lot of my mom.”
“They are. Though be forewarned, Maria will get you in trouble. You’ll have a blast doing it, but you will regret it.”
“She doesn’t seem to regret a thing.”
“Because she has all of us guys wrapped around her little finger. Her mom and our aunts, not at all. The rest of us, completely.”
“I don’t think any of you mind.”
“We don’t. She’s kind, funny, wickedly smart, and has managed to live her entire life asCosa Nostraand not come out jaded. She was one of my first friends when I moved here. She helped me meet other kids and stood up for me when they made fun of me for not speaking English or for being so tall for our age. She did the same thing for three guys in the Cartel when they moved here from Colombia as teenagers.”
And that’s why the melee happened. The Kutsenkos stuck up for her as a girl. They have no tolerance for any threats or insults to women. My family was pissed because of that, but also because of how ungrateful it was of the Cartel guys to disrespect her after she’d been nothing but nice to theTres J’s. It was Javier who started it, but Jorge and Joaquin made it worse.
“I could see that.”
“She also covered for Finn O’Rourke when they were at a party a few years ago. His date OD’d on some fentanyl his cousins supplied the party hosts. He’d gone to get her another drink, and she took some pills. Maria was in med school and tried to resuscitate her, but it was too late. She sent Finn away and covered for him with the cops. After that, she doesn’t leave the house without Narcan with her.”
“Wow. And she helped me. She said she didn’t think it was a heart attack, but since she couldn’t be certain without any tests, she erred on the side of caution and gave me the aspirin. She said she carries it just in case of situations like mine.”
“Yeah. That time in med school really shook her. She carries a pretty well stocked first aid kit in her purses most of the time.”
“Well, I appreciate it.”
“You still look tired,piccolina. Why don’t you try to sleep?”
