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From my memories of her, from the few pictures she’d left behind, Ava looked just like her. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Tan skin. Whereas I had Sonny’s eyes and her lips and nose. The rest of me was as foreign as her memory.
That was all I knew about the woman who gave birth to me and then abandoned us in this concrete jungle. That, and her maiden name was Irish.
Then I remembered what Mo had said last night about Minnie. I’d watched her for a while after she'd fallen asleep. She did have a fierceness to her looks that I hadn't really noticed before. Ava had some of that, too, but I always thought I saw more of Sonny in Minnie.
He was fierce looking, too. Black hair that was curly at the bottom and sprinkled with salt. Same color eyes as mine, and eyebrows that made him look intimidating.
After Mo had said what he’d said about the woman who gave birth to Minnie, though, I didn't see him in her anymore, but a woman who used to rent a bedroom down the street. Her name was Sally.
None of us resembled each other, but we had one thing in common—we all shared the man who seemed to run off every woman he was close to.
I was left behind to take care of everything, including his debt.
Laughter again from the kitchen. I snapped out of my thoughts and pulled on a tank top, hoodie, and shorts. I swept my hair into a ponytail and fixed my curtain bangs, which I cut myself regularly, before going out.
Clara Bow Mulligan was attending to Sonny’s head while her great aunt, Molly, stood at the stove in her robe and slippers, cooking breakfast for Minnie.
Molly lived two doors down. She’d lived in the neighborhood her entire life. The house she lived in belonged to her parents. She raised her children in it. Still lived there. She had worked for Valentino’s her entire life, too. It was a running joke that she was the only Irishwoman, or man, that the Italian-owned Valentino’s had ever allowed to set foot behind the counter. There was no stopping her.
Ava liked to joke that Molly reminded her of the actress in the movie The Others. Her hair was pure silver, and the short strands were wild. Rarely did she go out without a flowered robe and her house slippers.
Clara spent a lot of time with Molly growing up, so we knew her well. She was a nurse. She grew up around the Valentino’s, too, and ever since Michele’s wife, Carine, had been diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, she had volunteered to help with her care.
My eyes narrowed when Clara said something to Sonny while she cleaned his wound, and he grinned.
“Did Ava call?” I asked Molly, kissing her on the cheek before going for some melon she had cut up for Minnie.
“She called me. She told me you wasn’t answering your phone. I called Clara Bow after I came over and saw Sonny’s head. Knew he wouldn’t go see about it otherwise.” She flipped a pancake, giving me the side eye.
“What?” I said, leaning against the counter, watching her work.
“Pretty exciting night?” A beam of sunlight streamed in through the windows, and her clear blue eyes sparkled with knowledge, though she never outright came out with it. Even though she knew everyone’s business, she wasn’t a busy body, and she never placed herself where she wasn’t wanted.
“Too exciting,” I said.
She nodded, a serious look on her face, and went back to the stove.
“I’m going to call Ava,” I said. “Be right back.”
“Take time,” Minnie said, excited that her pancakes looked like the mouse with the same name. She was decorating it with fruit and chocolate chips.
I ruffled her hair and she scrunched up her nose, laughing at me.
It wasn’t uncommon that Ava didn’t come home. Sometimes we didn’t see her for weeks. She’d sleep at Vice City Times. She was an investigative journalist there, concentrating on criminal activity—specifically, crime syndicates. The entire paper concentrated on criminal warfare and the murders of the people who belonged to that society. It was also rumored that the paper was popular with the people who belonged because it was a way for them to find out information about one another. A newspaper created for criminals to keep up in that world, or to secretly communicate with each other.
Ava’s boss gave me the fucking creeps. There was no way he wasn’t connected.
It worried me that she worked there. Because she was eager, too eager, to dig up dirt on the wrong people. She had connections all over the city, even beyond, and most of them did business after hours, in seedy bars owned by men called “Boss,” who carted around a bunch of guys who looked trigger happy. Most of them made Mo look like the bottom-dweller shark he was.
My sister wasn’t after locals, though. She’d set her sights on a criminal enterprise that was much grander. The infamous Fausti family. They were a family who lived like royals in their home country of Italy, but Ava described them as a pack of lions behind their gilded gates.
My eyes focused on her side of the room. Above her two mattresses, neatly made with Hoffa licking her paws in the center, were tacked up posters she’d printed herself. Various images of the Fausti family stared back at me. She’d find them in articles and then take them to the local print shop and have them blown up. Only her favorites took up spaces on the wall. On her bedside table, she had a box filled with alphabetically organized members of the family—their pictures cut out and laminated, almost like baseball playing cards.
I picked up the last one she’d done. Brando Fausti. All his stats were listed below his name and picture. He was fine—most of them were—but…damn. He was intimidating. He was impossibly gorgeous, but with a dangerous vibe that clearly stated, I dare you to fuck with me.
She was obsessed with them. Totally consumed. It was past scary. It was fucking dangerous.
A sick feeling rolled through my stomach when I thought of her out there, doing her thing, and one day maybe crossing the wrong one. I set the card back where it was, not wanting to disturb her shrine, and plopped down on my bed. It was across from hers.
