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“Already thought of that,” he said. “I’m not going in guns blazing. I’m going to check it out before I go in. I’ve done this before.”
Even though I knew who he was, he’d mostly kept that side of his life separate from ours. I walked in a daze next to him, my heart contained in my chest but trying to beat out of it. It seemed too loud for what we were doing. Trying to blend.
I truly felt the difference between us then. I was too bright.
“A—”
That was all I could get out. Not even a half of a scream. By the time I realized someone had come out of the darkness, Lilo had already drawn his gun, pocketed it, and put a hand over my mouth.
“Molly,” he said, his voice low.
“Three of them,” she whispered. Her hair stood up around her head in short white flames. She held a golf club. “I was outside getting something I forget in my car when they pulled up. Sonny was coming out of the door, and they knocked him back inside of it. I’ve been watching ever since. You need to hurry.”
“Minnie?” I whispered. My voice was still muffled.
Lilo moved his hand.
“With my sister,” she said. “Inside.”
Lilo started pushing me in that direction, but Molly stopped him.
“Gallo knows this block. If they see Luci isn’t with you, they know she’ll be with me. Or they’ll coming looking for her there. She should take Minnie and my sister and split.”
Headlights flashed once across the street from Sonny’s before they turned off.
“Unc will take them,” he said.
Even though he trusted Molly, he trusted Aren more. Lilo waved his hand, but the cab didn’t move. Aren needed glasses but he refused to get them. We started moving in that direction, and close to Sonny’s, a loud crack! rang out. It sounded like a boulder had been thrown at the door.
“Go!” Molly hiss-whispered. “I’ll make sure she gets in the cab.”
Lilo met my eyes, and then he disappeared on the side of the house, swallowed up by the darkness. Molly squeezed my hand, hard.
“He’ll be okay. What do you think he does for a living? Sew? Now get in the fuckin’ cab.”
I nodded, but my heart was being pulled. Half of it went with him. I made a breathless noise when she pushed me toward the street. She was a lot stronger than she looked. But I should have known. I’d seen her pick up a fifty-pound sack of sugar at Valentino’s before. I stepped back just in time to miss getting run over by a car that seemed to come out of nowhere. The headlights were off, and it came to a screeching halt in front of me. Someone was staring at me from inside.
The window rolled down. My eyes narrowed.
“Shawna?” I whispered.
She pointed a gun at me. “Get in. Or I blow your brains out.”
LUCILA
PRESENT DAY
“On a scale of one out of ten—how dangerous is the guy behind us?” Shawna looked in her rearview mirror.
I looked out the passenger window. Aren was keeping up with her old Toyota. She pressed the gas harder, and the coconut-scented air freshener swung from the mirror as she started to drive more sporadically.
“I honestly don’t know,” I said.
Besides Aren, I had only met Lilo’s grandmother and a few aunts, uncles, and cousins from his Armenian side of the family. Until Carine’s funeral. And technically, I didn’t even meet the man who came to mind.
He’d showed up toward the end with a few other men. They were all dressed in suits with slicked-back black hair. Dark sunglasses covered their eyes. The center man was tall and wide—and really, really good looking. Like, I couldn’t peel my eyes off him for a while. He captured my attention because my husband favored him in looks. He was just older.
“Ma’s younger brother,” Lilo had said to me. “Tigran.”
