“Yes.”
Her face worsens. Her medium-brown cheeks turn a purplish red color and tears form a giant pool in her seemingly thick eyelids. Oh God, she’s going to cry loudly, most likely, and I’ll be the one stuck here comforting her. Michael remains stoic, keeping me in the dark over whatever mental calculations he might be making right now.
Lorena lets out a loud sob and wraps her arms around me. It’s weird and overemotional considering we hardly know each other, so I make my best efforts to pry her off of me. She squeezes me tightly, with an innocent yet desperate effort to find some human emotional connection as she accepts this loss. I don’t want to tell her that he was married… unless it helps us get into the laptop.
“What happened?” she sniffles after a few minutes of unceasing tears. “Where is he? Can I see him?”
Michael responds quickly as if I’m at risk of taking us off course.
“You can’t see him.”
“What happened?” Lorena asks, pulling away from me so she can search my face for answers that she’ll never find unless I want to give them to her.
“What do you know about Felice’s connection to Pittsburgh?” I ask her, keeping all the information I have locked behind an unreadable calm facial expression. Lorena sniffles and wipes her tears away on her sleeve, trying to gain some control over herself so she can process the shock and what to expect next.
“Was he killed?”
Lorena isn’t stupid – whether that serves my greater interests or not. She might have a ridiculous nose ring and even more ridiculous hair but I don’t think she’s a fool. Getting tricked by a man several years older than her just makes her young and inexperienced. Hopefully, she learns from this one day.
“Yes,” Michael says. “And if you don’t help us, you could be killed too.”
Lorena looks to me for confirmation. I nod, because it’s most likely the truth.
“We need his password to get into this laptop. It’s our only chance of finding more evidence of who could have hurt him.”
More importantly, who could have put this pipsqueak up to drugging me and Aricia. I ought to punish her more for that, but she currently seems truly pathetic.
“I don’t know it.”
“You know him better than we do,” Michael says. “Check out the hint and open it up. Sit.”
Lorena gives him a dirty look, but she obeys. I take the moment to play the good cop and get her a glass of water.
My aunt Viviana says good night to us and heads to bed without asking too many questions or seemingly thinking about anything other than finishing her cigarette. We say good night to her and I watch her disappear, pleased that this hasn’t escalated to any kind of family drama.
It’s good. She’s been helpful to us so far, but most of the women in my family are temperamental at best, downright cruel at worst. I’m glad we don’t have to navigate her moods tonight and I’m glad we don’t have to share more of our secrets with her. The fewer people you have to trust, the better.
Michael sets the laptop in front of Lorena, who opens it slowly, sniffling and allowing tears to pour down her cheeks as she slowly faces the terrifying reality of her boyfriend’s death. Idon’t understand how sad she feels or what that grief might look like, but the man probably wasn’t worth the tears.
I feel a strange pity for her. Lorena navigates over the login screen, hovering the cursor over the password hint. The sentence is completely incomprehensible to me.
“You seriously don’t get it?” she asks.
“Get what?” Michael asks, barely containing a growl. At this hour, he probably wants to be curled up in bed with his baby sleeping on his chest.
“The only thing Christopher ever published,” she says. “From the Sopranos?”
“I don’t watch television,” Michael responds impatiently. “Type the password in if you know it.”
Let’s hope this password also provides us with amotive.Otherwise, we just went through all of this and exposed ourselves for nothing. I want to go back to Aricia withrealanswers, not just an unexplained disappearance. The need to prove to her that I can take care of things and give her a normal life is… extreme.
I have no lofty position in the mob, making it particularly unfair that my life should be marked by my family ties. It’s not about an absence of loyalty, but I want a life that exists for more than just pleasing my family and carrying out their will. Some part of me wants to have a legacy that can be carried on.
I would be foolish not to see Aricia’s value and how she could improve my life…
I’ll just have to convince her to see my value and that means plunging the depths of this dark mystery that brought us together until I’m in firm control of ensuring Aricia will never be in harm's way again.
“It’s Cleaver,” Lorena says, typing the password in once incorrectly and then adjusting the capital letters until she gets it right.
