“You’ll have to kill me, too,” she announces to her brother stubbornly.
“Angela….” I try.
“I’m serious,” she tells Salvatore. “I love him. Please.” Her voice breaks with emotion. “I’ve always loved him, my entire life.” I’m a little stunned. When I told her that, I thought I was the only one. It’s something I only realized on the beach when I was holding her for the last time. I guess she’s slowly figuring it out now, too… I just wish we hadn’t come to our mutual realizations so late.
“If you kill him or his brothers,” she continues. “My death will follow shortly. By my own hand. Life without him isn’t life.”
Giovanni sighs. “Angela, you’ll get over him. You got over him the last time.”
“That was because I thought he left me,” she spits. “Because of your lie! When it was you who ordered his death, for the crime of liking me!”
Salvatore seems disturbed, and glances at his father. “Is this true?”
Giovanni ignores him, concentrating on Angela. “Someday you’ll understand. It was for the best. Just as this is.” He glances at Salvatore. “Move her aside.”
Salvatore hesitates.
“Salvatore!”
Finally his son obeys and pulls a struggling Angela away from me.
“I’ll do it,” Giovanni tells his son. “Better that her hate is directed toward me, than any of you.” He glances at one of his men. “Give me your Uzi.”
The designated man swings his shoulder strap around, bringing the weapon into view. Then he slides the strap over his head and hands the Uzi to Giovanni.
Angela freezes in terror at the sight of the weapon.
“Promise me you won’t let her kill herself,” I tell her father.
“I won’t,” Giovanni swears. “I’ll keep an eye on her.”
“Thank you.” I glance at Angela for what I know will be the final time. Beautiful, sweet Angela. It’s a comfort, knowing she’ll be the last thing I see before I leave this earth. I just wish she didn’t have to watch my death.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “I’ll always be with you.”
My words break through her fear.
“No,” she blubbers. She somehow finds the courage to overcome her phobia of guns, at least momentarily, and rips away from Salvatore to drop to her knees in front of her father. “Please, Papa. You can’t do this. He avenged Mamma.”
Confused, Giovanni looks at her. “What are you talking about?”
“He avenged Mamma’s killer,” Angela goes on, emboldened.
Giovanni frowns. “Explain yourself. Quickly.”
“The Cleaver!” Angela says. “I recognized him, finally, with Massimo’s help. Massimo helped me forgive myself for Mamma’s death, and that changed something inside me, helped me remember. I guess being taken by The Cleaver jogged my memory, too. Anyway, he admitted as much, moments before he tried to take my life here under the altar. Moments before Massimo saved me.”
Giovanni stares at her blankly. “The Cleaver… it wasn’t…”
“The Cleaver killed Mamma!” she shouts. “It was him! Don’t you see, the Rizzos were the secret allies of the Tunisians! The Rizzos!”
Giovanni stares at her, dumbfounded. “All these years I searched for her killer, and he was lying here right beneath my nose.”
He angrily steps toward me but shoves right past so that he stands before the corpse of The Cleaver. Then he begins unloading the Uzi, riddling the dead body. The Cleaver’s corpse bounces breath the impacts.
When the magazine empties, without lifting his gaze from the body he holds out a hand. “Give me a new magazine.” When no one moves to obey, he shouts: “Give me a fucking magazine!”
Finally someone hands Salvatore a magazine and he rushes forward to hand it to his father.
