I looked down at my phone, rain splattering against the screen, and pressed a few buttons. I hit speaker so I could hear her voice.
“Corrado,” she had said. “This is your mother. I haven’t heard from you—” She stopped talking. I could hear her breathing and a rush of voices from the other side.
“Where is she? Who the fuck is she? Palermo’s kid!”
“Fuck you!” she spat at the man.
There was more than one. They were yelling back and forth. The pottery she made and sold crashed to the floor in the background. Then everything went quiet, and my entire life seemed to go dead.
When I returned to the land of the living, I was a new man.
The autopsy report gave the reason for death, but it also said that my mother—Emilia—had never had any children. I demanded a DNA test for her husband, and it turned out, the fucker wasn’t my father.
The woman I believed to be my mother was my aunt.
My grandmother finally broke down and told me the truth.
Emilia and Luna left New York when they were young against my grandparents’ wishes and went to Las Vegas. Luna became pregnant with me after she got there. Luna must’ve either fallen in love with the bastard or was afraid of him, because she refused to give up his name. Even to my grandfather. He refused to talk to either one of them after. When I was only a few months old, Luna died in a car accident.
Emilia brought me back to New York, and my grandfather demanded to know my father’s name. She refused to give it to him. That was when he told her he would take care of me, but until she told him the truth, he wouldn’t speak to her.
He’d never speak to her again, because she went to the grave with the secret.
Tito Sala had told me who my biological father was because he thought I deserved to know after Emilia’s murder: Corrado Palermo.
Palermo was a capo in the Scarpone family who’d tried to kill his boss—Arturo—by slitting his throat. Palermo married after I was born, and after doing some research, I discovered he’d had a daughter with his Sicilian wife.
Which meant I had a sister.
A sister that no one, not even me, had a clue what had happened to. Corrado and his wife had been murdered, but the little girl was never found. Marietta Bettina Palermo was her name. We were thirteen years apart in age.
Somehow the Scarpones must’ve gotten wind of something they either forgot or had just discovered—or they had left it alone all of these years because they didn’t want my grandfather to know. If he had known, he would have gone to war over his daughter. Whatever the reason, the Scarpones went after Emilia thinking she knew something about Marietta, since they had no clue about me.
There’s no speaking beyond the grave, so all I had were my own deductions to rely on. My mother and aunt—either one worked for either woman—knew the trouble (always in fucking trouble) Corrado Palermo was in before the Scarpones had hidden him in Italy. The Scarpones and Corrado Palermo had been tight before he tried to slit Arturo’s throat when he returned to New York. After I was born, though, my mother and aunt refused to speak his name to anyone in fear that the same fate would come for me, if I was ever connected to him. Especially since he had denied me even before birth.
Emilia knew what I’d do if she told me my true identity—I’d go looking for the motherfucker, or anyone who had anything to do with him. She knew if I got close, it was only going to bring trouble, because the Scarpones were still looking for my little sister.
Marietta had a guillotine hanging over her head before she was even born.
I wondered if she even knew who she was. Or if she did, how she had survived for this long.
It wasn’t a secret in our circle that Vittorio Scarpone had been killed because he refused to end her life, so where the fuck did he take her? Why did he let her live? He was as ruthless as the rest of the Scarpones. None of them had hearts, not even for women or children.
As far as I was concerned, all Scarpone blood would be wiped clean from this earth. Saving my sister from death wouldn’t stop me from killing Vittorio Scarpone, if the rumor was true, and he was still alive.
Footsteps coming up from behind me stopped me from replaying the voicemail again. I slipped my phone into my pocket before Silvio reached me. Things had been a little tense between us after my grandfather had given his support for me getting the position instead of him, as long as I met the condition.
I would.
Rain dripped from his fedora as he blew smoke out of his mouth in a white cloud that quickly disappeared. “You’re causing Don Emilio unnecessary worry.” He took another puff from his cigar. “Go to Sicily for a while. Just until everything cools down. He’s lost enough.”
I said nothing, staring as rain collected on the yellow roses left on top of the casket.
He dug in his pocket for a second and pulled out a sheet of paper. He slipped it into my palm and said, “Find her for me, and I’ll tell you all you want to know about Vittorio Scarpone. The things we know.” He looked behind him, to make sure we were not being overheard.
Men were placed sporadically around the graveyard, in case we were attacked. They’d come on a day when attention wasn’t focused on war, but on tragedy.
There was no other focus for me. I saw, heard, and tasted nothing else but the salty tang of battle.
