“Sì,” he said. “After about a month, I found a phone booth with a phone book hanging from it. I found a few Assantis listed and went to the first house on the list. Before I went, I wrote a letter, telling them who my parents were, and that I was being sent to live with them. I signed my mamma’s name to the letter. My mamma told me we had family in America—on both sides—but she did not have any information to find them. But it wasn’t unheard of for a family member to end up on your doorstep—though that was years ago when it was more common. Still.” He sighed. “They took me in.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” he said. “The man of the house read the letter and said we were family, and that was the end of that. He’d seen me around before, scrounging for food. He owns apizzerianotfar from here. He was apizzaioloin Naples when he was a kid, before he immigrated to America. He understood my language right away. I speak a mixture ofSicilianand Neapolitan,as well as Italian,and he does too.His mother was Sicilian and his father from Naples.”
“Is he…a part of this life too?”
“The furthest thing from it. He hates what we stand for. In Italy, his family was harassed, run out. They owned a restaurant there, and a chunk of their earnings went for protection money.Pizzos.”
“Who did they need protection from?”
“The same men who were collecting thepizzos.”
“How unfair,” I said.
“Peppiniello agrees.”
“Peppiniello?”
“The man who raised me.”
“That’s something,” I whispered, my eyes closing for a second. His touch, along with his voice, was lulling me some. “Do they call him Niello too?”
“No,” he said. “His customers call him Peppin. His family calls him Pop. You’re the only one who calls me Niello.”
“I do?”
“You did.”
I looked up at him, and he looked down at me. His finger caught a tear before it ran down my face. I put my hand over his.
“You ran from them in Sicily,” I whispered. “Did they catch you here?”
“No,” he said. “I’m too fast for even them to catch.”
“You joined on your own?”
“You can say that.”
“I did.”
He studied my eyes for a second. “The Boss recruited me when I was young. Said I had potential after he saw me in a fight with another kid. He wanted me even more after he found out who my father was.”
“I bet he did,” I muttered.
He was the smartest man I’d ever met, which explained why it probably didn’t take him long to learn English. Especially with his memory. Add that to his physical presence, and he was, looking at the entire picture from an outsider’s perspective, fucking scary. His eyes alone were unnerving. Which was why I was thankful for the warmth I always found in them. If I was the outside world, I wouldn’t be in his arms. I’d be as far away from him as possible.
“Was your family—here—disappointed?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at me. He looked toward the wall, like he was watching a movie that only he could see. Then moving us so softly that I barely felt it, he seemed to get more comfortable. He placed his lips against my temple and said, “Sleep now, Rosalia.”
As if my body was obeying him, I yawned, but tears kept slipping from my eyes. Every so often my body would convulse. But he had tied the tourniquet. I felt my body giving over to rest.
“Can I meet them?” I whispered, closing my eyes, holding on to him even tighter.
“Sì,” he said, letting his mouth linger on my skin.
“When?”
