I tried to catch my breath. I tried to regain some of the strength that had drained when I watched my entire life leave me. I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything but cry what felt like tears of blood.
My body went still when I heard another voice join the fray outside.
“I called the cops,” Peppin said as sirens wailed in the distance. “The ones I know have no fucking strings connected to anyone. You have a few seconds to run or face the consequences. You killedmyson.”
A second or two after, cars started and rushed away from the house as the sirens grew even closer. Quentin released me some, and even though I couldn’t turn my body the entire way, I could see one of Niello’s hands still on the sidewalk. The ring I’d given him was still on his finger. It disappeared as Abe started to drag him to the side of the house.
“Let her go,” Peppin said, walking into the house. His eyes connected with Quentin’s, and after a second, Quentin released me.
I fell into Peppin’s arms and cried even harder as he tried to console me. He kept a firm hold on me as he walked me next door, and once he had me in an old kitchen chair, Bambina in my lap, he looked me in the eye.
“You have every right to cry,” he said, “but now is not the time. You have to think of your daughter. If you want her, you have to put her first.”
Not sure what else to do, I nodded. I wanted her more than anything, but how was I going to get my mind on straight when my heart was dead on the sidewalk?
“It’s what we do as parents,” he said. “We have to live for them even when life feels like it ends for us.”
I nodded again, the tears still falling. “She’s not going to know me.”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me w-what?”
“That answers that.” He sighed. “Aniello came to visit as often as he could. We hadn’t seen him so much in years. It was a nice change of pace, seeing him that way. Humanized.” He paused. “You remember how she went to him?”
He didn’t give me a chance to answer.
“She went to you easy, too. She doesn’t go to people like that normally. She’s not very trusting, even at her age. We laugh about how wary she is. She pulls a face when she’s unsure—it’s the spitting image of his. She didn’t pull it with you. My wife says a child just knows its mamma. I’m sure that’s true, too, but even if it wasn’t, he made sure of it. He showed her pictures and videos of you. He told her who you were to her. He asked the same of us.”
The tears came hotter, faster, but in that moment, I had to decide, for the both of us. I couldn’t lose her too.
“Keys,” I barely got out.
Peppin shook his head. “I’ll drive.”
We slipped around the police who were talking to Abe. It seemed like he was playing off the situation, as if nothing had happened.
“The neighbors must have been mistaken,” he said with charm. “Nothing going on here. You’re free to check.”
Even if he wasn’t considered a friend, because they didn’t exist in the life, he was still someone Niello was close to. They had played ball together as kids, and the bastard was coldhearted enough to shoot him twice and kill him.
There was more than one reason friends walked a man into a room in this life and he never walked out again, but there was one main reason.
That man had some trust his friend wouldn’t turn on him.
Abe and Quentin had turned on him when he needed them the most, but I had a feeling he knew they would.
“Rosalia,” Peppin whispered in my ear. “Get in the car.”
I hadn’t realized I was turning toward Abe’s direction, my hands balled into fists at my sides. It didn’t matter how much bigger he was than me. My heart was on fire with hate, and I wanted him to feel it come out of my hands.
His wounds would heal, though. They would be superficial.
Mine never would.
34
Rosalia
