“Okay,” she said. “You have a shovel in the trunk?”
“Don’t I always?”
“Your grandfather taught you well.” She smiled.
She watched me dig up a hole on the other side of the estate. Money had built a fortress for himself, and he was secluded. I looked around and found one of those signs alarm companies stick in the front yard. I stuck it in the ground where I’d buried the dynamite as a marker. I’d have Kitty call it in anonymously and let law enforcement know. I knew a guy who was good with explosives, but I didn’t want to get him involved. I wanted the cops to know Money and his crew had been behind the fire at my apartment building and what happened at Vinny’s.
I didn’t want to catch a charge any time soon. Especially not with all Leonora and I had going on in our lives.
Kitty wiped my face with a handkerchief in her purse once I was done. Sweat and ash kept running in my eyes and making them burn. As I set the shovel back in the trunk, Kitty got in on the passenger side. We were halfway down the road when an explosion made the car tremble, and fire ballooned in the night.
“Whoops,” Kitty said, making a sorry face. “I didn’t think it was really going to work.”
She’d stolen the detonator, which I’d purposely left in Money’s hand, and pressed it.
I sighed and looked at my grandmother. “Not a word of this to Leonora.”
“Fine, as long as you do something for me first.” She dropped the mirror down and started fixing her makeup. “Buy me a drink.” She turned the radio on, and then up, when Frank Sinatra started to serenade her from the other side.
I bought her an entire bottle of the good stuff at Paradiso, where I left her for the night with strict instructions to Gio’s guards to keep her inside. Money had taken her when she was on her scooter, going back to Paradiso from Casino Portofino. I wasn’t going to lie, seeing her scooter just sitting there without her on it gave me a fucking pang in my chest.
One of the guards rode it back, and I decide to walk it, twirling my keys around my finger, stopping at the “sea” that created a line between my casino and Gio’s. I needed a moment to clear the smoke from my lungs and reflect on the day. How close life and death was. A thin line like this “sea” that parted two sides.
My daughter was healthy.
And the people who wanted to hurt her mother were gone.
It was a beautiful day for a man like me, in my book.
I let myself into the casino suite quietly. Even though it wasn’t that late, it was late enough that Leonora was probably in bed. She’d been taking long showers and then just relaxing—a magazine or book to read—lately. Sometimes she’d even binge watch cooking shows. She loved the ones where they competed.
My keys crashed to the floor, and I made an “ung” noise when something solid came at me from the darkness. It was wild, making crazed noises, but it could speak, or was trying to. I was able to get the lights on.
It was my wife.
“You selfish asshole!” she growled at me, and then attacked me again.
I let her.
I brought us down to the floor and kissed her head once I could get her hands down.
“I didn’t know what happened!” she rushed out through sobs, her hands curling into my shirt, making fists. “I got a call about Dynamic. Rocky got a call about Gio.” The only reason I understood what she was saying was because…I understood her. “I kept calling you. You didn’t answer! Why didn’t you answer?”
I took her face in my hands and kissed her eyes. I kept kissing her. “I must’ve lost my phone outside of Dynamic.”
She started to cry harder.
I spoke to her in soft Italian until her sobs turned into cries, and her cries turned into the occasional hiccup.
“I’m sorry, Aphrodite,” I whispered, pulling her even closer. “But it’s over. It’s all over.”
She looked me in the eyes. “Does that mean our story is actually just beginning?”
I smiled and leaned in to kiss her. She kissed me back, wrapping her arms around my neck. “It’s just beginning.” I touched her stomach then stood, giving her my hand. She set hers in mine and I lifted her to her feet, then picked her up and carried her outside.
She didn’t ask me where we were going. She knew.
We stopped and got two small drinks—Leonora didn’t want to drink over a certain amount of caffeine, because of Daphne—and headed to Red Rock Canyon.
