His final words to me.
“Take care of myfamiglia.”
I’m doing my best, I think, slightly irritated.If only your goddamn son wasn’t so determined to get himself into danger.
But watching Tino again now, I realize it’s not only Finch that Tino meant when it comes to the Morelli Family. I’ve asked so much of my people since Tino’s death.Expectedso much. Expected their loyalty, their support. Expected them to die for me.
For Finch.
And it has not been fair of me to expect that. Nick Fontana royally pissed me off several months back when he pointed out my hypocrisy, but I was only so angry because he wasright. I’ve been putting my own goals ahead of the Family, and that is not what Tino Morelli wanted from me.Expectedfrom me.
I need to stop using the Morelli Family like a personal army.
Yes, it’s my role to protect Finch. But he is not, as he himself said, some princess in a tower. He’s my lover, my husband, my partner. He’s the son of the man who died here in this room. And Finch’s mother was a formidable woman, as we are coming to understand more and more each day.
As for Finch, when I really think about everything he’s done in his life—well, he’s more dangerous and more resourceful than Tino Morelli and Orla Fincher Donovan combined. He’shadto be, to survive.
I play the video again, judging the specific place where Tino sat slumped against the wall, Connie Taylor hugging him hard, her face buried in his neck like a little girl wishing the real world away.
To my left is a large, boarded-over hole that I know used to lead to the escape route through which Angelo took Connie. Tino, he’d told me later, was already bleeding out. He’d insisted Angelo take Connie—the mother of his unborn child—and leave him behind. I’d do the same, if I had to. I would send Finch away if there was a chance for him to survive, and I’d stay behind as still-live bait for my enemies.
And like Tino, I’d take as many of them with me as I could.
But in his last moments, he also cared for the Family. I must follow the example he has set for me more closely. I can still learn from him, it seems, even beyond death.
I hear the creak of the door at the top of the stairs, and footsteps coming down. Swiftly, I come over to the bottom and hold up my hand. “No, baby bird, don’t come down. I’m coming back up.”
“I want to,” he says, and I know better than to argue when he’s using that voice. He comes down the steps, looking around with interest. He catches sight of the phone in my hand, although I try to pocket it without him seeing. “The video?”
I nod.
“Will you show me, please?”
He’s never watched it before. Where the hell is Vitali, and how did he let Finch come down here on his own? “I don’t want you to see it.”
“I know you don’t.” He holds out his hand for the phone and, after a moment, I give it to him.
I pace the cellar while the familiar monologue plays out. I’ve watched it so many times myself that I don’t need to see the picture to know exactly what is happening in each frame. Tino’s calm, his smile, they astonished me at the time. I understand better, now.
He had accepted his death—had probably accepted it some time before that night, in fact. Like me, Tino was a man who thought ahead, well in advance. When his options narrowed to one, he had no fear in the face of death, only the stoic knowledge that it is inevitable, and peace that he had already planned for it.
The video stops, and I glance over to Finch, expecting grief, even tears. But he’s as calm as Tino himself and, not for the first time, I see a startling resemblance. “Thank you,” he says. “I think…it was the right time to watch it.” He returns my phone to me.
But listening to the video without watching it at the same time has made me notice something I’ve never noticed before. I hesitate before replaying, glancing at Finch, who understands what I’m asking without words. “Go on,” he says, brows lifting slightly.
And so I replay the video, scrubbing back a few times over one particular part, until I’m certain. “You hear that?” I ask. “In the background. ‘Let me down there, I want to kill that motherfucker myself.’” I play it twice more for Finch, but when I see a flinch cross his face, I stop at once. “I’m sorry, angel, I shouldn’t have made you listen to that.”
“Idohear it,” he says softly. “Is it…important?” He must see me debating internally whether or not to share, because he adds, “Just tell me.”
“That’s Lou Clemenza’s voice.”
Finch looks at me for a long moment before his eyes slide sideways, back to the place in the cellar where Tino died. “I see.”
I have never wanted Clemenza dead more than I do in this moment. But until and unless I can disrupt his Family’s finances and weaken them as a whole, there’s more danger in killing him than keeping him alive. Lou Clemenza is not a man with anything approaching self-restraint—but he’s still the best his Family has to offer at the moment. In my estimation, his Capos are all twice as violent as he is, a view which has only been reinforced by recent troubles in the city. If one of them takes the Clemenza throne…
“Why did you come down here to the cellar?” Finch asks, curious. I consider my answer for so long that he prompts, “Luca?”
“I’m not sure. I wanted to…face the truth, perhaps? Face up to my inheritance. It’s time I stop feeling like I’m merely warming the seat for Tino’s return—or for the next guy.”
