He’s doing my job.
Since Matt’s not in a talkative mood—and I don’t think I could hear him if he tried—I recede into my own mind while he drives. Thoughts of Emily flit through my head.
The day we met, one of my rare days off from work. Our first date. Our first kiss. The first time we made love. A thousand little moments that added up to a fulfilling love, gone in an instant.
Dear God … Our baby was due next week.
She didn’t get a name. We had it narrowed down to a few, but we thought we had more time to decide. More time for everything.
She wasn’t baptized, either. Fuck, what’ll happen to her? I think back to that Catholic school Matt and I went to. What did they teach us about unbaptized babies?
Her soul’s fate is up to God now. She’s in His hands.
What am I going to do?
I have to call Emily’s parents. Make funeral arrangements. Pick out a casket.
Do I need to pick out two caskets?
Then, an even more sickening thought surfaces, one that makes all this a thousand times worse:
I can’t call Emily’s mom and dad. Can’t make funeral arrangements. Can’t pick out their caskets. I can’t do any of that because until Matt gets to the bottom of what happened tonight, I can’t exist.
The moment I contact anyone outside the Syndicate, the moment I let my guard down, we’re dead. Not just me—Matt, too. I know him; he won’t leave my side after tonight. It would take an act of God Himself to get Matt to leave me alone for a second after this. If I let even one person know I’m alive, they’ll know Matt survived the attack, too.
After a while, I notice that something about Matt’s driving seems off. I know all the Syndicate escape routes and hideouts, but nothing about this road looks familiar. “Where are wegoing?” My voice comes out in a harsh croak, reminding me that I broke it screaming.
“Somewhere safe.”
“C’mon, Matt. I need to know, too.”
His lips—still covered with dust and ash—spread in a wry grin. “I’m not supposed to tell you. In fact, Dad set this place up with your dad in mind. ‘In case the Martinezes turn,’ he said.”
I’d be angry at the insinuation, but in Tito’s mind, anyone was a potential enemy, I suppose.
Matt continues. “Only Dad and I know about this place. We bought it in secret, kept it off the Syndicate books. It’s probably the safest place in the underworld right now.”
“Tito really thought my dad might turn on him?”
Matt shrugs. “He said not to trust anyone.”
“You’re trusting me.”
His fingers grip the steering wheel tighter, knuckles turning white beneath the soot. “I’ll always trust you, Aron. The entire world could be on fire, and you could be holding the only match, and I’d still trust you.”
I rasp out a gravelly laugh. “That trust will get you killed one of these days, Matt. Tito’s right; you’re not supposed to trust anyone in this business.”
“You’ve got the tense wrong, Aron. Titowasright.”
Matt’s words are a harsh, sobering reminder that I’m not the only person in this car who lost someone close to him tonight. Say what you want about Tito Mangione: for all that he was a bloodthirsty don, he was a good father to Matt. He cared, which is more than many could say about their dads. I’ve known average Joes who had less paternal instinct, and I’ve known kids who grew up to be shitheads because they had terrible fathers.
Matt is anything but a shithead. He’s a fucking saint in my eyes. Ran into a burning house, one that had just exploded notonce, but twice, one that could have had more explosives rigged, just to try to save a woman he’d never met.
“Saint Matteo,” I mutter as an image of Matt dressed in robes with a glowing halo over his head flashes in my mind.
“Huh?”
“Oh, nothing. Sorry.”
