“I’m done.” He put his mouth close to my ear, and I closed my eyes, already knowing what he had to say would be awful. “You’re out of here. I’m getting someone who wants to be a good, obedient boy, and who knows how to take care of his Daddy the right way.”
“Please, Daddy. Give me a chance. I want to make you happy.” I felt stupid and sad and small as he opened the front door and pushed me out of it for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. He’d put me out of the house before, but never like this. Never into a real storm. Of course, I’d also never made Daddy late for work. I went to my knees and could barely catch my breath. I turned and put my hands on my thighs the way he always wanted to see me at his feet. “I swear I’ll try. I’ll be better. You’re all I have, Daddy.” I held in my tears and sobs so he could see I meant it.
I will be good.
He slammed the door.
I waited. He always wanted to see my training in action, so I sat very still despite the storm I hated and the rain and the wind and the occasional debris that whipped across the porch and stung my skin. A while later he opened the door and tossed out my shoes and blanket. I tried to get up to hug him, to show him how thankful I was for his consideration of my needs, but he slammed the door before I could make my exhausted body move.
I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, then put on my shoes. There was nothing left to do except wait.
Sometime later Daddy opened the door again, dressed in his suit with his things to go to work. He opened an umbrella, and for a moment I thought he was giving it to me, but he stepped outside. Turning, he locked the door, and I gasped.
There was no key for me; he’d never trusted me with one.
“Go somewhere else and snivel.” He glared down at me. “Don’t come back. I’ve wanted someone who actually knows how to be a good boy for a long time. If you’re still here tonight, I’ll call the cops and tell them a deranged homeless man is trying to break in.”
He went down the steps toward his silver Lexus in the driveway before I found my voice. “Daddy. Perry!” I yelled to get him to look at me. He spun and his jaw was tight. “I’ve lived here for seven years. This is my home.”
“This was never your home, it’s mine. I tolerated you, but I’m finished. You’re untrainable. You’re a waste of time.”
My heart squeezed and I couldn’t deal with the pain. “I’ll do anything you want.”
He smiled. “Get off my property and out of my sight. That is what I want.”
My head felt fuzzy as I dragged myself to my feet and stood there, watching Daddy back the car out into the street. Sometimes, when we first got together, he used to take me places. Once we went to a party together. I didn’t talk, but I stayed at his side all night and brought him drinks. Those trips had ended fairly early on, though. He said I embarrassed him with my behavior, but I always thought I did what he had instructed me to do.
Hopelessness swamped me as I stepped down off the porch. I hadn’t left the house in a long time, and it felt strange to be outside. The trees that lined the street were too big. The rain bit at my skin. The wind raised goose bumps on my entire body and the thunder made me cringe with fear every time it boomed overhead. My stomach growled, but it barely mattered.
All I’d ever done was try to be the boy Daddy wanted, but I’d always ended up punished. I’d never been good enough to sleep with Daddy at night the way I wanted, and now I’d lost the chance to try.
What would I do? I had no idea. My mind whirled and I walked, hoping my feet would take me somewhere friendly and safe, but doubting it would happen. At this point, I’d take someplace where the wind wasn’t blowing quite as hard and be happy with it.
2
GIAN SABBATINI
There wasn’tmuch in the world I feared as a man of God, but my cousin was one of the few things that terrified me to the core. His face alone scared more than three-quarters of the city of St. Loren. Most of the locals knew who he was, even if the law couldn’t lay a finger on him for his crimes.
“You owe us. We let you out—alive.” Riccardo lounged on the front pew, his left leg crossed over his right knee, arms spread out across the back. He looked like the Devil personified, even in a black suit and a white-and-black-checked dress shirt. The rumbling sounds of thunder and rain rattled the roof of the church from the storm that had been raging all day and throughout the evening, but even though Ric had entered less than five minutes ago, he was dry and impeccable, his short dark crew cut without a drop of water. His unruffled presentation was thanks to the men standing closer to the vestibule doors—his paid flunkies—with the large black umbrellas they held for him. Inside their suits were guns, too, even though I’dtoldRic more than once I hated weapons in the church.
“How many more times are you going to sing that same old worn-out song, Ric?” I stared at the array of prayer candles on a small by-altar to the right of the main one before sighing and turning back toward him, my hands clasped together. Ric was in his element, but I’d never seen my cousin appear any different. “You’re asking me to sin.”
He laughed meanly. “God will forgive you.”
God loved his children, but I couldn’t ask forgiveness for the same sins yet again. I couldn’t willfully commit these acts and expect anything good to come of it. “You’re asking me to hide your blood money in my church. I can’t request to be absolved if I keep sinning the same way over and over.” I shook my head and walked two steps down until I was standing near him. Taking a seat beside Ric on the pew, I inhaled deeply. “Please do not ask me to do this. You can launder money anywhere. Do you really need the church?”
Ric laid his hand on my shoulder and squeezed until it became painful, and I winced. “You don’t get a choice. I let you leave our organization to go to the seminary, Gian. Not many guys get out that easy. Usually they lose some limbs. Remember Eduardo?”
How could I forget? I’d been twenty and new in the organization. Ric had been learning the ropes from his father, but he’d already had more experience with death than me. Uncle Giuseppe—we all called him Uncle Gus—had Eduardo, a man who wanted out of the mob to marry a sweet Russian girl, tied up to a flimsy wooden chair in the middle of what amounted to a dungeon. The men surrounding Eduardo went to town on him, landing their fists against every inch of his body until he was begging them to stop. And then, as the final hurrah, Uncle Gus cut off Eduardo’s left leg from the knee down. The old man had done the deed himself with an evil amusement twisting his smile. His words still echoed in my head.
“How much will your woman love you without a leg, Eduardo? Because to leave this organization, you must leave a part of yourself behind.”
I’d nearly been sick, and the only thing that kept me from vomiting was Domenic, a cousin to Riccardo and me. He’d grabbed my wrist and held on tightly, encouraging me to stand firm. It was obvious why Dom co-ran the Sabbatini crime family with Ric—he’d always been strong.
“I know,” I said simply, staring up at the stained glass window of Jesus on the cross, the twelfth station in the church located behind the chapel, then touched the cross that hung on my chest like a lifeline. “But our family is devout. Becoming a priest has made them proud.”
“Maybe,” Ric drawled, grinning. “But you were always one of us. You know how our operation runs.”
