“Fine.” I centered myself for a moment. “When I was a cop, I responded to a domestic violence report of a man abusing his wife. I busted through the door and found a three-hundred-pound asshole beating afive-foot-nothing woman. He had one hand around her neck, holding her against the wall, and the other was pummeling her face. The guy was so out of his mind, he didn’t even hear me come in. He punched her again before I could get to him, and I heard the crack of her nose.” I paused, seeing the woman’s bloody face again like she was right in front of me. “My father used to beat my mother when I was a kid, so I guess it brought back a lot of bad memories, and I lost it on the guy. I took him down to the floor and beat the crap out of him. When backup arrived, they had to pull me off of him, and he was a bloodier mess than his wife was. Long story short, I got fired from the force, and the district attorney charged me criminally for using excessive force. Turned out, the woman being beaten was Vince’s cousin.”
Juliette gasped. “Oh my God. Antoinette?”
I nodded.
“I remember that. It was in the news. I’d called my dad to see if she was okay.”
“A few days later, Vince showed up at my door and told me he respected what I’d done for his cousin. Then he laid out a deal. Antoinette would change her story—say she’d smashed her husband in the face with a frying pan after he started beating her, and that her husband had pulled a gun on me. That version would clear me. In exchange, I’d owe Vince. He wanted me working security for him. Said he liked the idea of a trained cop on his payroll.” I shrugged. “Prison isn’t easy for regular people. It’s a different kind of hell for cops. So I took the deal.”
Juliette reached over and squeezed my hand. Then she got up and took out a suitcase. “I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”
***
“Have you ever been to Ortigia?” Juliette asked once our plane had leveled out at flying altitude.
I’d been too busy strangling the armrests to talk until now. I wasn’t a fan of planes, especially not little ones like this, even if the inside was fancy. I shook my head. “Never been to Italy.”
“You’re going to love it. It’s beautiful.”
“What’s in Ortigia? The little bit I read about it said it was a pretty small island.”
She nodded. “It is. My grandmother lived there. When I was growing up, we went once a year, and I loved it. It was the only time I felt like I had a normal family. My dad wasn’t the boss yet, so things were calmer. Though he always had a posse of men around. His…” She made air quotes. “…associatesdidn’t come with us to Ortigia, so it was just my mom and dad and me. We’d do simple things like go to the beach and take bike rides, and my dad wasn’t busy looking over his shoulder all the time.”
I smiled. “That sounds nice. When did you stop going?”
“When I was sixteen. The last time I was there was for my grandmother’s funeral. But my dad still goes back from time to time. Do you know where we’re staying?”
I reached into my back pocket and took out the envelope Vince had given me. Inside was a thick stack of hundreds and a paper with an address on it. I handed the paper to Juliette.
She nodded. “This is my grandmother’s house. I’m excited to see it.”
“Yeah? Then maybe you shouldn’t have given me such a hard time about going.”
She stuck her tongue out.
I chuckled. “Mature.”
Juliette sighed and looked out the window. “I didn’t even know what my father really did for a living until I was twelve. Can you believe that?”
“How’d you find out?”
“Career day. We had to write a paper about someone we admired and tell about their job. My mom didn’t work, so I wrote it about my dad.”
My brows drew down. “What did you think he did?”
She rolled her eyes. “Garbage man. What else? I stood in front of the whole freaking class and told them how my father wore a suit to work every day, then changed into his uniform once he got there so he wouldn’t come home smelling bad. That’s what he’d told me when I asked why he didn’t wear a uniform like the guys who picked up the garbage at our house. At the end, we had to take questions from the class, and Danny Donnolly raised his hand and asked if I really didn’t know my father was in the mob.”
“Shit.”
“I marched straight to the pizzeria after school that afternoon. That’s where my father went every day after he supposedly went to work. My uncle Pietro owned it back then, and I had no idea Gino’s was a front either. Apparently, when they kill your uncle and you become the head of a crime family, the job comes with a free pizza place.” Juliette shook her head. “Anyway, I confronted my dad and told him what Danny Donnolly had said.”
“How’d that go?”
“He ruffled my hair and laughed. Then he said, ‘Little Danny got half the story right. I do take out trash. Just not the kind that goes in the can.’ All his cronies started laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world. Meanwhile, everything I thought I knew about my family had just blown up in my face.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. That must’ve been tough.”
“Anything to do with my father is tough.” She caught my eye. “But I guess you know that by now.”
