10. CLOSE
SILVINA
It’s midnight. Gioele doesn’t want to wait until the morning. He was on the phone with Isaias while I packed, his expression more pinched by the second. He’s carrying my suitcase to his car.
“I can follow you in the Fiat,” I say, but my cousin doesn’t want to hear it.
“We’re hauling ass back down, Silvina. It’s to the point where Isaias wishes we had a safe house farther north. You know how the Santa Colombini work. They love to take out the weakest links first, and—”
“I’m not the weak link,” I clip out. “I have better aim with a semi-automatic than you.”
“I know.” He strokes my cheek in passing. Gioele is too affectionate, but when things are falling apart around us, it’s the last thing I want to think about. “You’re a devil with your SMG. You have it here?”
I press my lips together. “It’s at home.”
Gioele could rub it in. Instead, he says, “Okay, so we need to get you to your gun. You can inflict serious damage with it, but for now, what do you have? Anything?”
“A .380 ACP.”
“A lady gun?” He arches his brow at me, and I fold my arms over my chest. Gioele’s stare draws from my eyes to the V of my neckline.
“Whatever,” I say.
One of these days, we’ll be over. Completely over. But at the moment, we’re on a break from a healthy future, and I’ll be in the passenger seat of his Escalade all the way back to our parents’.
I have a small fish tank with a violet Beta in it. I bought it my first week in San Francisco, and despite the short life expectancy of this warrior fish, I’ve never had to replace it. In my haste, I forgot about Arthur. My cousin didn’t. Settled into his car, I have time to wonder what takes him so long before I see him balance it out in his arms.
“I’ve poured out a third of the water and taped it shut with shrink wrap. Still brought this, though.” Gioele holds up the lid of my Dutch oven. Then he wiggles it on top of the fish bowl. “Whatcha think?”
I can’t help smiling. “Arthur and I approve.”
Gioele bobs his head and situates my Beta in a cardboard box he’s lodged between my backrest and the backseat. “I’ll drive carefully.”
It isn’t the first time we make the long drive down the Pacific Coast Highway together. Tonight, though, there’s urgency in the air. Long-transport trucks inhibit us, and my bane zig-zags in and out of traffic at high speed.
In the low light, his profile is eternally familiar and never for granted. Lips as generous as they look, he’s perfection and not for me. My focus keeps straying to his jaw tonight. Defined, it dips into the shadows of his throat, but it’s the muscles clenching there that alarm me. Gioele has many tells, but rarely does his jaw muscles jump.
He turns up “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” by Wham!, a song I love and he finds ridiculous. I lean my head against his shoulder and stare out the dark blue glass pane.
“This is nice, isn’t it?” I run a stare up his face.
“Yeah.” The Escalade jolts forward. “Great song,” he adds without sarcasm.
“Right. I know what you’re doing, okay?”
“As in getting you to safety?”
“No. As in only picking up calls from Il Lince and Isaias when I’m not next to you. One of them called at the rest stop. I saw it, Gioele. The time before that, you had me buying us coffees while you talked with them.” I sigh. “As soon as I call your mother, I’ll get the full story anyway.”
I send him another look and find his expression frozen.
“How many times have you done this, shielded me like I can’t deal with reality? I can, you know, and we’ve lived this particular reality for over twenty years. I’d so much prefer to hear what’s going on from you than from your mother.”
“And your mom?” he asks. “I believe you just talked to her.”
We both know she’s not fit for this life. “The difference between her and me is she’s too afraid to want any details. Me, I need them.”
He mutters something under his breath. We stall at a streetlight. He peers at me before syncing his cell with the radio and calling his father. My uncle infamously doesn’t answer, so I’m surprised when he does.
“Hi Dad. It’s me. I’m on my way home with Silvina.”
“Good. And where’s Gabriela?”
“Isaias’s sent someone for her. So the family’s at risk?”
Il Lince exhales. “Yes, unfortunately so. The Santa Colombini love to go after the innocent.”
Impatient, Gioele huffs out a breath. “The last time, they went after us for a reason. It was our fault. We started it.” I answer his stare with a grimace; it’s never pretty when giant mobster machines crash.
Il Lince lets out one of his hoarse laughs. “Well, it’s for a reason this time too, figlio. Let’s talk more when you get here.”
Gioele groans, the impatient kid I fell in love with a long time ago. He opens his mouth to insist, but before he can, a vehicle slams into the driver’s side of our car.
I shrink against the passenger door, as far away as I can. The Escalade careens to the right, scraping the cliff at the side of the road. Gioele straightens it last minute.
“It’s still there. What the hell?” I shout.
Gioele speeds up, trying to escape, but we took off from Pacific Coast Highway to drive inland twenty minutes ago, and this country road leaves plenty of room for the other car.
“What’s going on?” Il Lince asks.
“We’re being attacked.” Squinting, Gioele floors the gas pedal, and the Escalade leaps forward. “It’s a black van, medium-sized, maybe a Ford Transit— Fuck!”
“Where are you?” his father snaps. The Transit crashes into Gioele’s side again, making the Escalade fishtail onto a side road. My heart starts a thundering rhythm.
“SR 81 and Satellite Cross. We’re nowhere near the Valley.”
The bunker is there, ready and waiting. I wish we were there.
“What do they want?” Gioele shouts.
“Do you have weapons?”
“Just handguns.”
The Ford Transit skids past us and makes an involuntary half-turn, kicking up a dust storm. Gioele puts us in reverse and backs out of Satellite Cross at a velocity that causes the Escalade to zigzag.
The Transit sets its high beams on us. It lurches once, then it’s in control. My own scream is swallowed by the roar of its engine, and in a frozen moment of clarity, I sense what the driver is planning: a head-on collision.
“Gioele, he wants to kill us!”
“Silvina. Are you in the passenger seat?” Il Lince barks.
“Yes!”
“Reach underneath it. On the right side, pull out a small, square box.”
“But I don’t—”
“Do it!”
I’m snapped to action by the imperial force of Il Lince. He’s Don. He rules life and death tonight, more than ever. Gioele grits his teeth around mumbled words. I see what he’s doing; with the Escalade in reverse, he hopes for the onramp to hit us before it’s too late.
“Found it,” I huff, voice shaking.
“Okay, there’s a hand grenade in there. Take it out.”
“You put a hand grenade in my car?” Gioele roars.
“Do you want to survive or not?” Il Lince roars back.
“I’ve got it.” I open my window. The Transit is coming straight at us. Onehanded, Gioele fumbles his gun into position.
“What are you doing?” My eyes go up the barrel. Its mouth touches our windshield, pointing straight at the van speeding toward us. He can’t possibly be thinking—?
“We’re out of time.”
“But the glass?” Fingers stiff with adrenaline, I pull the safety pin out of the grenade.
“Kids! Focus: throw the grenade at them before they’re too close.” Il Lince’s voice doesn’t leave room for doubt. Just—they are too close now. Aren’t they?
Doesn’t he see?
An ear-numbing explosion. Glass rains over me in fine particles. The scream in me lasts and lasts, while the Escalade rocks backward, careening into the ditch.
I force my eyes open. Our windshield is gone. The windshield of the Transit is now a big, black, square hole, and the vehicle itself is stalled sideways. I don’t think. I unbuckle my seatbelt, stand up, my whole upper body emerging through our front window. Feebly, I register the wind blowing hair away from my face.
Gioele shouts for me, wants me to get back inside, but I see them moving in there. They’re lifting their guns, and Gioele has no window to hide behind. They’ll snipe him, and I can’t have that.
With all my might, I hurl the grenade toward the Transit. In beautiful, perfect form, it sails in the front window. I see the whites of the driver’s eyes as he realizes what’s happening. His mouth becomes a black hole too, and it has no sound. Or maybe it does emit sound in the few seconds before the van erupts in an inferno of orange.
GIOELE
It should be dark here. It isn’t. Behind us, the Ford Transit burns steadily, leaving the landscape in an amber hue. Car fires turn to wildfires up here. I need to call in an anonymous tip.
I’ve got Silvina. She’s shaking. Crying. Shaking. She should never have been exposed to blatant evil.
“Baby, baby, baby.” I kiss her head while she trembles in my arms. “You were amazing. If it weren’t for you…”
“We’d still have escaped somehow. I just killed someone, Gioele. Several people. Crap, I don’t even know how many I killed. Do you realize what that means?”
“Yes, I do. It means you saved our lives. It was us or them. They came for us, okay? Don’t ever forget that. And if we died, how many more would’ve died after us? You know we weren’t the only ones on their list.”
She sobs. Never has she been so little. She’s shrunk against me, and the need to feed her of my strength is all-consuming.
“Listen.” I tip her face up and look into eyes that overflow with terror. “I don’t want to drive all the way to the Valley after this. Let’s find a Motel 6 or something around here and take a break. You okay with that? First and worst place on the map?”
I stroke her face free of moisture. “I’ve got booze. We can lock ourselves in, drink whiskey, and down some Ibuprofen.”
Quiet, she nods against me.
“Okay, good deal. And Silvina?” I tip her face up again. “We survived. Did you see that? We survived.”
Her smile trembles.
I drive with Silvina’s head in my lap. She turns toward my stomach and burrows her nose against the fabric. There are shards of glass everywhere, but with the heat of her breathing and the wind from the missing windshield, I feel more alive than I have in a long time.
“And then”—I gesture toward the motel window—“a young mafia goddess rose and stuck half her body out through the window.
“She was fearless and gorgeous. With her long, black mane rolling down her shoulders, she stood tall. Majestic, like the fucking goddess she was, she pulled her arm back, and with one little toss, the grenade shot toward her target, and pow! Just like that, a whole van full of evil mobsters blew up. She stood there long after, arms wide, accepting the cheers from the crowd.”
“Oh, my god, you’re ridiculous.” Silvina shakes her head, laughing. The half ovals of her eyes shine with a different type of wetness than an hour ago. All I needed was to get her drunk. She’s such an adorable drunk too. Now, her laughter tapers off as I refill her whiskey.
“Check out this luxury,” I say. “We have ice, and I know how much you like fancy glasses. Look at the pattern on these babies.”
“Yes, and we don’t have to worry about them breaking, because plastic,” she chimes in.
I grin, lifting my own glass in a toast. She counters with a “Cin cin!”
“Cin cin, Ina mia.”
We take a sip. Then another. It’s hard for her to avert her eyes from me, and I dig it. Silvina’s on her side, hiked up on an elbow on the bed, and I move over from the chair I’ve got pulled up close. It’s a natural progression.
She doesn’t need my comfort anymore. That’s not why I stroke my thumb down her cheek. It’s not why her eyelids flutter either, or why she suddenly looks so fragile.
I know what it is. My darling can’t look away from the love in my eyes. This love flares easily around her.
I could have lost you, I think.
“I could have lost you,” she whispers so low it’s just a gust on her lips.
I’m done thinking. I’m done worrying. I’m done letting her believe they’re right, up there on their high horse of morality. I roll onto the bed. Take her in my arms. Hard, I press her against me, and her moan distinguishes right from wrong in ways no law or family sin ever can.
“But you didn’t,” I whisper against her neck. I kiss her there, tentative, at first. Then I open my mouth, allowing myself a taste of her flavor. She’s like the wild berries on the farm at Lake Como. She’s blueberries and raspberries. My girl is the slightest hint of strawberries.
“You’ll never lose me, Silvina. I promise you that. As long as there’s breath in me, I’ll be with you.” My hands work on her little dress, the one she shouldn’t have worn when she left in the cold San Franciscan night. “We’re going to L.A.,” she’d insisted, and “You have seat warmers.” I’m happy about it now; I get to button her down from the top of her breasts to her navel.
So much smooth, tan skin I haven’t caressed in years. I swallow the emotion rising in me, because this—this woman in my arms—is everything that means anything in this world. I expect her hands to stop me, like they have before. My fire is raging, and I want to put it out buried deep inside of her. I wait for signs, for quiet nos. One gesture from my love, and I’ll stop dead.
Delicate fingers find a way into my hair. I shut my eyes, reveling in the sensation as she pulls her nails through my too-long chunks, the way she used to when we were teenagers. I look up from my path down her chest, find her eyes, and they’re filled with the same emotions I have: longing, grief, temporary bliss.
I let my gaze go to her lips. They lift in tender invitation. I find them with my own, and the groan I emit when she opens for me is made of pure relief.
“Do you know I love you?” I free her breasts and push them together between us.
“Yes…”
“Do you know I need you?” I peel her dress off, and she separates me from my clothes too.
“Yes…”
“Do you know you’re everything to me?” I moan as I sink inside of her slowly, slowly, as her legs cling around my waist like there could never be anyone but me.
“Yes…”
She’s giving me more than I could imagine. I am full of her. She’s listening to me, accepting my words without fight. I couldn’t dream up a more than this. So when we move together, in that ultimate, single, perfect way that’s only for lovers who love, my eyes blur when she says, “You’re my everything too.”