Vendetta

Suddenly he seemed so much older. A part of me wanted to cry for him and for the innocence he never really had, but another part wanted to shake him and scream at him for being so idiotic, for not seeing his life’s calling as I did — as an insane death wish.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

I shook my head. “That you could die at seventeen because you’re chasing down vendettas that have nothing to do with you, and I still don’t really understand why.”

“It’s my job,” he said simply. And then came four horrifying words: “I’m a career assassin.”

I lost the ability to blink. Suddenly there wasn’t enough space in my lungs to fill them with the air I needed to breathe. If I had remembered any curse words in that moment, I would have used them all at once. Nic just waited, politely, while I connected the word “assassin” with a seventeen-year-old boy who had big, beautiful brown eyes and an easy smile.

“How many?” I stammered, as numbers ran through my mind — five people? Ten? Fifty?

He slow-blinked at me, but I knew he understood. I spelled it out for him. “How many people have you killed?”

“I don’t know.” Lie.

“Ballpark,” I demanded, but my voice wavered. Did I really want to know? Would it be worse than my guesses?

“Not that many.” His eyes grew, and I caught myself noticing the flecks of gold inside them.

I refocused. I was not about to let him smolder his way out of this. “Anything over zero is ‘many.’ ”

Nic had the good sense to look away from me, even if he was feigning the shame he should have been feeling.

“So how many?” I asked again.

“I can’t discuss it, Sophie. I’d get in trouble,” he said, almost pleadingly. “Just know they were bad people. People a lot worse than Stenson. And it’s my job.”

“How could that be your job?” I finally managed, though it came out with an eye-watering shrillness.

“It couldn’t be anything else,” he replied simply.

“It could be lots of things, Nic!” I was screeching without meaning to. “You could be a teacher, a doctor, a barista, a fishmonger, an accountant, a — ”

“Sophie,” Nic interrupted softly. “Just calm down …”

I clamped my mouth shut until the hysteria subsided, and when I had finally calmed my breathing down, I conceded, “I’m scared.”

“I told you I would never hurt you,” he said quietly. “It’s just a job.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “How could it be?”

“The Falcones have earned our position as one of the most honorable and respected lineages in the American Mafia. The other families always come to us, for one reason or another, and we always respond. That has been our calling within the underworld. And it is how we operate within omertà.” The last word rolled off his tongue.

“What’s omertà?” My tongue stumbled over the word.

Nic smiled at my botched attempt. “It’s a code of silence. Our people don’t speak to the law, but we speak to each other, and that’s how we get things done. How we solve certain … problems.”

“You mean people,” I pointed out.

“People,” he confirmed.

“So your family is like a special branch of the Mafia?” I ventured.

He considered it for a moment before conceding with a soft smile. “I suppose it has become that way. We are the part that takes care of the people who shouldn’t be dealing on the streets, or trafficking, or killing innocent bystanders …” His voice grew hard. “We take care of the scum.”

He studied me intently as I started knitting the pieces together in my head so I could see the picture he was creating. His family hurt and killed people whose aim in life was to hurt and kill innocents. That was his job, but it was more than that, too: It was his legacy. But how could he justify it to himself, and how could I justify his understanding of it? The idea that I was sitting beside an assassin made me dizzy, and yet when I looked at Nic, I didn’t feel afraid, I felt … confusion. “And you get paid to do this?”

“Yes, we do.”

“By other families in the Mafia?”

“Yes.”

“Handsomely, I’m guessing.”

“That’s not important.” He was right, the answer wasn’t important. The mansion spoke for itself.

“Wait.” There was something not quite right about his explanation. “Don’t members of the Mafia break the law, too? I know they’re not exactly law-abiding. I’ve heard about horse heads and secret murders and money laundering and brutal family feuds …” I trailed off, hoping Nic wouldn’t notice I had just listed a bunch of things I had seen in movies over the years. After all, those stories must have come from somewhere.

He inhaled through clenched teeth. “Yes, the families are not exactly angelic.”

“Well, how do you have their protection if you have to go after at least some of them, too?”

Nic regarded me like I had suddenly sprouted horns. “Sophie,” he said, his tone affronted. “We never go after members of our own culture, whatever they have done.”

All of a sudden I was back on my own planet, watching him from afar and resisting the urge to shake him until all the stupidity fell out. “Is that a joke?”