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Chapter Thirty

LUNA

Etta stands over the stove. The pancetta is frying and the egg is already a perfect white circle with a glowing yellow center.

Nunzio, Domenico, and Serafina cooked with me in this kitchen. We ribbed each other and joked like family. The boys wrestled and played. I miss it all so much. Those terrible weeks were more real to me than the twenty-five years that preceded them.

“Can you make me one?” I put my fingertips to my mouth as I say it—the international sign for feed me .

Etta points at the eggs then at me, saying what must be It’s for you . She glances at me in a way that’s warmer and more loving than I’ve ever come to expect from anyone.

“ Grazie .”

She takes my face in her hands, kisses each cheek, and says, “ Prego .”

There’s a bowl of fruit on the counter. When I pick up an orange, I freeze midway between sitting and standing.

Him .

My body shudders. My nerves stop the jangled cacophony and sing a single, plaintive note. I go liquid between my legs, and my lips part in a sigh.

The reaction could be memory or magic. If I peel the orange, I’ll find out. If I eat it, I may end up trapped in a single, everlasting orgasm. Or maybe it’s a message. Maybe if I consume this fruit and think of him, he will appear.

My heart screams for him. My skin flushes with the longing. Etta’s saying something from outside the cone of him , but I can’t hear her. I’ll never hear her. Not with Carmine inserting himself into every fiber of my being.

Then it’s all cut off as if a switch has been flipped, and I’m back in the kitchen, empty-handed.

Silvia’s holding the orange. She took it away from me and it all stopped. Whatever touching it did to me, it’s not doing to her.

“Protein first.” She leads me to a seat at the table. She puts the plate of eggs and pancetta in front of me, the fork next to it, and the orange above. “Replace the sugar last.”

“Okay.” The shock of being thrown from the cone of his presence and suddenly slammed into the real world with unexpected people leaves me unable to do more than whisper.

With her fingertips, Etta removes the slice of bread that toasts on a burner’s open flame and drops it on my plate.

“ Grazie ,” I say around a mouthful of eggs. God, I am hungry.

“So.” Silvia sits cross-corner from me, hands folded in front of her. “We leave at sunset.”

“Are you taking me to Carmine?”

Silvia leans back with a long exhale, then translates for Etta, who makes horns with both hands and says, “ No, no, no. Assolutamente no .”

“Somewhere else,” Silvia says more calmly as I gobble breakfast. “It’s quiet. Beautiful. There’s someone who speaks English we can introduce you to.”

I push the empty plate to the side. The orange rolls an inch toward me and stops.

“Where?” I ask.

Silvia meets my eyes with an intensity I don’t expect.

The question really is, will it be away from Carmine? Can he find me? Can I find him?

“An island far away, but not too far. Delfina, my niece, will be there. You remember her.”

“Rizzo’s cousin?”

“Yes.” She leans in and drops her voice. “We just have to get you past Nunzio. Our contacts in Sicily?—”

“Your contacts ?” I look from her to Etta and back again. Two ladies in their forties who I’ve never seen do more than cook, clean, and read palms.

“It’s been a while, but there’s a system under the System.”

Contacts in Sicily. A system. It will get me past Nunzio.

“Like, an underground railroad? Harriet Tubman? That?”

They converse in Italian, and I realize they probably don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. The orange sits between us. I’m afraid to touch it. As if reading my mind, Silvia picks it up.

“Never mind.” I take my plate to the sink. “What about my mother?”

“She can come with you, if you like.”

“No, absolutely not.” I’m in such a rush to leave my mother behind that, somehow, I’ve agreed to get brought to a quiet, beautiful island where there’s someone who speaks English. “Look. I appreciate all your help, but there are things I have to work out with Carmine.”

Silvia shrugs at Etta, rolling the orange around in her hand.

I don’t feel anything from her touch, but I’m a little ashamed.

It’s as if she’s handling my dirty underwear with her long, sparkly nails.

Her emotions are shaped like peace, resolution, joy.

Etta’s are more utilitarian, but I can’t tell if that’s her managing the kitchen or something else.

“Do you want this cut or peeled?” Silvia holds up the orange.

The idea of being fingered by Silvia is a bit much. Maybe a knife won’t have the same effect. I hand Silvia a paring knife and a little cutting board. When she slices an end flat so that it stays still when she lays it on the wood, I stop breathing to wait.

I feel nothing, thank God.

“Was Carmine here when you guys came?” I feel something about the orange, actually. I feel hungry.

“Carmine called us—Etta and me—to come and take care of you while he’s off somewhere.” She slices the orange into halves, then quarters. “There was a… battle… maybe. A mess. The café monkeys are already telling old stories about it.”

She cuts the fruit again. Eighths. I’m not waiting for sixteenths.

I grab a wedge and eat it. Holy shit. My mouth explodes with satisfaction and need.

It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted in my life.

I want more almost as much as I want him.

I slide the cutting board to me and devour it, juice dripping.

“Did he say when he’s coming back?” My face is covered in juice from chin to nose.

“We don’t know. So we can’t waste time.”

I scrape the rind with my teeth until there’s nothing but a few white eye-shapes.

“Where did he go?” My face tingles with unexpected tears, because under that question are ten more about why he took Serafina and not me.

“He went to the airport.” She shrugs as if that’s all the information she has, plucking another orange from the bowl.

Etta hands me a clean cloth napkin so I can wipe away the juice.

“Some vampire business.” Silvia cuts the second orange. Again, nothing. The cone of connection the oranges opened was for me alone.

“With Serafina?”

The bitch passing magazines out to the Gargiulos. Did you wonder for one second?

You only need numbers and an old wives’ book to tell the Scangas where he’s weak. They know. They all know .

“ Si .” She offers fruit instead of further explanation.

I taste it this time, remembering how he hand-fed me sticky, forced orgasms our wedding night.

“The last thing I remember is Laro.” I leave off the darkness of the draining house, Laro’s attack, the card he shoved in my face.

Until my father, who’s so soft, lets Domenico go home to talk to everyone he knows, because you… you fucking witch.

“He said Serafina and Domenico betrayed Carmine.”

The Scangas. The last of the Orolios. All of them were running stupid magazines back and forth through the Gargiulo house .

Did he take Serafina to punish her? She betrayed him. He has to know. Is he hurting her? Is she hurting him? I don’t know who to worry about. Both? Neither? And what am I supposed to do about it, when this orange tastes like sex feels?

“It’s too much,” I say with juice dripping down my chin.

“Your mind has to resist the thrall,” Silvia says. “Wear it down. Then we keep you away from him so he can’t take your blood again.”

“I want him to take it.”

Not just that. Want is too weak a word. I’m desperate for him to do it again. The sugar is hitting my blood. I’m calmer, and in that satisfied space, I can feel all of my desires more clearly.

Will I still be this desperate to give myself to him it if he hurts Serafina? If he fucks her?

Yes. I hate it. But yes.

I wipe my hands.

Do you see how every bad decision is about you, you, you?

You told him to let that Scanga boy go to his mother.

Whose blood is that?

It was Domenico Scanga’s blood. I knew that then, I know it now.

It doesn’t matter. It never matters .

Serafina wasn’t exactly available when Domenico was alive. I overheard her fight with one of our human bodyguards though the wall. They were speaking Italian, but there was no mistaking the tone or the breathy silence that followed.

“Did Domenico go with them?” I ask.

“That’s all over now, dear.” She pats my hand. “Not to worry.”

“Did he or not?”

“He’s not here. And not there either.” She makes the sign of the cross.

I know exactly what that means, and I’m about to demand details when Etta clears her throat loudly. Silvia sits straight. Behind her, Ario enters the kitchen like a black cloud on a clear day.

“She’s up,” he says, referring to me in the third person while looking directly at me. “Good morning.”

“Hey.”

He speaks to Etta and Silvia in Italian, clearly annoyed. Nunzio’s name peppers the conversation. He leaves in a huff.

“What was that about?” I ask.

“Viaro’s young. He has trouble being awake when the sun is up, and this other one isn’t so old either. Nunzio is supposed to watch you in the day.” She winks.

Silvia intends to use their weakness in the sunlight to take me to Peaceful Island whether I like it or not.