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SAbrINA

“ D eclined.”

The card is flicked back in my general direction. It lands on my backpack, which is lying open on the counter while I rummage through pocket after pocket in search of more resources. Humiliation turns my face as hot as the planet Mercury.

“Try this one.” I hand another card over. “Please.”

I flash a smile. This usually gets me somewhere. But not today.

The guy on the other side of the counter is about my age and immune to smiles. He rolls his eyes and purses a set of thin, wrinkled lips that have probably never seen a stick of moisturizer.

“Also declined.” His voice is like a symphony of honking geese.

At least he doesn’t throw my card this time. He pushes it across the counter with a spindly forefinger and plucks the paper bag out of my hand with a smirk.

Maybe I wronged him in a past life and he’s discovered his chance at revenge. I don’t know. I don’t care. All I want is my freaking pretzel.

I need that pretzel. It’s now been eighteen hours since I’ve eaten. This morning I was so anxious about my escape plan that I couldn’t deal with breakfast. And forget airplane food. My last encounter with airplane food included three days of puking my guts out into a mop bucket. The little cellophane bags of oyster crackers passed out by the flight attendants probably would have been okay but why take chances?

Grabbing a bite to eat as soon as I landed in New York seemed like a much better plan. New York food has never made me puke. But I didn’t count on my bank cards being useless and I’m not carrying any cash that would be accepted on this side of the Atlantic.

“You need to get away from the counter now,” honks the terrible man who stole my pretzel bag. The red and white tag pinned to his shirt says BOLTON. The name doesn’t fit him. He doesn’t seem like a Bolton at all. I would have guessed his name to be something like Peter. Or Dick.

“You’re blocking the other customers,” he complains when I don’t move fast enough. He sniffs some wet snot back into his ill-mannered skull and glares.

Maybe I should just grab the pretzel bag and run. I’ll come back when my card situation is fixed and shower him with enough money for fifty pretzels. It could work. Bolton doesn’t seem especially spry. There are no security guards or cops in sight at the moment. Everyone who isn’t lined up here for a pretzel is busy getting hysterical about some massive cyberattack, which I haven’t had the time to worry about yet.

There are two problems with my plan.

The first is that I’m not a fast runner. Even in the best of circumstances, all I can do is caper along at a pathetic trot and right now I can’t even manage a trot. The small ankle fracture I suffered when I slipped in a puddle aboard my uncle’s yacht on Easter Sunday has healed but I’m still limping. A toddler could outrun me.

Also, no matter how hungry and grumpy I might get, I like to think I’m still above stealing an airport pretzel.

“If you could just hold onto my pretzel,” I say to Bolton. “I need a minute to call the bank and sort this out. I’ll be right back.”

Bolton stares at me with dull eyes the color of rotting avocados. The heady scent of baking dough is torture. My empty stomach clenches.

But Bolton, the overlord of the JFK Airport pretzel kiosk, knows no mercy. He stuffs the bag into an overflowing garbage can and motions to the customer behind me.

What a prick.

Seriously, nobody in this zoo of an airport is having a fun day but why the rudeness?

I don’t even get a chance to sputter out an insult because the woman at my back is elbowing me out of the way. Can’t say I blame her. I’d gladly elbow someone right now for the chance to eat. With my backpack hugged to my chest, I glance around in search of refuge and find none.

In every direction there are upset people.

Some of them are yelling at each other. Some of them are yelling at phones. Others look around with expressions of blank despair at the scene of Airport Armageddon while a deep overhead voice repeats the news that all flights have been cancelled until further notice.

I’m going to assume ‘all flights’ includes my connecting flight to Denver. I’ve come this far and now I’m marooned with thousands of other unhappy travelers. It’s time to embrace the horror.

Hours earlier, as I watched Sicily get left behind from the scuffed window of a commercial jet, I was half expecting my uncle to pull enough strings to force a U-turn back to Palermo. The notorious influence of feared mafia don Vittorio Messina should never be underestimated. His grim, Armani-suited men would have stormed the cabin to kidnap me right out of my cramped coach seat while no one dared to raise an eyebrow.

To my relief, this didn’t happen.

The plane crossed the Atlantic without incident and landed safely in New York. No furious, overdressed mafia men were waiting at the gate. I figured I was in the clear. My next plane was supposed to leave for Denver in thirty minutes. From there I’d hop on a flight to the small regional airport less than an hour from my sister’s house in small town Sleepy Rock. I thought I’d be hugging my beloved big sister and cuddling my angelic baby niece before the sun set and I could hardly wait.

Instead, when I look around right now, the words ‘all hell has broken loose’ jump to mind. Some massive international cyberattack has crippled air travel and turned the scene into a dreadful mess of angry businessmen, crying children, barking service dogs and impolite pretzel vendors.

The chances that I’ll reach Colorado today are now hovering around zero.

As I locate an empty square foot of wall space to slouch against, disappointment now overtakes hunger as my primary emotion.

My sister’s baby, my very first precious little niece, was born twenty-five days ago and I haven’t even seen her yet. The minute Anni went into labor I was ready to drop everything and fly to her side. My oldest sister Daisy was already there. Daisy got to be in the delivery room watching the miracle of our niece’s birth while I was stuck in a Sicilian villa, limping around on my mobility scooter and pleading with my mother.

Arguing with Giulia Messina Barone is more work than a twelve-hour livestream gaming marathon. Once my mother is stuck on an idea, she’s not easily moved. Though she was delighted by the news of her first grandchild’s arrival and impatient to hold Anni’s baby in her arms, she refused to leave Aunt Marcella in the middle of a severe gout attack.

I have multiple reasons to be less than fond of Aunt Marcella. A great aunt on my mother’s side, she’s part of the vast wilderness of Sicilian relatives I’m still in the process of sorting out. For decades she’s lived in a suite within one of the many massive villas owned by Uncle Vittorio, the head of the family and my mother’s older brother. She rings an antique silver bell every time she wants a tray of olives delivered or her pillows fluffed and she calls me colorful variations of ‘whore’ in muttered Italian when my mother is out of earshot.

But what pisses me off the most is how she runs my mother ragged with her never-ending demands. She always insists that she’s about to die from various health afflictions and she’s definitely lying about her gout. Last week I caught her doing disco dance aerobics on the villa’s seaside balcony. Then she threw a crystal bowl at the wall when I refused to massage her feet.

Anyway, I’ve had enough of letting some pretend gout stand between me and my niece. I’m capable of getting on a plane without supervision even if Uncle Vittorio doesn’t agree. Despite all the drama about cyberattacks and pretzel disappointment, my heart has felt far lighter since my first glimpse of the Manhattan skyline.

The year I’ve spent in Sicilian exile feels like a decade. The sudden and extremely violent death of my tyrannical father had left everyone in need of a new life plan. The gothic Long Island mansion where I’d grown up wasn’t a place anyone wanted to see again. As the youngest and only unmarried daughter, it made sense that I’d be the one to offer my mother the support she needed.

The intricate mafia network Albie Barone had spent a lifetime building imploded after a bloody feud with the Amato family. All the New York mafia bits and pieces were scattered to the wind. Since then, I’ve heard rumors that the captains and soldiers have been fighting like jackals over the Barone criminal empire but I don’t spend much energy worrying about what that pack of lunatics are up to.

Anni and her husband Luca were at the center of all the Cosa Nostra madness. Leaving the mafia isn’t like leaving a desk job. There was plenty of grumbling when Luca renounced his position and it’s only because everything was so fucked up that he was allowed to escape at all.

Luca and Anni decided it was best to exit the New York scene for good and chose a small town in southwestern Colorado as their new permanent home. Luca’s older brother Cale, formerly the grim reaper hitman for the Amato crime family, lives nearby. He runs an animal sanctuary with his wife. Sometimes I wonder if the population of Sleepy Rock, Colorado is aware of their status as a country refuge for ex-mafia brutes.

I’m sure they are not. And I’m sure it’s better that way.

Anyway, I never planned to stay in Sicily forever. I miss New York. I miss my sisters even more. And I’m growing restless under the scrutiny of strict Uncle Vittorio, who doesn’t believe that young single women from notorious mafia families ought to be free to do much of anything, let alone gallivant around the globe with no chaperone.

The last time I visited the states over the holidays, I was escorted on the family jet by three of my uncle’s henchmen. They were about as much fun as influenza. However, though it’s nice to travel without being monitored by heavily armed, humorless gangsters, I kind of wish my uncle’s guard dogs were around right now. They’d throw a wad of cash in Bolton’s face and force him to give me ALL of the pretzels immediately.

Unfortunately, I’m on my own.

I fled the villa at the crack of dawn with a lie that I planned to attend mass. My mother was so pleased by my sudden affection for the church she didn’t even notice the suitcase I was dragging behind me.

The terminal becomes more crowded with each passing minute. The racket of mingled voices reaches a crescendo. People pace and gesticulate and bump into each other and snarl and pout.

It’s beginning to feel like we’re on the cusp of something apocalyptic.

The gaming sector of my brain clicks on. Call it a coping mechanism. Some people choose meditation tactics in times of stress. I don’t find this useful. My panic is only kept at bay if I treat new challenges like a game.

When I’m not avoiding Aunt Marcella’s sharp tongue and my mother’s fussy attention, my time is spent learning code and tweaking various video game designs. I’m very proud of the handful I’ve already finished. Two of them have attracted enough attention from independent sales to merit offers from game developers. I’m still hoping to get back to the Manhattan School of Game Design, where I was taking classes before everything went haywire.

But right now, instead of spiraling and hyperventilating, it’s much more enjoyable to imagine the crowd as fellow gamers. Our goal is to escape from the airport before the invasion of the zombie horde. Or maybe before some brain-eating plague cloud reaches New York. The reason doesn’t matter. We’re all fighting the same fight.

I watch as a woman drops her green energy drink on the tile floor. Her face crumples and her shoulders slump.

She shouldn’t give up. If she gives up, the zombies might get her. Or maybe the plague. I haven’t decided. I have the urge to shout, “Your life force is still intact! Keep going!”

But she’d probably think this is weird.

It is weird. I’m weird. Not many people are allowed to see just how weird I am.

It’s probably best not to inflict my weirdness on the entire crowded airport terminal. Everyone is tense enough as it is.

The defeated woman shuffles away, leaving a green energy drink puddle behind.

When my eyes shift, I’m startled to discover that I’m being watched. An icy finger of anxiety crawls up my spine.

The man leans against the opposite wall and wears a navy blue suit with no tie. Three top buttons of his wrinkled white shirt are open. He looks to be in his mid-thirties, about ten years my senior. He thinks he’s discreet when he slips a gold band from his left hand before sliding it into his pocket. He’s wrong.

The man realizes he has my attention and takes this as an invitation to saunter in my direction. While he’s busy sauntering, I fire off a text to Daisy.

My oldest sister will no doubt be surprised to hear I’m on the same continent. I didn’t mean to be secretive. I absolutely planned to spend some time with her after visiting Colorado to surprise Anni. But right now I hope she’ll forgive the lack of notice.

The man in the suit stops right in front of me. He flashes a confident grin.

A tickle of wariness grows into fear. My uncle’s associates are endless. This jerk might be one of them.

“ Ciao ,” he says. “ Ho aereo da Palermo.”

He speaks terrible Italian with a stilted American accent and thumps his chest like he’s saying ‘ME TARZAN’. I don’t remember seeing him on the plane from Palermo, but then again I wasn’t inventorying the passengers.

At least I can rule out the possibility that he’s one of my uncle’s men. Vittorio Messina wouldn’t be caught dead hiring a clown like this.

“Hello,” I grumble in English and then look back at my phone, hoping Daisy has answered within the last three seconds. She hasn’t.

“You’re American!” he exclaims as if this is the most exciting development ever.

“So are you,” I mutter, holding my phone closer to my face while scrolling. The newsfeed is screaming with unpleasant headlines.

“Global Cyber Outage Hits Airlines Worldwide”

“Travelers Stranded With No End In Sight”

“Multiple Banking Sites Reported Down Internationally”

The man leans a palm against the wall to my right, too close for comfort.

“You were sitting a few rows in front of me on the flight,” he says. He glances over his shoulder at the hectic terminal before leaning in. There’s alcohol on his breath. “I guess we’re all stuck now. I was heading to LA. How about you?”

None of his fucking business. That’s where.

If I had Anni’s feisty energy, I’d say this right to his face. When I’m around family I have no trouble firing sharp comebacks but around strangers, particularly strange men, I’m too uneasy to be bold.

“My name’s Gavin,” he says, not deterred by my silence. “Real estate attorney. I was in Sicily on behalf of a client. Maybe we could team up and rent a car. This feels like a good opportunity for a road trip adventure.”

He chuckles at his non-joke and lets his eyes subtly rake my body. I’m still wearing the green Minecreeper hoodie I threw on this morning because airplanes tend to be chilly. My black and purple plaid skirt is at aesthetic odds with the hoodie and my long brown hair hangs loose in tangled waves after recently escaping from a messy bun. I don’t like makeup and I’ve often been told that I look way younger than twenty-five.

I don’t want to talk to this guy. I’ve done nothing to encourage him and yet he hovers inches away, confident that he’ll get what he wants if he just keeps grinning.

It’s a relief when my phone buzzes with an incoming call from Daisy.

“Get lost,” I say to Gavin. “And go call your wife instead of hassling random women.”

Not a bad parting line. I’m proud of myself as I walk away without awaiting his response.

“Thank god,” I say into the phone as I turn a corner, dodge a garbage can and nearly trip over the outstretched legs of a man who has decided to sprawl on the floor. “You’ll never believe what kind of a day I’m having.”

There are no seats available anywhere. Even finding an empty section of wall to lean against is a challenge. I settle for an unoccupied spot beneath bright digital screens, all of them ominously listing every flight as ‘CANCELLED’.

“Sabrina!” exclaims Daisy. “How did you get to New York?”

“I invented a teleportation device.”

“Oh,” she says with hushed awe.

I adore my sister but she can be a trifle gullible.

“Daisy, I’m kidding. I snuck out of Vittorio’s villa prison and took a plane from Palermo to go see Anni and the baby.”

“I heard the planes weren’t working.”

“This was before the cyberattack. I’ll explain everything but can you come pick me up? I can’t even call a car because my cards don’t work and I’m not sure a driver would show up anyway now that the traveling world has plummeted into anarchy.”

“Hmm,” she says. “Okay but it will take a really long time to get there.”

“Do you and Big Man Bowie have the truck at Jones Beach today?”

Daisy’s husband is the inventor of the food truck franchise Big Man Bowie’s Burgers. I think it was Anni who initially refused to call our new brother-in-law anything other than Big Man Bowie. The trend stuck.

Big Man Bowie might be the most cheerful, least complicated man on the planet. He loves the beach and he loves feeding people red meat and most of all he loves my sister. He and Daisy eloped three days after they met.

I’ll admit Big Man Bowie’s trademark hamburgers are exceptional. He’s generously tried to share his secret aioli sauce recipe and offers random tips about toasting thick brioche buns to perfection.

Too bad my interest in cooking hovers somewhere near my interest in slugs. As long as the food lands on my plate, I don’t give a hot damn what it went through to get there.

“No, we’re in Atlanta,” Daisy says. “We just got here last night. So much driving.”

“Atlanta?”An icky feeling starts to bloom in my gut. “The one about ten states and a thousand miles away?”

“Yup. This weekend is the annual food truck convention. Bowie is presenting his white truffle burger with mushrooms and caramelized onions. Didn’t I tell you about the white truffle burger?”

“Probably,” I mutter, feeling defeated as yet another complication is added to my situation. It never occurred to me that Daisy and Big Man Bowie would be out of town.

“Brina?” says my sister when I’m silent for too long. “Are you still there?”

“Yeah, I’m here. Don’t worry and have fun at your convention. I’ll figure something else out until I can get a flight to Colorado.”

She sighs. “You should call Mama. She keeps texting, asking if I’ve heard from you. She’s so worried.”

The stab of guilt is worse than hunger and anxiety combined.

I hate the fact that I’ve caused my mother grief. But if I’d admitted that I was taking off on my own she would have freaked and tipped off my uncle. He would have sent a Sicilian army to stop me. Reminding these people that I’m not a helpless child does no good. I’ve tried.

I’ve learned to accept that my mother will still see me as her baby when I’m fifty. As for Uncle Vittorio, he’s a little behind the times when it comes to respecting feminism. He also feels a lot of brotherly remorse for the abuse his younger sister endured during the years she was married to my father. Ever since she moved to Sicily, he’s been on a mission to keep her happy. If my mother is unhappy, then my uncle is unhappy. And if Uncle Vittorio is unhappy, heads tend to roll. Literally.

“I’ll call Mama,” I promise my sister. “Say hi to the burger prince for me. Love you.”

“Love you too, sweetie,” Daisy replies with typical upbeat cheer. “Be careful.”

The terminal is teeming with humanity and the temperature is starting to feel unpleasant. I’d probably be cooler standing outside on city concrete in the direct summer sunlight.

I pull the green hoodie off and tie it around my waist. The purple tee underneath fits a bit tight thanks to one too many trips through the laundry. A pair of men wearing New York Giants jerseys perk up and nudge each other with jackass grins while gawking at my chest. My sisters like to joke that I won the boob lottery but many times I’ve wished the jackpot was a little smaller.

After a deep breath and a whispered Hail Mary prayer that can’t hurt, I put a call through to my mother.

She answers instantly. “Sabrina! Grazie a dio! Do you know how worried I’ve been?” She unleashes a long string of Italian exclamations that I can’t even keep up with and I need to wait for her to stop.

“I’m sorry, Mama. I didn’t mean to sneak off. Didn’t you get the note I left taped to your bathroom mirror?”

“A note! I thought you’d been kidnapped. I had to call your uncle. Now there’s all this cyber stuff. Where are you?”

“I haven’t been kidnapped. Like I told you in the note, I took a flight to New York. I’m here now.”

“You are in New York all alone?” Her voice starts to sound weepy. “What made you do this?”

I grit my teeth and silently count to three so I don’t snap at her. “Mama, I’m going to see Anni and the baby. As soon as the planes are back up in the air I’ll fly to Colorado.”

“But what will you do right now?” she wails. “Your sisters aren’t there. Nobody is there. What will happen to you?”

All of this emotional drama is making my head hurt. While I’m trying to come up with the right words to set my mother’s mind at ease, she makes a plan of her own.

“Your uncle will know what to do,” she says. “Vittorio will tell the New York families to go protect you. They will do it right away. They are all frightened of my brother.”

Oh boy.

Now I have a horrifying vision of half the New York mafia invading JFK Airport on a quest to scoop me up in order to win favor with the dreaded Vittorio Messina. Instead of being locked in a Sicilian castle, I’ll be locked in a New York castle until my unpredictable uncle decides to let me out.

No fucking thanks.

“Mama, listen to me. Uncle Vittorio doesn’t need to call anyone. I’m perfectly safe and I’ll be staying with friends.”

She sniffs. “Who are these friends?”

Shit. I’m really not good at improvising. My sisters have always been my best friends and my external social circle is limited to basement dwelling gamers and former classmate acquaintances.

As my brain thumbs through the short list of contacts who wouldn’t mind a call for an airport rescue and yet wouldn’t expect to see me naked as a reward, the results are depressingly shallow.

But then inspiration strikes and I snatch it without a second thought.

“Monte Castelli,” I blurt out. “I’m staying with him and his brother, Nico.”

“WHO?” she shouts.

“Mama, you remember the Castelli brothers. They are Luca’s best friends. They were very helpful during our…um, domestic issue last year.”

The ‘domestic issue’ involved my father getting his head blown off by Luca when he stormed into the house with the Castelli brothers on a mission to rescue Anni.

My mother makes a noncommittal ‘hmph’ sound as she thinks this over. She’s not getting more hysterical, which is a good sign. She thinks very highly of her son-in-law and obviously Luca trusts Monte.

And, odd as it sounds, I sort of trust Monte too.

Though he’s been in and out of trouble since his early teens and his reputation as an oversexed hookup king is known far and wide, I’m comfortable around him. Monte was often assigned as my bodyguard when I traveled back and forth between Long Island and the city. We’ve been alone together dozens of times and he never once tried anything shady. That doesn’t mean we’re close buddies, but I’ve been on the receiving end of enough crooked behavior from men to appreciate the ones who don’t openly stare at my tits while salivating and covering their schemes with a phony polite act.

There’s nothing phony or polite about Monte Castelli. Nothing at all.

Honestly, he’s a chronically sarcastic asshole. Whenever we exchange more than two sentences, spirited arguments tend to break out.

But Monte has a few good qualities. He’s loyal to the people he cares about. He has the courage to step up when it really counts.

And he can be funny. Profane and infuriating, but also funny.

“Monte is a good boy,” my mother decides.

I’m glad she’s calming down but I stifle a snort of laughter. Monte Castelli is nobody’s version of a ‘good boy’.

“Sure he is,” I mutter.

“And he understands the way things are. He knows the family. He’ll protect you.”

“Of course he will, Mama.”

She sighs. “You should apologize to your uncle.”

“What on earth for?”

“Vittorio worries about you.”

I’m glad she’s not here to see the way I’m rolling my eyes. Mafia bosses are infinite control freaks. I ought to know. I’ve been stuck with them my whole life. Arguing does no good. The best way to deal with them is play nice and hope they move on to some other target instead of making your life hell.

“Please tell Uncle Vittorio that I’m very sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused. I hope he forgives my reckless indiscretions.”

“You will be careful, bambina ?”

“Yes. I love you, Mama.”

Ending the call with my anxious mother is a relief. It could have gone a lot worse.

Now all I need to do is beg Monte Castelli to let me crash on his couch for tonight. Or maybe for a few nights. I’m not sure how long this disaster will take to sort out. As reality sets in, my nerves, which were already frazzled, whirl into a cyclone.

Monte and I haven’t exactly been in close contact since I left New York. From what I’ve heard, when Monte’s not haunting his father’s Lower East Side pizzeria he’s prowling around the underbelly of the city doing illicit shit with the rest of the mafia thugs. I have no guarantee that he’ll even answer my call.

I hope he will. Yes, I think he will. Somehow I have faith in Monte.

Yet if I wait any longer, I’m sure I’ll talk myself out of this idea.

With a deep breath, I scroll to Monte’s contact information and click the green phone icon. The sound of my pounding heart is louder than the ring tone.

The seconds seem to stretch on endlessly before he picks up.