Echo, p.4
Echo, page 4
“Yes, I do.” Guilt tumbled all over my emotions, and I chastised myself. “I always need to rush to you when you call me, Papà.” I grasped his frail arm as he gripped the banister for support. “You need to lie down. Come, I’ll help you up the stairs.”
His exhale was heavy, but his voice came soft. “Principessa.” But then he said no more.
I looked into his eyes that were as dark as mine. “Yes, Papà?”
He slowly shook his head. “I do not deserve a daughter like you.”
Concern chased the guilt. “Do not say that.” I was the one who did not deserve him. The memory of the weight of the phone in my hands burned like betrayal. I did not know my mysterious gift giver. I did not know if he was friend or foe or intended Papà any harm. Shame fell past my lips, and I blurted out my suddenly guilty conscience. “I am sorry, Papà.”
Shaking his head, Papà dismissed me. “You have nothing to apologize for, child.”
Yes, I did. I had expressly gone against his wishes the moment I had accepted that cell phone. Even thinking about it made me remember every detail of the man who had given it to me, and heat struck my cheeks. “Come, I will help you upstairs and get you your medicine.” Praying my blush did not give me away, I gently coaxed Papà up the steps.
The effort wearing on him, he said nothing until we reached the second floor. His breathing labored, he cradled my hand on his arm and looked down at me. “I think it is time we stop worrying about the medicine, Sancia.”
Sancia.
Not cara mia, not Principessa.
My heart fell to the floor and shattered around me. “Papà?” Unable to move for fear of splintering apart, tears welled. “What are you saying?”
The lines in his face that were too many for his age curled around a tired smile. “Cara mia, I think we both know it is not working.”
“No.” No. “Do not say that. We will go back to the doctor. We will get a new medicine. We will—”
“Stop, Sancia.” Papà patted my hand. “We knew this would be an eventuality. You are not a child. You have never needed me. You are like your mother. You are smart and kind and good. You will be okay. I will at least make sure of that.”
“Papà, no.” Frantically blinking back tears, I started to lose control of the grief I had been pushing down for two years. “Stop saying these things.” I was not ready. “It is not time.”
“I am afraid I am out of time, cara mia.” Dropping his arm, he nodded toward my bedroom. “For tonight, get some sleep. We will talk in the morning once I have rested.” With effort, he turned toward his room.
Pain ruptured from every broken piece of my life. “I am not ready!”
His shoulders dropped, and he hung his head. “Neither am I, cara mia, neither am I. But I will live to see you become a woman, and your mother will look after you from above like she always has.” Without lifting his head, Papà glanced back at me. “Same as I will look after you once I am gone.”
This was not happening. “Papà.”
“Always, cara mia.” He walked into his bedroom and shut the door.
Covering my mouth so I did not openly sob, I fled to my room and shut my own door.
Then I collapsed on the bed, and the tears came.
Wrenching, heavy sobs that shook my body and robbed me of all breath.
But they did not take away the pain.
Erico
I made it to the foot of the driveway before I lit into Giancarlo. “What the fuck was that?”
Glancing up from his cell, Giancarlo threw me a look that he thought was intimidating. “What was what?”
“You know damn well what I’m talking about.”
“Since I don’t, go ahead and enlighten me, brother.”
Cagey, sarcastic prick. “Whose house was that?” I challenged.
“None of your business.” He went back to fucking around on his cell phone.
Ademaro sighed from the back seat. “He’s going to find out eventually. May as well tell him.”
Giancarlo spun in his seat. “I don’t pay you for your opinion. I pay you to do the banking.”
In a rare show of emotion, Ademaro let loose with the Mantovani smirk. “You don’t pay me at all, brother. I assign and allocate my own salary.”
“I am the fucking Don of this famiglia.” Giancarlo looked from Ademaro to me. “Both of you better remember that.” His attention going back to his phone, he gave us his version of a fuck off and dismissal.
I glanced in the rearview mirror at Ademaro. “You know whose house that was?”
“Yes.”
“You know what this means?”
Ademaro gave me a slow nod of resignation. “Yes.”
Giancarlo fucking lost it. Pointing with his phone still in his hand, he aimed at me first. “Don’t think for one goddamn minute I don’t see through you. You’re the trigger because you don’t give a fuck about this famiglia or any other damn thing.” His aim hit Ademaro. “Same goes for you. You do the books because you fucking hide from the decisions that need to be made.” He shook his head in disgust. “Neither of you has any fucking loyalty. This famiglia stays alive because I make the hard decisions both of you are too selfish to make.”
“So now you’re fucking selfless?” Right. “That’s what you’re calling tonight? An act of selflessness?” He was out of his goddamn mind. “Is that the bullshit you tell yourself when you think about your first wife? She was an act of selflessness?”
Faster than I thought he was capable of, Giancarlo drew on me.
For the second time in my life, the motherfucker aimed a gun at my head, point-blank. “Speak of Maria again, and I will shoot you.” Low, controlled, he issued the warning like he meant it.
He didn’t.
“Go ahead,” I taunted. “Pull the trigger. Show the Cosa Nostra who’s fucking Don.” He wouldn’t. “Give them a glimpse of the violent motherfucking reputation I built for you.” He never pulled the trigger. Not on me, not on any of our enemies. The sick fuck saved his brutality for his women.
Giancarlo’s voice dropped lower. “Your problem is that you think I won’t.”
“Erico,” Ademaro muttered in warning from the back seat.
“I don’t have to think a damn thing.” Ignoring Ademaro, I threw a disgusted glance at Giancarlo. “I was there. I saw your wife.” What was left of her. “Hard to forget that kind of mess, especially when I was the one who had to clean it up.” Done with his bullshit, I said what I should’ve years ago. “You’re a sorry fucking excuse for a man and a Don.” And I should’ve done something about it long before this. “Ademaro’s the one who should be sitting where you are.”
His false calm slipping, pressing his 9mm into my temple harder, Giancarlo bit out a threat. “Keep going.”
“You want me to keep going?” I slammed on the brakes. “No fucking problem.”
“Erico!” Ademaro snapped as he was thrown against his seat belt.
Glaring at Giancarlo, I addressed my other brother. “Get out of the car, Ademaro.”
“No.”
With the precision that came with familiarity, I drew my Glock and aimed at Ademaro. “Not a request.”
Swearing under his breath, Ademaro reached for the door. “If either of you kills the other, I’m killing the one left standing. On principal,” he added, before getting out of the SUV and slamming the door shut.
I didn’t hesitate. I trained my aim on my oldest brother. “Listen carefully, because I’m only going to say this once.”
Giancarlo seethed. “Fuck you. You’re in no position to—”
I laid out, in acute detail, exactly what I would do to him. “If you touch her, if you so much as think about taking her as your wife, I will break both of your legs, cut off your hands, then I will torture you. You’ll be begging me to end your life before I’m through with you.” Glaring at my piece-of-shit brother, I gave him the last warning he would get from me. “Sancia Santoro is off. Fucking. Limits. You understand me?”
Giancarlo didn’t miss a beat. “I understand that no matter who the fuck you think you are, you are nothing more than a capo. You are not Don Mantovani. You do not make the decisions for this famiglia. I do. My business is my business. So understand this, Enforcer. Next time you threaten me, I will kill you.”
“You can try, motherfucker.”
Ademaro opened the back door and slid into his seat. “Incoming vehicle, two hundred meters ahead.” He closed his door. “Get moving.”
Glaring at Giancarlo, holstering my Glock, I hit the gas.
Ademaro buckled his seat belt. Giancarlo lowered his 9mm, and we all stared straight ahead as a work truck full of laborers passed us going the opposite direction.
“Drive to the airport,” Giancarlo ordered.
Hell no. “Fuck off.”
“Do it.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“You’re going to New York tonight.” Shoving his Beretta inside his suit jacket, Giancarlo traded his gun for his cell.
“I’m not going anywhere tonight.” I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. No fucking way was I leaving right now. “I just got back from New York. Whatever it is, it can wait.”
“No, it can’t. The Arcuris moved in on our territory again. We need a show of force.” Giancarlo made a call. “Consigliere, is the jet ready to go?”
Sancia
A faint vibration jostled me from sleep.
My eyes swollen, I forced them open.
The room dark, the window open, I glanced around.
The vibration sounded again, and I remembered.
The cell phone.
With a heavy heart and too much guilt, I slipped off the bed and reached under the mattress. My fingers curled around the small device, and it vibrated a third time.
Pulling it out, I stared at the screen.
Incoming call. Ghost.
Ghost?
I swiped my finger across the screen like I had seen Papà do countless times. Then I held the phone to my ear as I sat on the cool tiled floor, but I did not speak.
His deep voice rumbled through the line. “Principessa.”
“Yes?” I whispered, my voice hoarse, my throat hurting.
His tone immediately changed from liquid masculinity to sharp dominance. “What’s wrong?”
“I do not wish to speak about it.” I couldn’t. I would start crying, and I did not want this man to hear me cry.
“Talk to me right now, or I’m calling Santoro,” he threatened.
Pulling my legs up, I rested my forehead against my knees. “Papà is asleep.”
“Don’t care. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Closing my eyes, I inhaled deep, hoping I could smell his scent from his phone but it was already gone. “Could you talk to me instead?” I hesitated, but then I spoke my mind. “I just want to hear your voice.”
He let out a derisive sound of cynicism. “Nice try, Principessa. We’re not changing the subject. Start talking.”
I noticed a background noise at his end. “Where are you?”
“Where are you?” he countered.
I trailed a finger over the ancient tile. “On the floor.”
“Why the fu—” He cleared his throat. “Why are you on the floor?”
“You were about to curse.” Maybe in another lifetime, I would have smiled.
“You were about to tell me why your voice sounds like you went up against a pack of cigarettes and lost. A couple hours ago, you sounded like an angel. Now you sound like you’ve been screaming or crying. Since you don’t strike me as the hysterical type, I’m going with the latter.” His voice became quieter. “So tell me, Principessa. Who made you cry?” His voice lowered with lethal intent. “Who do I need to kill?”
The tears, they welled anyway. “You think I sound like an angel?”
He inhaled, then let it out slowly. “I did. Now I think you sound like a woman avoiding the question.”
A shiver ran up my spine and erupted into chill bumps that raced across the back of my neck. “You think I am a woman?”
That time, he did not hide his curse. “Gesù Cristo. How old are you, Sancia?”
The tone of his voice, the way he asked it, I did not keep the answer from him like I had before. “Almost eighteen.”
Silence.
Pressing the phone to my ear, I lowered my legs and sat up straight. “Hello?”
“I’m here,” he muttered.
Alarm prickled at the edges of my already weary conscience. “I said something wrong?”
“No.”
“But you are not saying anything.” Before, he was talking. Now he was not. I should not have told him my age.
“I’m thinking.”
Oh no. “About?”
“Who I have to fucking kill.”
“I….” I did not know how to respond to that. I had ignored it the first time, but now I was not sure I should. “I do not know if you are speaking in jest.”
“You don’t talk like a seventeen-year-old.”
“What does that mean?” How did other women my age speak?
“Jest?” he repeated.
“I read many books,” I defended.
“No kidding.”
He didn’t say anything else, and neither did I.
A moment passed, then another.
I pulled my legs back up and listened to the background noise. I strained to hear his breathing, and I rested my head against my knees, but he still did not talk.
I neither rushed to speak, nor felt uncomfortable with the silence.
As far as my memory went, I grew up an only child. Silence was not my enemy.
His voice finally broke the spell he had created. “All right, what does ‘almost’ mean in Sancia speak?”
“Scusassi?”
“You heard me, Principessa. When do you turn eighteen?”
Lifting my head, I glanced at the glowing numbers of the clock on the nightstand. It wasn’t quite midnight yet. “Three days.” Technically—for another two minutes. Then it would be two days.
“Cristo,” he muttered before inhaling deep again. “I’m on a plane. I’m supposed to be gone for two days.”
“Oh.” A plane. That was the background noise, and why was he swearing about the fact that he would be gone for the next two days? I wanted to ask, but did not. “Are you allowed to use the phone on a flight?” I had never flown before. I did not know for certain, but sometimes when Papà was not at home and the house staff did not know I was around, they would turn on the television to stations Papà forbade me from watching. I had seen snippets of shows, news. I remembered something about the rules of flying.
He made the sarcastic sound again. “I can do whatever I want on my plane.”
“Your plane?” He had his own airplane? I did not understand. I thought the important people rode in the back of cars and the bodyguards or drivers in the front. Growing up, that was all I saw. But he had said he was neither a driver nor a bodyguard, the SUV was his, and now he was in his own plane?
“L’aereo della mia famiglia,” he corrected.
“What do you do that your family needs their own airplane?” He did not look like any businessman I had ever seen.
“Tell me who made you cry, and I’ll answer that.”
“No one made me cry.”
“Rule number three. When I ask a question, you answer it.”
“You are adding a third rule?” I suddenly realized my entire life was rules. I did not want any more. I especially did not want any with this man.
“You want me to take the phone away?”
“I am not a child.” What was he going to do? Come into my bedroom and physically remove it from my hand? He was on an airplane.
“For three more days, you are.”
I glanced at the clock. “Now it is two days.”
Colorful language filled the line as he muttered a string of curses that was a mix of Italian and English. “You’re killing me, Principessa.”
“You said you were the one who does the killing.”
He uttered a word in English that needed no translation. “Motherfucker.”
“You are very fond of swearing.”
“You bring it out in me,” he stated flatly.
I was not sure how to take that, so I tried to move the conversation away from it. “Do you speak English?”
“Yes. And I didn’t say I did the killing. I asked who I needed to kill. Quit changing the subject, and tell me why you were crying before I turn this plane around and piss my brother off even more. Not that I give a damn about him, but you’ve suddenly made me fond of breathing.”
“I….” There was so much to decipher in everything he had just said, I almost was not sure where to start. “You do not care about your brother?” How could that be? I did not even remember mine, and I loved him.
“No, I don’t. Did Santoro make you cry?”
“Not directly,” I answered vaguely, still not ready to talk about it. “Why do you not like your brother?”
“How many reasons do you want?”
“There is more than one?”
“There’s one main reason with a hundred that follow. What did Santoro do?”
“It….” I swallowed past a sudden lump in my throat. “It is nothing he did. Not on purpose.” I tried closing my eyes against the painful playback of the conversation on the stairs with Papà earlier, but not seeing did not mean not remembering. Opening my eyes again to the dark room, I focused on the too-handsome, mysterious stranger on the phone to distract myself. “What is the main reason you do not like your brother?”
“He’s a fucking coward.” Spitting the words out with a vehemence I had not heard in his tone before, his anger took me off guard.
There was only one conclusion I could draw. “He hurt you?”
With an exhale, his tone came down. Then he spoke not with conviction, but with exhaustion. “I’m untouchable, Principessa. My brother doesn’t hurt me.”
“I wish I was untouchable.” I wish I had known my brother.
“Tell me what happened.”
I gripped the phone tighter, and then I said it. “Papà is sick.”
The man who had programmed his name as an apparition into his phone sighed. “Figured it was something like that. How long does he have?”
