Nineteen

ARIANA 

He was heavier than he looked.

I got his arm over my shoulder and pulled him up inch by inch, and he let me, which was worse than if he'd fought me. His head hung forward. His feet dragged. Every few steps he'd sag and I'd have to brace us both against the wall and wait for him to find his legs again.

She promised she'd be back.

The words sat in my head and wouldn't leave.

I kept walking. Kept dragging him. Kept my eyes on the corridor ahead.

And then I wasn't in the corridor anymore.

I was seven years old, standing on the front steps of a house that doesn't exist anymore. It was morning. My father had his jacket over one arm and his keys in his hand, and he was crouched down in front of me so we were the same height.

Papa, where are you going?

Work, sweetheart.

When are you coming back?

He'd smiled. He always smiled. That's the part I remember most — that smile. He had no idea it was the last one.

I'll be back before you know it. Wait for me.

Promise?

I promise.

I never saw him again.

—

"Hey."

Jack's weight shifted and I nearly dropped him. I caught the wall with my free hand and held us both there, breathing hard, my heart going too fast for reasons that had nothing to do with his size.

"Hey," I said back. "Walk."

He walked. Sort of.

I'll be back before you know it.

My father said that. Jack's mother said that. Two different houses, two different families, two different cities — and the same sentence, buried in the same shallow grave.

---

I looked at Jack's face.

His eyes were half closed. His jaw was slack. He looked nothing like the man who'd caught my wrist in that bathroom, nothing like the man who'd put a contract in front of me and told me I had no choice. He looked like a boy who'd been waiting by a window for a very long time.

Then I looked at the floor.

The marble. The same marble Skylark had dropped her cigarette on. The same floor where he'd been kneeling, calling for a woman who never came.

Where are you, Papa?

I never got an answer. I spent fifteen years asking and never got one.

But I was standing inside the De Luca house.

I was sleeping two doors down from Romano. I was passing him the bread at dinner. I was calling him nothing while he called me dear. Smiling at him. Thanking him. Watching him.

He was the first name on my list. He'd been the first name since I was ten years old, since I found the folder, since I read the company letterhead with my father's handwriting on it.

And now I was in his house.

Now I had a seat at his table.

Now every meal, every toast, every quiet conversation he had with the men who still called him Don — every single one was a chance to catch him in something.

I just had to be patient. Patient enough not to slip. Patient enough to keep playing the wife, the employee, the clueless girl from the wrong side of the city.

I tightened my grip on Jack's wrist.

I'll find out what happened to you, Papa.

The thought came clean and cold, the way the good ones always do.

Even if I have to play the wife. Even if I have to play the spy.

Even if I have to lie to everyone in this house — including the man I'm holding up.

I'll find out.

Jack stumbled. I caught him.

"Almost there," I said.

He didn't answer.

We kept walking.

ARIANA 

The door gave way easier than I expected.

I stumbled through with Jack's arm still over my shoulder and dragged him toward the bed, half-walking, half-carrying, my legs shaking under both of us.

"Okay," I breathed. "Okay. Almost."

I turned and lowered him toward the mattress.

My foot caught the edge of the rug.

I went down first. My back hit the bed and Jack came with me, dead weight, his chest landing on mine, and the air went out of me in one hard sound. His head dropped against my shoulder. His arm sprawled across my throat.

"Jack."

Nothing.

"Jack."

A snore.

I closed my eyes. Of course. Of course he was asleep. Of course, after everything — after the floor, after the corridor, after his mother's name in my ear — he'd pick this exact moment to stop being conscious.

I shoved at his shoulder. It didn't move. I tried again, got my hip under him, pushed, and he rolled about two inches before sagging back down on top of me.

"Shit," I whispered. "So much for doing good."

I lay there for a second, staring at the ceiling, listening to him breathe against my neck. The room was dark. The curtains were open but there was no moon. Just the shape of furniture. Just the hum of the house.

Then I heard it.

A footstep.

My whole body went cold.

I couldn't see them. I was pinned under Jack with my arms trapped at my sides and my head turned toward the wall. But I could feel them standing there. The way you feel someone in a room before you see them.

Then a voice.

Low. Calm. Amused.

"So this is what you do now, Jack."

I stopped breathing.

It wasn't Romano. It wasn't D.D. It wasn't John, or Angela, or any voice I'd learned in this house in the last week.

It was a voice I'd heard once before.

In the dark. With a lighter in one hand and a bullet in the wall behind my head.

I tried to turn. Jack's weight wouldn't let me. My voice came out thin, and it shook, and I hated that it shook.

"Who's there?"

Nothing.

"Answer me."

A pause. Long enough that I heard him take a step. Then another. Then stop.

Then, softly, from somewhere near the foot of the bed:

"You already know.”