“Oh, but you have to taste Connie’s
pitta ’nchiusa,
Rosa,” Don Gaetano said. “They’re unbeatable. Just like Nonna used to make.”
Zia Rosa let out a grunt. “Whatever.” She opened her purse and dug around in it until she pulled out the crumpled envelope, the one that held Tony’s letter. “We’re here to talk about this.”
Don Gaetano stared at it, grimly. “I heard about Tony’s passing.”
“Figured you would,” Zia Rosa said.
“I thought the whole thing was finished,” he said heavily.
“I told you.” Costantina was in the entryway, laden with a tray. “I told you she’d screw you over first chance she got.”
“Mamma, please,” Michael snapped.
Zia Rosa gave Costantina a slit-eyed look, then turned her gaze back to Gaetano. “I thought it was over, too,” she said. “I woulda never done anything with this letter, Gaetano. Not if you left us alone. But that bastard’s got my boy again, hear me? Same son of a bitch as before. You leaned on him twenty years ago, and we got him back. I need you to lean on him again. ’Cause if they hurt him . . .” She slapped the letter against her hand. “This goes out. All the copies, like Tony said.”
Connie marched over to the couch and set the tray down on the glass coffee table with a rattling thump. She poured a dollop of espresso from the pot into each of the seven cups. There was a heap of something that looked like tarts, with gleaming candied fruits and nuts in their centers.
She set the pot on the tray with an angry thud and straightened up. “Well?” she snapped at them all. “Come and get it before it gets cold. Don’t tell me I made the damn coffee for nothing.”
Kev sighed. The last thing he wanted to do with his gun hand was hold an espresso saucer with his pinkie in the air. He snagged a cup from the tray and downed the swallow of throat-scalding brew in one gulp, no sugar, nodded his thanks to the lady of the house, and took up his previous post, social duty fulfilled. No way were they going to make him eat one of the cookies. He had his limits.
Sean followed his example, and Petrie, too. Zia took her own sweet time, stirring in sugar lumps. She took one of the
pitta ’nchiusa
, looking at it from all sides, sniffing it before taking a cautious nibble.
Costantina watched intently as she chewed. “Nonna’s recipe. Just like hers, isn’t it? The trick is the wine you put in. Has to be a real good Calabrese red, or it don’t work worth a damn.”
Zia Rosa chewed, making no sign of having heard her cousin’s words. She swallowed. Sipped her coffee.
“I don’t need a cooking lesson from you, Tittina,” she said.
“Let’s get back to the subject, shall we?” Kev said, before the red-faced Costantina’s head had a chance to explode. “The letter? The guy who took Bruno? Can you give me a name? That’s all I want.”
And he would get it before he left. If he had to take those two guys apart chunk by bloody chunk.
Don Gaetano cleared his throat. “Well,” he said. “A lot of years have gone by. Things have changed. I don’t think it’ll be possible to—”
“I got this goddamn letter, Gaetano.” Zia Rosa’s voice began to shake. “I swear to God, I’ll send it. And if you have me whacked, the lawyer sends it. And you will go down.”
“Bullshit, it don’t,” Zia Rosa said. “I bet you’d rather spend your golden years in your fancy house, gobbling Tittina’s
pitta ’nchiusa
than sitting around in cell block C eating red beans. You can’t shit me.”
“You don’t understand what my father is trying to say,” Michael broke in, his voice reasonable. “Times have changed. We just don’t have the same kind of clout with this person that we had eighteen years ago.”
“That’s no problem,” Kev said, his heart thudding. “Just give me his name and his address. I’ll take care of the clout myself.”
Michael and Gaetano gave him a stare. He returned it.
“The name, please,” Kev said. “Give it to me. And we’ll leave.”
Zia Rosa put down her coffee cup with a clatter. “Tittina. Did you steal Nonna’s jewelry box from Madga’s apartment after she died?”
Oh, Christ, no. Kev cringed, inwardly. Zia’s timing sucked.
Costantina thrust out her chin. “How dare you accuse me!”
“You did!” Rosa spat the words out. “It’s true, eh? Eh?”
“I wouldn’t call it stealing!” Costantina yelled. “I’d call it salvage! The no-good trash next door would have stolen it, or it would have ended up in the garbage! And it should have been mine to begin with!”
“Nonna gave it to me,” Zia Rosa shot back. “Not you!”
“But I was older!” Costantina’s face had gone purple.
“Yeah, and you was also a nasty lying little
troia
who couldn’t keep her panties on!” Zia Rosa snarled.
“It ain’t my fault nobody ever wanted to get into yours,
brutta zitellaccia!
” Costantina shrieked back.
Things degenerated from there. Kev cursed. He was about to grab Zia to drag her out the door—
And the room exploded in gunfire.
“Hobart? The video, please?” King prompted his servant.
Hobart went to the computer pad. He tapped it and held up the screen in front of Bruno’s face.
“This is Lily’s debrief,” King said. “The whole thing would take hours. I selected a couple of highlights to illustrate my point.”
The sound was tinny, but he would know Lily’s soft voice anywhere, even distorted by the tweeter and rough with exhaustion.
“. . . all I know, he was already screwing other women. He’s a ladies’ man. He’d boff anything female with a pulse. And he’s attractive. Who could blame me?”
“Oh, no one, my dear.” It was King’s voice, coming from behind the camera. “Was he good?”
Lily froze for a moment. A smile curved her lips. Bruno had never seen that smile, or that strange, hard glitter in her eyes.
“Very good.” Her voice went low to a sexy purr. “Lots of stamina.”
The camera cut to a moving shot that swirled around her, taking in King and the woman, his other servant. “I was so entertained,” Lily went on, with a light laugh. “We had quite the mad affair.”
The camera flashed to King’s reaction, laughing. “ that’s funny,” he said. “You are unique, Lily.”
She gave the camera that cold-as-glass smile again. It chilled him to the bone. “I’m gratified,” she said. “I live to please.”
“I know you do,” King replied. “You’ve done very well, my dear. You’ve exceeded my expectations. I’m so pleased with you.”
“I’m glad that you are,” she said, her voice oddly wooden.
“In fact, after this is finished, I’ve decided to give you a very special privilege,” King went on. “A great honor. I’ve chosen you for the qualities of bravery and cunning that you displayed in this assignment. I am starting a new crop of embryos for the pods, my dear. And I have chosen to use your eggs—with my sperm.”
The camera cut to Lily’s reaction. She looked dumbstruck. Tears glittered in her eyes. One of them flashed down her cheek.
“Why?” she asked, her voice quavering. “Why me?”
“Because you are so special, my pet,” he crooned. “Do you have anything you want to say to me, my lovely Lily?”
She brushed the tears from her eyes. “I have to . . . to thank you,” she said. “What a gift you’ve given me.”
King’s voice was soft. “I always reward loyalty and talent, Lily.”
She sniffed. “I love you,” she said. “Just you. Only you.”
“And you belong to me, Lily? Just to me?”
She looked straight at the camera, her eyes blazing with raw emotion. “Yes,” she said. The camera cut to her stark, graceful profile. “All yours,” she added. The video flickered, disappeared.
Bruno couldn’t breathe. He stared at the screen, eyes frozen wide. Hobart gave him a wide, unpleasant smile.
“Yes, Bruno, that’s right,” King said. “She’s the chosen one. She reminds of Magda, you see.” He chuckled. “Not a coincidence, hmm? She reminded you of Magda, too! That’s why it worked so beautifully. I’ll be so glad to have her in my bed again. She is delicious, isn’t she? So affectionate, so uninhibited. But duty called.” He rubbed his hands together. “Finally things can get back to normal.”
Bruno’s insides were a screaming hole. He fought the pressure. Hung on to himself. Who he was. What he knew. “That’s a lie,” he said, roughly. “You doctored that tape. You can’t fuck with me.”
King looked over Melanie’s shoulder as she sprayed antibiotic ointment on his bitten hand and began to wind the gauze around it.
He shook his head with a sad smile. “I can, Bruno,” he said. “You see, there are things you don’t know about yourself. Things that I altered in you twenty-four years ago. Let’s see if the preliminary command codes still work, after all this time.” He grabbed Bruno’s chin and spoke a harsh, guttural word that Bruno did not recognize and almost instantly could no longer remember.
King stared at him, expectantly.
What?
Bruno wanted to snarl, but then he realized, horrified, that he could not speak. It was as if the nerves had been severed. He tried again. And again. Panic burst like fireworks inside him. He began to sweat. Cold chills racked his body. He fought his bonds, panting.
King was chuckling. “They still hold! That’s wonderful. Listen to this, Bruno.” He declaimed a longer phrase, also in that thick language. “Now, try to move,” he urged. “Go on. Give it your best shot.”
Fuck you,
Bruno wanted to scream, to shake his head, to spit in the guy’s face, but he couldn’t. He was physically paralyzed now. He sagged in his bonds, his head lolling to the side.
“My programming and medications back in those days were relatively primitive but still effective. It was an intensive learning curve for you. You were strapped into the programming device in a hypnotic trance for ten to fourteen hours a day. Did you ever wonder why your physical reflexes are so quick? Why learning martial arts came so easily to you?” The chair was tilting from Bruno’s weight, which was sagging to the side. King shoved him upright. “It was DeepWeave combat tapes. Remember that fight at the diner? Did you surprise yourself that night?” He stared into Bruno’s eyes and giggled. “Of course you did.”
He waited for Bruno’s response. “Oh, how funny—you’re still locked! One moment. Let me think . . .” He blinked. “Wouldn’t it be funny if I couldn’t remember the code to free you? You’d stay like that forever. I could make you do anything at all, you know. Put a gun to your head, pull the trigger. Mutilate yourself. Stop breathing. The power of DeepWeave as I have conceived it is tremendous.”
Bruno stared at him. Air sawed between his parted lips.
King slowly pronounced a phrase. A racking shudder went through Bruno’s body. He tried to speak. A scratchy croak came out.
“Bruno, think back to your first encounter with Lily at the diner,” King said. “Remember Lily saying the phrase ‘you’re my champion’?”
Bruno coughed as he heard the words echo in his memory. Lily’s lilting voice. The image of her, bent over her coffee in that black wig, her lips vivid scarlet. That was his memory, private and precious, and he didn’t want it to be fodder for this guy’s crazed agenda. He didn’t want it soiled and dishonored. But he had to know. “What if she did?”
“It was a command phrase, Bruno,” King said. “Programmed into you years ago. I linked it to images of your mother. You were in a phase of development where you continually fantasized about rescuing your mother from monsters. And you dreamed about saving your mother from her attackers for years after her death, no? The perfect setup.”
Bruno’s jaw ached. He refused to answer. His only defiance.
“Knowing that phrase would trigger all those powerful childhood emotions, I arranged for those emotions to transfer onto Lily. And then, of course, you consummated your sexual relationship immediately.”
Bruno clenched his teeth.
“The sex act that I commanded her to perform with you reinforced the programming. From then on . . .” He tousled Bruno’s hair with his bandaged hand. “You were her slave. My poor boy.”
“That’s not true,” he said. “You’re lying.” But even as the words left his mouth, he remembered those words she’d spoken in the diner. How they made him feel. She’d spoken them again, in the cabin, he suddenly thought. On that wild, incredible night. Soaring emotions, searing sex, right after she’d pronounced it . . . like a ceremonial vow.
All those feelings, all just because he had been programmed . . . ?
No.
He shook his head. “It’s a lie. Why mount those huge attacks? Why not have her drug me while fucking me? She had opportunities. There was no reason to risk your people like that, if Lily was—”
“That was a miscalculation,” King said gravely. “I wanted you alive, for the purposes of my research, ad I wanted to perpetuate the fiction that Lily was an innocent victim under your protection for as long as possible. Had I known how difficult you’d be to subdue . . .” He shrugged. “By all means, I would have done as you suggested and had Lily take you out herself. Live and learn.”