Chapter 2

At that moment, all I could focus on was getting her to the infirmary.

The Doc had warned that the Don might not pull through, and Adriana was the only hope for Renata.

My pride meant nothing now, less than nothing.

I bolted over to stop Adriana, desperation cracking my voice. "I swear on the Family, I'm not lying. Your mother and father are in deep trouble. Please, just come with me."

She looked at me the way you look at a man running a con, so I pulled out my phone with trembling hands.

"You don't believe me? I'll get the Doc on the line this second."

Adriana's eyes sparked with anger. "If any of that were true, word would have reached me by now."

I wanted to tell her that her phone had been dark all night, that no one in the world could have reached her.

But before I could get the words out, Enzo cut in.

He laughed a beat too early, before there was anything to laugh at, and his hand drifted to the back of his neck. "Run out of stories, have you? Look, I understand. You're eaten up because Adriana's out with me tonight. We're just old friends, amico. No need to play the jealous husband."

"Be a bigger man than this. Acting petty and jealous only pushes her further from you."

"But dragging her family into it? Using their lives as a chip on the table? That's low, even for you."

He stood there, arms folded, looking down the length of his nose at me as though he had honor to spare.

He was the last man alive with the right to preach it.

"Mind your own affairs. This is between my wife and me." The anger boiled over, and every scrap of my calm burned away.

The anger boiled over, and every scrap of my calm burned away.

A wiser man would have held his tongue by now. Not Enzo. Never Enzo.

He turned to Adriana, arranging his face into a wounded thing. "You see, Adriana? I told you exactly how he'd be."

Adriana's face went dark as a storm rolling in off the water.

"What is wrong with you? Why can't you just leave it alone? I wanted one quiet night with Enzo, and you're making a war out of nothing."

"I've been buried in work for weeks. I finally get an hour to breathe, and I can't spend it with a friend?"

"Ever hear of giving someone room? Enzo has done nothing but treat me kindly, and you treat him like dirt beneath your shoe. Is this who you are?"

She was right up in my face, her finger nearly against my nose.

I had no time to trade blows over any of it, not with the Don and Renata hanging by a thread in that back room.

I forced down the turmoil rising in my chest.

Sweat slid down my temple. I wiped it away and pleaded in a low voice, "They're on the table right now, both of them. Your mother, your father. Are you truly going to leave them there for a drink?"

Adriana paused. For a breath she seemed to catch the truth in my voice.

"Adriana, look. It's the old crowd from the neighborhood."

Enzo pointed, all delight, toward a restaurant down the block.

Through the tall glass, a couple at a table caught sight of them and lifted their hands in a wave.

"What are the odds? Haven't seen those two in years. Come, let's sit with them."

Adriana turned to go. I caught her arm, desperate.

"We're out of time. I am not lying to you. Your parents are waiting for you. You're their only child. Don't miss the last words your father has left, don't stand by and watch your mother slip away."

Enzo was relentless, his voice gone to ice. "Salvatore. Are you finished with the theatrics? Enough."

He began to draw Adriana away by the hand.

She went with him. Without a second thought, she chose him.

The thought of the Don and Renata dying alone in that room crushed something inside me. Tears flooded my eyes, and I dropped to my knees on the pavement.

"Adriana, if I've spoken one lie, let the sky come down on me. Please. Come to the infirmary with me. I'm begging you."