The amount of adrenaline running through my veins makes it nearly impossible to keep from outing Gravina right now, forcing him into a corner to make him play his hand, to get to the real details behind how he’d know where Melody was and why no one thought to mention it to me prior to this moment. I’d volunteer to help my brothers dig the hole that would soon house him—but the outcome would not change Melody’s own future: dead and buried right next to Eddie.
I promised Melody I would keep her safe, that I would do whatever needs to be done to protect her. To keep that promise, there’s only one play I can make, only one that matters: Get Melody out of this house. Now.
Melody looks up, holds her breath, fights the tears.
My father glances at Peter, walks to the stockpot on the stove, gives his sauce a stir with a wooden spoon. Then, to no one in particular, “Take care of her.”
Peter steps up to bat, but Melody tips my way and grabs my leg and looks up at me, tells me she loves me like it’s the last thing she might ever say, uses her final words to assure me that no matter what this looks like, her feelings were genuine, that she wants me to know it was all true. I give Gravina one final glance, and with him still looking away, his line of vision ending at his shoelaces, I believe Melody.
I will never doubt her again.
Pop puts the lid back on the gravy. “Take care of it, Johnny, okay? Enough is enough. We’ve let you play this game for years.” He walks my way, says in a tone that none of us would mistake for anything but genuine sincerity, “No more.” As Melody clings to my leg, I hope somehow he sees the little girl, the child I brought home for them to meet. How could he look at this innocent woman and want her dead? How does someone’s sense of humanity devolve this far? I pray he sees it, understands, and agrees. He looks down at Melody, watches her breathe hard against my leg and suffer at our hand one final time, sees her get to live the nightmare from which she spent a lifetime running. And as he tilts his head and stares at her, for a few seconds I think he might see it, he might understand what I was trying to do, he might see the virtue, the beauty, the perfection in who she is. But then his expression turns to one of slight contentment, and my last thread of hope falls from the frayed end, drifts through the air, and vanishes. He turns to me and stares me down and says, “Put. A bullet. In the bitch.”
Though I hear the words, I cannot fathom them, cannot comprehend how he could ask this of me. He has created a finality, has officially calcified my softer life of tiptoeing around the darker crimes and keeping away from the blood spatter. His words are the mortar binding the bricks in the new wall between us. I am no longer one of them, no longer know who they are. I am a stranger in my own home.
I wipe the moisture from my eyes, know that if I display the slightest hesitation, that if I do not play the part of an infuriated, determined killer, she will be put to rest by a more seasoned member of our crew. So I must become the actor, must hurt Melody in a way that convinces not only my family, but her as well.
And now the most difficult moment of my life: As Melody looks up at me with her tear-soaked face and says, “Please, Jonathan, I love you,” I reach down and grab her arm and twist it, yank her up to her feet, then slam her against the wall. She squeaks as her back hits the edge of the doorframe. I feel like I’m going to vomit as she crumples to the floor and covers her face, overwhelmed by how many times she’s been failed in this life, how she interprets my betrayal now as one more failure. As I lift her back up only to slam her into the corner of the room, I have to tell myself I am saving her life.
“Come here,” I say, as I grunt and grab her by her other arm and haul her to the door. She