lets her body fall limp, feels like I’m dragging her already dead body. My family watches the spectacle like a boring rerun. My objective is that they view my actions as determination, though the people I need to convince most are my father and Peter. As far as Gravina goes, I’ll one day release the pressure from my newfound self-discipline and self-control upon him, make it last for hours.
I open the front door of the Tudor so fast and hard it slams against an antique coat rack, sends it to the floor in slow motion. I yank Melody to the Audi; she stumbles and falls the entire way. I open the passenger door and shove her inside, run around and hop in, lock the doors.
As I start the engine, I say, “Geez, Melody, I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
I back out of the driveway, whip the car around in the middle of the road, and fly down the neighborhood streets at twice the speed as when we drove in. Melody rubs her shoulder, tries to collect her thoughts.
“I’m so sorry, Melody.” I ignore all the stop signs, pass idle cars. “Are you all right?”
She turns and looks at me, holds on to the door grip with all her strength, wipes the moisture from her face with her other hand. “I’m okay, I… think. Wait, you’re… you’re not mad?”
I wave my hand at her. “Look, here’s what we’re up against: If I didn’t convincingly act out the part of the livid mafioso back there, they’re going to send someone after us, make sure I close the deal.”
“Kill me?”
“Yes. I don’t have the greatest track record, if you recall. And being the guy who thought it was a clever idea to keep Morrison alive, they aren’t going to let this slide unless I really appeared like I was going to take you out.”
She swallows, hard. “But you’re not going to kill me?”
Despite our need for escape, I turn and look at her, pull my foot off the gas. “Melody, it’s hard to admit, but I love you. And I promised I would never hurt you—never. Do you remember? I promised you that when we first met.”
“Yeah,” she says, rubbing her shoulder again as if to imply, Well, this kinda hurt. She smiles and says, “But that was only, like, three days ago.”
I turn back to the road and accelerate. “Yeah, well, it’s a promise I’ve been keeping for twenty years.”
She stops rubbing her wounds, stares at me.
“Look,” I say, “I don’t know how or why you met with the feds or how you managed to get to their operations center, but I know in my heart you love me.” She doesn’t respond. “Right?”
She reaches over and touches my knee, and as she is about to say something, I catch a glimpse of a familiar shape in my rearview mirror. I shake my head and say, “Predictable.”
“What?”
“Guess I’m not taking home the Oscar. It’s Peter.”
If my father’s insistence that I take Melody’s life was mortar between the bricks, Peter’s tailing us is the wall’s capstone. Their reluctant tolerance of my defiance over the years, my loose rebellion and incapacity to conform to the full Bovaro stature, has come to a close. Only time will tell if they’ve lost their love for me, but for these it is now too late: They have lost their faith, and they have lost their trust.
Everyone has made their choice.
I know what was running through my father’s mind: We’ve come too far, worked too hard to get through this nightmare to have one loose end get pulled and start the unraveling process. Peter begins closing in, speeds up the road in his massive black Chevy.
“I’m never gonna outrun him with that monster engine he’s got.” Melody turns around, watches the black mass fast approaching. “Though we do have one advantage.” I check my rearview again, see him whip around a Honda, the body of his car tipping as he sweeps back into our lane. “We can outmaneuver him.”
I quickly turn down a side road, drop the car from sixth to fourth and begin passing cars, take turns at speeds I know Peter could never replicate, would have him flipping the massive sedan off the street and into some suburban front yard.
Melody grips the door with both hands as we cross over a series of small hills, become airborne with each crest. Peter begins to fade as he slows on the turns behind us, pulls to the left each