don’t fit.” I grinned. “His legacy is too small.”
“We were not made to fill other people’s shadows,” he said. “We were made to leave solid marks. Shadows fade.”
“Emilia knew about my sister,” I said.
“No one knew about my wife but me, and certain people I trusted with my life. Once the Scarpones had been wiped out, it was safe enough for you to know who she was. If I felt in any way you could cause her, meaning me, trouble, she would still only be a woman named Mari to you. Nothing else.”
There was no mistaking the possessive tone he used when he said, “No one knew about my wife but me.” He was letting me know that she was my sister, but she belonged to him.
“What’s the fucking deal?” I said. “You let her live and then you fall in love with her?”
“Whatever you’re thinking,” he said, sitting back, settling in more comfortably. “Wipe it fucking clean. Unless you consider falling in love with your wife something dirty. It happened the same way for us—between two adults.”
He was fucking reading between the lines—it seemed far-fetched that he had left her alone all of those years, but my gut told me he was telling me the truth. At least on that.
It still didn’t change who he was and who I was.
“I appreciate you taking care of her,” I said. “Not killing her after her mamma.”
His eyes seemed to grow darker when the light flickered, and then they were ice-cold. “She was a child,” he said. Like that meant anything to his people.
I shrugged. “I knew your father and your brother.”
He gave a short laugh, almost cocky. It was rough, gritty. “You don’t know me.”
“I know enough,” I said.
“I know everything,” he said. “I even knew your father, when you’d never laid eyes on him before a picture I let you have.”
Our eyes connected from across the table. In less than a second, we were both standing, our guns pointed at each other.
“I’ve been here before,” he said. “It didn’t end well for the other side of the table.”
“That other side of the table wasn’t me,” I said.
He moved. I moved.
I moved. He moved.
We circled.
“You think killing me is going to kill the ghost. You’re fucking wrong. You can’t kill a ghost,” he said. “You exorcise them out. And even then, from experience, you wrestle with them time and time again. Nothing ends here.”
“It has to,” I said. “There is no other way. Our blood can’t exist together in harmony.”
“It does,” he said. “Through my son.”
“You don’t want to kill me,” I said.
“I do,” he said. “But again. I’m exorcising the demons. The only reason we’re standing around this table, and not sitting at it, is because of you.”
“It doesn’t matter what you fucking exorcise,” I said. “You’re still a Scarpone. That’s why you’re standing there.”
“And that’s why you’re about to fall, Palermo,” he said.
I knew it was just a matter of seconds. The winner determined by who was quick enough to get the draw.
One.
Two.
Three breaths.
My hand was steady, my finger about to pull the trigger.
A light hit my eyes, so bright that I blinked from the shock of it. The entire dining room was flooded with it. It brought Scarpone into focus, and for the first time, I saw the entire man he was in this room.
He was a tall and wide motherfucker, a similar build to my own. The tattoo on his hand was a reflection of him, like the scorpion was an echo of me.
He blinked at me, doing the same.
Our guns held steady, neither of us trusting the other enough to put down our weapons. Whoever had hit the lights was of no importance. A flash of gold-colored silk moved in my periphery. I ignored it.
The moment between us held steady, ready to decide the victor. It wouldn’t be Vittorio. My finger was magnetized to the trigger. One pull and his life was mine.
His eyes narrowed, but before I could process what it meant, the cold barrel of a gun touched me behind the head.
“You don’t get along with anyone, do you?” My sister’s voice came from behind me. She pressed the gun harder to my head. “Drop your gun, Corrado.”
“You, too,” my wife said, holding a gun behind Scarpone’s head. She was wearing a gold silk shirt.
Scarpone and I looked at each other, narrowing our eyes even further.
This fucking complicated things.
How were we supposed to shoot at each other with them in the room?
Still. He held