Mercenary (Gangsters of New York #3) - Bella Di Corte Page 0,57
didn’t stop him from doing his job. He claimed to have not eaten much the entire day. His blood sugar was low, so he needed protein to keep from passing out.
“Cugino,” Nicodemo said.
He sat across from me under the pergola.
“You’re still here,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Nicodemo was like smoke. The only time you really saw him was when there was a fire. He wasn’t a motherfucker you wanted to draw close, because unlike the animals who prowled in the night and were afraid of the flames, he wasn’t.
“I found the man. He was waiting outside of the theatre—as I would have been. He was sent by Silvio. To kill you both.”
I rubbed my chin. “Silvio knew where to find us.”
“To be the men we are, we must think like the men we are.” He tapped his temple once. “He knows most of the places Don Capitani is connected to. A patient and wise man goes over the list more than once. People are drawn to what is familiar. Silvio knows this.”
I grinned at him, but it wasn’t friendly. I knew this—this was how I knew sooner or later Alcina would return to her parents’ casa. But after I’d found the picture of her, I became curious, which changed the entire game.
I wanted to know her village, her people, her parents, and in the end, her. I wanted to know her story. My world was usually colored black, white, and red—hers was in a colorful Sicilian print.
Then I looked into her eyes, and that strange fucking madness that entered my blood when the moon was full took over all logical thinking. She was my madness and my sanity.
Where was my focus? I looked at Nicodemo again. Truly looked at him.
“He also knows about your marriage to the woman who castrated his son. He goes to sleep every night dreaming of her head on a platter. Now that you married her, vowed to protect her, and ordered his son’s murder, it is the both of you in a burning building he dreams of.”
I nodded. “We’ll go back to Sicily then. There are more places there we can go that he knows nothing about.”
“There are more people willing to protect you there.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I agree.”
Nicodemo looked over his shoulder at Alcina, who had just stood and dusted off her skirt. It flowed down to her feet and wrapped around her bathing suit. She started toward the Vaporina, slinging her bag over her shoulder. Adriano stood back, watching her.
Nicodemo grinned. “You did not stand a chance,” he said in Sicilian. “The old goat knew it.”
I stood and then he stood, and I clasped him on the shoulder. “Fate has no purpose where Tito Sala is concerned.” I laughed. “He was leading me to her all along.”
“Without a fucking doubt,” Nicodemo said.
We met up with Adriano as Alcina stepped onto the dock leading to the boat slip. She stopped for a minute, turning around, waving at us.
Another boat came around a turn, going slow, and two men stared at us as they passed. It only took a second for Nicodemo to hit me, for Adriano to scream out her name, and for me to start running.
A click, click, click, like the sound of the irreversible hands of time, echoed around us.
The second my body collided with hers, the force from the explosion rocked us at a sideways angle as we were in mid-air, and a second later, we hit the water and it took us under.
Debris splashed against the surface as embers touched down in slow drifts, and dark smoke drifted over the water like rain clouds.
Alcina was pressed up against me, but her mouth was open, her arms floating. She was unconscious and taking in too much water.
I broke the surface, bringing her up first. Nicodemo was waiting by the shore—the dock completely destroyed by the blast—with his hand ready. His shirt had gaping holes where the heat from the blast had burned through, and his skin was blistering already, along with his face.
I took a tight hold of his hand, and he pulled us out of the water. I turned Alcina on her back and started to do CPR. We were not under long, but I had no idea if the blast had done something else to her. Her bathing suit had holes, and so did the skirt. But my main priority was to get the water from her lungs.