her, moonlight peeking in the open door behind them. "I'll make sure the power gets running then, I promise. I just have to make a few calls."
"What even is this place?" Genna asked, looking around at what little she could decipher in the darkness. A clunky rotary phone sat on a wooden stand not far from her.
"A safe house, I guess."
She tensed. "One of the Barsantis?"
"No," he said. "Not the Galantes, either."
"So... neutral ground."
He nodded. "Neutral ground."
She didn't press him on that. He'd kept her safe before on neutral ground, and she had no choice but to trust him again. Besides, they were twenty-five hundred miles away from New York City, in the stifling desert in the middle of nowhere. Primo's reach was undoubtedly long, but Genna wasn't sure it was that long.
"I'm going to look around," she said. "See what's here, you know… if there's anything."
"I'll unload the car," Matty responded, lingering as he stared at her. "Make yourself at home."
Once he finally turned, walking back out the front door, Genna set off through the house. Her footsteps were hesitant in the darkness, not wanting to trip over anything lying around. Old belongings were strewn throughout the place, hastily discarded, broken glass shoved along the sides of the hallways. No one had bothered cleaning up, but they'd cleared a path, which Genna was grateful for.
In the kitchen, she opened a few drawers, shifting through the leftover contents. She found a heavy black-handled flashlight shoved in a cabinet and clicked the button to turn it on.
Nothing happened.
Scowling, she unscrewed the bottom of it, grimacing when a set of corroded batteries dropped out, hitting the floor by her feet. Gross.
"Jesus, how old is this shit?" she grumbled, continuing her search. She found a matchbook in a drawer and snatched it up, squinting to make out the logo in the dim moonlight. The Flamingo Hotel & Casino. She held her breath, ripping a match out and striking it against the worn out strip on the back. It ignited, the flame sparking. "Ha!"
"Ah, she discovered fire," Matty said, stepping into the kitchen and dropping their bags on the floor. "Taking it back to the Stone-Age."
She shook the match out before it burned down too far, not wanting to singe her fingers. "Help me find some candles, Fred Flintstone. Maybe they don't have electricity, but even damn Buddhists have candles."
"Amish," he corrected her.
"What?"
"I'm pretty sure you mean the Amish," he said. "Buddhists aren't opposed to candles, but a lot of monasteries use electricity and technology, so…"
"Buddhist… Amish… really, what's the difference?"
"Not touching that one."
Genna scoured the kitchen some more as Matty disappeared, returning with a tall white candle in a glass jar, a religious votive with some faded Catholic painting on the front of it.
"Mother Mary to the rescue," he said, playfully shaking it in her direction.
Genna took it from him, blowing inside of it, gagging at the amount of dust that flew back out at her. She lit another match, holding it down into the candle, grateful it was just long enough to touch the wick, igniting it. The spark snap, crackle, and popped around the lingering dust, but the thing stayed lit, giving off enough light for her to see.
"We should stick to the downstairs for tonight," Matty suggested.
Genna had no plans to argue with him on that.
Carrying the candle, she made her way through the downstairs. A dining room was adjacent to the kitchen, a splintered wooden table in the center of it, reminiscent of the one Genna's family sat at every night for dinner. Past that was the living room, more furniture there—a couch and two chairs, an old television that looked like it might've been black and white. Unbelievable. Knick-knacks sat around, also collecting dust, long ago abandoned, left behind like everything else.
Genna had been to a few safe houses in her lifetime, places in the city her father secretly owned in obscure names, with little more than mattresses on the floor and a refrigerator in the corner, whatever they'd need to survive if they went into hiding for a few days. But this wasn't like any safe house Genna had ever encountered. Someone had once lived there. Someone had once called the place home.
What happened to them? Where did they go?
Who the hell were they?
Matty plopped down on the end of the couch, sending dust flying that had settled into the cushions. Genna laughed as the cloud of it lingered around him. Smiling, Matty opened his arms to