she had committed suicide.
She had suffered with mental illness most of her life, and the life she had with him eventually took its toll. Then his father tried to kill him. The mark on his hand proved what famiglia he had once belonged to. He claimed them no more. But that was all I knew about the situation.
Corrado stared back at Amadeo, and I did not like the look on either face. I noticed one of the men Corrado came with, the serious-looking Italian, touch the guns he kept hidden underneath his shirt. The tension pushed me to take the box out of Corrado’s hands and stand between him and Amadeo.
“Where are the zie?” It took Amadeo a minute to answer me. I had to say his name.
“Back,” he said in Sicilian.
As he said the word, Stella, Eloisa, Candelora, and Veronica came out of the room in the back of the shop, arguing with each other. The zie were his mamma’s sisters. They caused enough of a fuss to disrupt the tension between the men.
The aunts were followed by a red-haired woman laughing at whatever the aunts were arguing over, and a man with a tiger tattoo on his neck and a little boy in his arms. A little girl stood close to the red-haired woman. I had met her at Mari and Amadeo’s wedding, but I could not remember her name.
“Cash doesn’t do sugar.” The red-haired woman rolled her eyes at the man with the tiger tattoo. Cash was stuck behind the aunts and a few people shopping the store, so he didn’t see that she had done it. He was busy fixing the little boy’s hair anyway.
Mari popped up next to me, and she smiled at Corrado. He gave her a polite nod back. “We’re going to the beach. Keely and Cash and the kids have never been. Do you want to come?”
So Keely was the red-haired woman’s name. “No,” I said, kissing her cheeks. “I need to get back. The harvest.”
“I ordered you extra supplies,” zia Candelora said, motioning with her hands to follow her into the back. “I figured you would want them.”
I touched Corrado’s hand, wanting to break the dangerous spell between him and Amadeo, hoping he would come with me.
I did not miss the look on Amadeo’s face when I did. Neither had lo scorpione.
Amadeo nodded at Uncle Tito to follow him out.
I took the opportunity to redirect Corrado’s eyes by just leaving the room.
10
Corrado
Two days after I took the ride to Modica with Alcina, Tito Sala invited a woman named Rosa to the pistachio orchard to meet me.
She spoke very little English, and as we walked, she moved her hips closer to mine, smiling shyly as she bumped me every so often. It wasn’t her eyes that had mine, though. It was the angry woman who was named after a sorceress in a poem that had me looking over my shoulder every so often.
It fucking unnerved me when she was too far away. I kept my eyes on her at all times. There was still a bounty on her head, and even if I were to order Silvio to call it off, he might agree to my face but go behind my back until she was found.
Even though Silvio and I were friendly, tension ran high between us after my grandfather said he would give me his blessing to run the famiglia. If Silvio knew how I felt about Alcina, he might do it just to spite and weaken me.
“Your family is very powerful, I hear,” Rosa said, smiling at me. She touched her neck. “You will buy me jewelry?”
“I’m a poor farmer in America,” I said. “I have nothing.”
That was far from the truth.
Rosa stopped walking. After a few steps, I did, too. She picked up a second later, walking beside me again, but her hips were on the opposite side of the worn path, no longer bumping me.
I nodded to Rosa and her family when we came to the central villa, where her people waited for us to return from our walk. I kept walking until I was back in the orchard, straps around my neck, ready to fill my bucket. The sun had started to make its way to the horizon. I only had an hour or two left to work.
Even after it became dark, though, there would be some light still left. Red lava spilled from Mount Etna. It shot out, like a woman spewing curses from her mouth,