me the keys. “Be careful!”
I nodded and slammed the door before he could change
his mind. The big car roared away, threading its way
quickly through the highway traffic in the direction of
the hospital.
Jesus. Yuri. It was difficult to breathe. Please don’t let
him die! Not Yuri. There’d been too many casualties of
this war already.
I ran over to the Mercedes, got in and started it up.
How did this go so wrong, so fast? Vasiliy would want
vengeance against whoever had stabbed his beloved
bodyguard. There was no question: he’d put a hit out on
the attacker. The only saving grace was that no one
knew it was Angelo.
“Hello, Irina,” said Mikhail from the back seat.
38
Angelo
I had Yuri’s head resting on my lap, my hands slick with
his blood as I tried to keep pressure on the knife
wound. The knife itself was still in his chest, evidence of
my crime. I wanted to throw up every time I looked at
it, but I didn’t dare move it because it was stopping
some of the bleeding. Please don’t let him die. Yuri’s
face had gone the same color as the soot-stained snow
back in Little Italy, his eyes narrowed in agony, his teeth
gritted. From what Irina had told me, this guy was
practically family. The guilt was like nothing I’d ever felt.
And yet, each time I felt Rico glance furiously back at
me, that guilt was almost worse.
“What were you doing, Angelo?” he demanded.
“Just drive,” I said tightly.
“You’re dressed like you’re going on vacation.” Rico was
almost panting, he was so angry. “You’re out here by
the highway—what’s out this way, huh? The airport?!”
“Just drive! He needs the hospital!”
“I’m fucking driving!” He banged the steering wheel.
“You were running out on us. You were fucking running
out on us, weren’t you?”
I didn’t answer, just looked down at Yuri’s ashen face.
When he spoke again, Rico’s voice was so full of hurt it
brought a lump to my throat. “Fuck you, Angelo.”
Moments later, we arrived. Rico pulled right up to the
Emergency Room entrance and I ran in to get a doctor.
We got Yuri onto a gurney and inside but, immediately,
nurses were asking me questions: who was he, who
was I, what happened?
I had Vasiliy’s number in my phone from when I’d set
up the peace talk. I scrawled it on a form and handed it
to a nurse. “Call this man. He’ll take care of everything.”
Then I was running back to Rico. I didn’t want to leave
Yuri, but there was nothing more I could do and getting
myself arrested wasn’t going to help.
Rico pulled away as soon as I got in the car but we
didn’t head towards the city. He turned and headed out
of town. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“The Saints just called,” Rico said. “They want to see
you.” He twisted in his seat and looked at me, his face
drawn with worry. “Angelo...they know.”
39
Irina
My hands were still on the Mercedes’s steering wheel. I
sat there clutching it, willing it not to be true. But when
I looked up into the rear view mirror, I could see the
lower half of Mikhail’s face, his unmistakable wide smirk
almost splitting his pink, doughy face in two. With
shaking hands, I adjusted the mirror and those beady,
lust-filled eyes gleamed back at me.
We hadn’t even considered it, when we carried Yuri to
Rico and Angelo’s car. The Mercedes had been sitting
there with the doors closed, the blacked-out windows
concealing Mikhail. We’d just assumed Yuri had come
alone.
Mikhail leaned forward. “I saw everything. I took a peek
over the top of the hill, just in time to see your
boyfriend murder Yuri.”
I wanted to throw up. When he found out, Vasiliy
wouldn’t rest until Angelo was dead.
“Since you’re already in the driver’s seat, I think you
should drive,” said Mikhail. He sat back in his seat.
“Let’s go home.”
My heart pounding, I put the car into gear and drove off
to Vasiliy’s house to seal Angelo’s fate.
40
Angelo
It wasn’t like the last time I’d seen The Saints. Last time
had been like being summoned to the Principal’s office.
This was like the walk to the gallows.
The big, dark room was lit this time by a huge fire
roaring in the fireplace, the flames turning one side of
Nicky’s scowling face to flickering gold. He stood, hands
braced on the table, but insisted I sit down. The other
Saints stood beside him, looking equally pissed. Even
kindly old Vincenzo was giving me a you’re fucked, kid
look.
I sat. I figured that if they were going to kill me, it
wouldn’t make much difference. Rico stood in the
doorway behind me. I figured that that would be my
warning: if they asked him to leave, I was dead.
Nicky opened a brown envelope and tossed a sheaf of
photos onto the table. They spun and spread as they
landed, covering the table in a glossy fan of eyes and
lips, breasts and thighs. Moments that were meant to be
private.
Mikhail, you bastard….
“You arrogant, self-centered little fuck!” snapped Nicky.
“How dare you? How dare you endanger everything,
just to dip your dick into that little whore?”
I felt the anger start, then. It was red-hot and clean,
burning upward through the cold black layers of
tradition and respect as if they were so much filthy coal.
“Don’t talk about her like that,” I grated.
Nicky groaned. “You’re fucking sweet on her?” he asked
incredulously. “Oh, Jesus….” All of The Saints were
shaking their heads in despair, now. “We knew you’d
been dumb but we thought you were smarter than
that!”
I stared at him in confusion.
“It’s a trick, you dumb fuck!” yelled Nicky, slamming his
fist down on the table. The photos of Irina and me
jumped and drifted further apart, revealing more and
more of us. “Vasiliy sent her to get into your pants, so
you’d go soft on the Russians!”
“No,” I said angrily. “She’s his niece!”
“So? He’s a Russian. Russians don’t have any fucking
qualms about sacrificing their own. Don’t they teach you
history in school? World War II?” He leaned across the
table at me. “That’s why he brought her over here, to
fucking seduce you!” He glanced down at the photos,
his eyes stopping on one of Irina, her leotard rolled
down to mid-thigh. “She’s got a nice pussy, I’ll give you
that. She was probably turning tricks for Vasiliy when
she was fifteen.”
If I’d been standing, I would have been able to hit him.
But I had to shove my chair back first and stand and,
when my fist was an inch from Nicky’s jaw, it slapped
into Rico’s hand. I twisted around and glared at Rico but
he simply shook his head. He forced my fist back with
me resisting every inch of the way.
“It’s not like that,” I told Nicky. I had to pant through
my anger. I barely recognized my own voice—God,
what had happened to me?
“Yeah, it’s true fucking love,” spat Taavetti. He coughed
and adjusted the valve on his oxygen cylinder. “We got
no confidence in you anymore, Angelo.” He indicated
the room. “That’s what this is.”
He nodded at Rico and my shoulders tensed. This was
it. Rico would leave the room, some hired killer would