Chapter 4 - The Weight of Seven Years
Twenty-four hours earlier, the study had smelled of old paper and the cold wind off the Sound. Now, down in the dark, it smelled of iron and wet wool and the particular, sour odor of fear that had nothing to do with blood.
Rafael didn't look at Marco. He looked down at the small red coat with the missing button on the left cuff—the one Sophia had tried to sew on with black thread because she didn't have any red left in her basket.
“Emma,” Rafael said. It was the first time in three years he had used her name without a title or a nod to her mother. “Go back to the kitchen.”
“The door’s stuck,” the child said simply. She set the calico cat down on the stone floor. Biscotti immediately shook his left leg, gave his ear a thorough, noisy lick, and walked over to sniff Marco’s left shoe.
Marco didn't move. His hand was still in his pocket, the knuckles pressing against the wool until the fabric strained. He looked at the child, then at Rafael, and a small, ugly smile flickered at the corner of his mouth.
“Well,” Marco whispered, his voice dropping an octave as he shifted his weight onto his back foot. “The family always said you had a soft spot for the help, boss. I didn't know it came with a family plan.”
He pulled the revolver out of his pocket. It didn't make a sound as it cleared the wool—just a smooth, oily slide of steel against leather.
“She’s three, Marco,” Rafael said. His voice was still flat, still level, but the skin around his eyes had tightened until the small white scar by his temple looked like a drawn thread. “She doesn't know the address of the bank in Newark.”
“She knows your voice,” Marco said, cocking the hammer with a sharp, double-click that echoed off the low brick ceiling like a hammer hitting an anvil. “And she knows you’re sitting here in the dark. That’s enough for the prosecutor in Brooklyn. They love a family story. The Last Contini, Found Bound and Bleeding by the Orphan’s Child. It’ll play well in the Times.”
He raised the barrel until it was level with the space between Emma’s red wool buttons.
The little girl didn't scream. She had spent three years living in the basement rooms of a house where people only spoke in whispers when the men in the dark suits came home from the city. She simply reached down, grabbed a handful of Biscotti’s orange fur, and pulled the cat up against her chest like a shield.
“Uncle Rafael,” she repeated, her lower lip beginning to tremble just a little bit, the way it did when her mother gave her medicine that tasted like iron. “My boot’s wet.”
Rafael’s right hand—the one without the glove—closed into a fist so hard the fingernails broke the skin of his palm.
“Marco,” Rafael said.
“Save it,” Marco muttered, his finger tightening against the curved metal of the trigger. “The boy from Yonkers is waiting in the car by the gatehouse. In ten minutes we leave for the airport, and you and the kid can stay down here with the coal.”
He didn't see the movement because he was looking at the child’s eyes.
Rafael didn't use his hands. He used his weight. He threw his entire thirty-eight years of bone and muscle forward, tipping the heavy iron chair off its front two legs with a sudden, brutal wrench of his spine. The oak backrest splintered against the edge of the lemon crate, and the whole assembly—chair, man, and iron legs—crashed sideways across the floor, striking Marco just behind the right knee.
The gun went off with a roar that filled the cellar like a physical blow, the bullet chipping a three-inch crater out of the mortar between two bricks four feet above Emma’s head. Plaster dust fell like grey snow into her hair.
Biscotti let out a sound like a tearing sheet and rocketed up the cellar stairs into the dark, three steps at a time.
Marco went down hard, his knee buckling sideways under the weight of the falling chair. Rafael was already moving, his bound wrists coming up behind his back as he rolled over the uneven flagstones, kicking out with his left heel until his boot hit the base of Marco’s thumb.
The revolver skittered across the wet floor, coming to rest against the copper leg of the old boiler.
For four seconds, there was no sound in the cellar except the whistling of the wind through the coal chute and Emma’s small, rhythmic sniffing as she wiped her nose on her sleeve.
Marco scrambled on his hands and knees, reaching for the small penknife in his pocket, his face dark with purple rage, his breath coming in ragged gasps. “You crazy bastard—”
He didn't finish the sentence.
The heavy oak door at the top of the stairs didn't open; it was kicked inward with a dry crack that splintered the frame from the lintel.
Sophia Rossi stood in the doorway. In her right hand, she held the ten-pound iron skillet she used for frying corn bread every Tuesday morning. Her hair was completely down now, falling around her shoulders in a wild, dark tangle that made her look ten years younger and three times as dangerous as anyone Marco had ever hired out of Yonkers.
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“Emma,” Sophia said, her voice small, cold, and dead.
“Mama,” the child said, turning around with the calm, matter-of-fact air of someone who had just found her missing toy under the sofa. “Uncle Rafael broke his chair.”
