Chapter 7: Run

I stared at the message until my hands stopped shaking.

Santo had not moved beside me.

His eyes were open in the dark, and he was looking at the phone in my fist.

"You knew," I said.

"Viviana."

"You knew he was going to be shot, and you let me lie here and thank you for it."

I was out of the bed before the last word, dragging the sheet.

I found my dress on the floor and pulled it over my head with my back to him.

"Let me explain," he said.

"Explain it from over there."

He sat up slowly and did not touch the sheet.

He had the look of a man who had been waiting for a blow for five days and was relieved that it had come.

"Carmine's driver talks too much when he drinks," Santo said. "On Tuesday night he told me something at a bar in Newark."

"What?"

"That the Wednesday morning at the bakery was going to be the last one."

"And you went straight to Aurelio."

"I went to his study at midnight. I texted him first, because he never answered his door at that hour."

"And?"

"He came out and stood on the stairs with me," Santo said.

"I told him to take you and the kids and leave the state that night."

I stood very still.

"He said no," Santo went on.

"He said if he ran, Carmine would take the house and the children, and you."

"He said he'd rather die at his own door than live on someone else's."

"He said that."

"He said it with his hand on my shoulder. He said, you drive them, Santo. If I don't come back, you drive them."

My throat closed.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I failed him," Santo said.

"He told me to stay with the children that morning, and I did."

"If I'd been on the sidewalk, I could have..."

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