The Viper Donna: Stepmother's Mafia Justice novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Garage

Viviana finds Nico hiding in his father's Lincoln with Aurelio's phone, and the family driver Santo gets them past Carmine's men before a bullet hits him at the gate.

I did not scream his name, because the whole house was full of Carmine's ears.

I checked under the bed, and then the closet, and then the bathroom with the bus maps taped over the mirror.

Nico collected bus maps from every city we'd ever driven through, and they covered his walls.

His shoes were gone, and so was the little flashlight he kept in his desk.

"Vivi?" Bianca stood in the doorway in her pajamas, dragging a stuffed rabbit by one ear.

"Stay with me," I said. "Right at my hip. Don't talk."

She nodded and put the rabbit's ear in her mouth.

I took the back stairs, the narrow ones that Aurelio's mother used to call the servants' stairs.

Through the wall I could hear the luncheon going on without us, low voices and the clink of cups.

The kitchen was empty, and the door to the garage stood a hand's width open.

It was never open.

Aurelio kept it locked, and he kept the key on the same ring as the Lincoln.

I put Bianca behind me and pushed the door wide with the tip of my gun.

The garage was cold and smelled of tire rubber and cedar.

The black Lincoln sat in the middle bay, with the dome light off.

On the dashboard, something glowed small and blue.

I crossed the concrete floor with my heart in my teeth.

I looked in through the back window.

Nico lay across the rear seat with his knees pulled up, holding a phone in both hands.

He was eleven years old, and he looked at me.

I unlocked the door from the inside with the button on the handle and climbed in beside him.

"I wasn't running away," he said right away.

"I know."

"I heard Zio Carmine's man in the hall. He said they'd come for us after dark."

"Come for us how?"

"With a car," Nico said. "And a woman from the county who'd say it was legal."

My shoulders finally dropped.

"Where did you get that phone?"

"It was in the door pocket." His voice shook once and straightened. "It's Papa's."

I took it from him carefully.

It was the second phone, the one Aurelio carried in the pocket he never showed anyone.

The screen was locked, and it showed forty-one missed calls.

"They're all from the same number," Nico said. "It says Carmine."

My skin went cold, one patch at a time.

A man who has just buried his brother does not call that brother's phone forty-one times.

He calls it because he's afraid of what's on it.

I slid the phone down the front of my dress.

"You did right to hide it," I said. "Now I need you to be brave for ten more minutes."

"I'm always brave," Nico said, and his chin went up.

Bianca climbed into the car and burrowed against him, and he put his arm around her without looking.

Footsteps crossed the floor of the garage.

I raised the gun without thinking.

"It's me," said Santo Lombardi.

He stood at the passenger window with his suit jacket off and his sleeves rolled to the elbow.

He was thirty-six, tall, with black hair and a white scar cutting through his left eyebrow.

For three years he had driven Aurelio to every meeting and the children to every school.

I couldn't remember him ever saying more than a sentence to me.

"Carmine's men are at the front gate," he said. "Four cars, and more coming."

"Whose side are you on?"

He looked past me into the back seat, at the two heads close together.

"Theirs," he said.

Something in how he said it made me believe him, although I didn't want to.

"Keys," I said.

"I drive."

"Santo."

"You're a good shot, Donna, but I know every road out of this county."

I hated that it was true.

I climbed into the front passenger seat and kept the gun in my lap.

He started the engine, and the Lincoln gave a low purr.

"Heads down," he told the children. "Pretend you're hiding from your teacher."

"Teachers don't carry guns," Bianca said into the rabbit.

"Mine did," said Santo, and put the car in gear.

The garage door rose on its chain.

Outside, the drive curved down through the trees toward the gate, and I saw the headlights waiting there.

Santo did not slow down.

"Hold on," he said.

A man stepped into the beams with his hand raised.

Santo hit the gate at forty miles an hour, and the iron bars sprang off their hinges with a shriek.

Glass popped somewhere behind us.

Then a shot cracked, flat and close, and the car lurched.

I turned.

Santo's left hand was on the wheel, and his right shoulder had gone dark and wet to the collar.

"Santo!"

His jaw was tight and his eyes were on the road.

"Drive," he said, and slid his foot off the pedal. "Donna, you have to drive."

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