He winced. “When you put it like that, it sounds horrible.” He gave a lopsided shrug. “That was my brother Ryan on the line, if you have to know.”
“And?”
“He’s bringing me another car and taking care of the one out front with the bullet hole.”
“I’m guessing your brother’s not a car salesman and doesn’t rent cars at the airport.”
“Ryan moves stolen cars. Either to buyers overseas or strips them for parts.”
“Areanyof your siblings upstanding citizens? Maybe a cousin who’s a priest?”
“The MacCarrick Mafia. I told you.”
He had, in fact, told me. But since Leon was being unexpectedly chatty, I was going to press my luck and finally get some answers.
“What’s going to happen to me?” The words escaped my lips without a tremble. They were flat, direct, blunt. “Are you going to kill me anyway?”
“I should,” he said, never once looking away.
My heart plunged through my body to splash down in a pool of icy fear. The hairs on the back of my arms lifted. Everything I tried to think to say seemed to fall apart in my head before I could speak.
In the end, I could only manage to say one thing. “Why do you hate me so much?”
It was easy to see the walls slamming down again and his defenses going up, and I knew he wasn’t going to tell me anything. Because of some code of silence or whatever, he was going to let me continue to live every minute afraid.
Damn him and his secrets. I deserved to know the truth.
“Why?” I demanded.
“Your father had my older brother killed.” His cold stare pierced to the heart of me, even if his words were spoken softly. “That’s why.”
My right hand left my pocket and clutched the porch railing. Clutched so hard that the edges bit into my skin, and the metal was so cold it almost seemed to burn.
“I don’t…” The strength drained out of my words, leaving me grasping for more, trying to say something through my shock. “But why would he do something like that?”
“Cal was working with some guys from Boston looking to take up where the Westies left off in Hell’s Kitchen. These Irish guys were going to plant a flag, work some rackets. Mostly small-time stuff. Your father didn’t appreciate a bunch of Irish moving in when the Italians have a chokehold on New York.”
I slowly shook my head, not understanding most of the jargon but getting the gist. His brother showed up on the radar, and apparently, my father ordered him killed. “How do you know it was my father who gave the order?”
“It was never any secret, believe me. It was a message. Don’t dare poach on Accardo territory or you pay. My brother paid.”
I couldn’t imagine my father ordering someone killed. Even though I knew what he did, it was a kind of intellectual knowledge. Disconnected from my image of the man who had raised me, who’d been there for me my entire life. Sometimes stern, sometimes kind, but always my father.
I’d always tried to tell myself the blood was on other people’s hands, but that was naïve. The orders came from the top, and I knew it.
Now I could see what those orders did to other people. I didn’t know Leon, but it was obvious he was hurting over the loss of his brother. Most of the time, he hid it well. Very well. Buried it deep. But sometimes little flashes showed through. When he got cold and distant and scared me.
And I finally knew why he hated me.
I felt dizzy and weak and cold. My thoughts were trapped in a blender inside my head, cut to shreds too tiny to make sense of.
“You didn’t kill me,” I finally managed to recover from my shock enough to say. “You knew who I was. You…recognized me. Why didn’t you get your revenge? I was right there.”
“I told you. I didn’t know who I was paid to kill. But I don’t kill women or children.”
“You know killing me would hurt my father,” I said, desperately trying to understand him. Trying to see if there was any hope I could survive this nightmare. “He’d be devastated. The way your family was devastated.”
“You don’t know anything about my family. And you know nothing about me.”
