Vendetta(76)

I fell back against the couch, groaning under the weight of everything I was being asked to understand. “But why do you go after people at all? What does it have to do with you?”

Nic dropped his voice, and quietly, like he was revealing a great and terrible secret, he said, “This has everything to do with us, Sophie. It’s in our blood.”

“The same way managing the diner is in my blood?” I would have laughed if I wasn’t so full of horror.

“Sort of.” Nic smiled. “My people are descended from Sicily. From the very beginning every member of my family has been born into the Mafia. Not inducted. Born. For us there is no other choice, no alternate way to live.”

I felt a pang of uneasiness in my stomach. Did that mean he was stuck in this life? Did being a Falcone mean he was destined to kill, the same way being a Gracewell made me bad at math? How was that even possible?

He continued, undaunted by my silence. “The Falcone traditions are unique, our membership confined to blood, and our actions informed by honor and solidarity. We are on earth to make the world a better place. We give everything for the family, and in turn, everything in the pursuit of good.”

“That’s all very poetic,” I said after a moment of consideration. “But when are you going to explain the killing part?”

“Now.” Nic reacted with formidable calmness. He didn’t even blink, he just dropped his hand on top of mine and tangled our fingers together on his knee. I let him do it, and I don’t know why, but I was trying to look at him as a product of his ancestry and his upbringing, and I wasn’t sure whether I could punish him before I understood what that truly meant. I didn’t even know if I was safe or not, being here with him, but I felt comforted by his touch, and despite everything telling me to run, I didn’t.

“In Sicily, the Mafia came about from the need to protect the local townspeople. It wasn’t anything like it is now, different families governed by ruthless behavioral codes and illegal money-making schemes. The true and real Mafia, La Cosa Nostra, was different.” His voice twisted, turning wistful, like he was remembering something he had once been part of. Maybe that’s how he felt. “After Italy annexed Sicily in the nineteenth century, the lands were taken from the Church and State, and given to private citizens.

“Trading grew and so did commercialism, and out of commercialism came the ugly side of profit: greed, crime, murder. There was no real police force. The townspeople didn’t have anyone to protect their homes, their businesses, even their families, so they looked elsewhere. My grandfather used to say it was a simple case of supply and demand. First, small groups of men started to spring up across Sicily; in return for money, they ensured safety by killing those who threatened to destroy it. Word spread, and after a while these groups were hired by wealthier families to settle personal vendettas or offer additional protection.”

“So these groups — these early members of the Mafia — were just a law unto themselves?” I asked. Sounds familiar.

“And that was the problem,” Nic replied. “With no law, apart from their own, temptation got the better of many of them; some organizations turned against the people they protected, falling into violence for violence’s sake, extortion, money laundering, and racketeering — all the things that make the Mafia as infamous as it is today.

“After that, many of them, who had become formidable families in their own right, emigrated to America. My grandfather’s family were among the first immigrants in the early twentieth century.” Nic paused for a moment before continuing with quiet surety. “But the Falcones never chose the corrupt path of those around them, not in Sicily and not here. We have always tried to protect those who can’t protect themselves, to stay on the right side of right and wrong. And sometimes, the right thing is to kill the wrong kind of man.”

Suddenly he seemed so much older. A part of me wanted to cry for him and for the innocence he never really had, but another part wanted to shake him and scream at him for being so idiotic, for not seeing his life’s calling as I did — as an insane death wish.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

I shook my head. “That you could die at seventeen because you’re chasing down vendettas that have nothing to do with you, and I still don’t really understand why.”

“It’s my job,” he said simply. And then came four horrifying words: “I’m a career assassin.”

I lost the ability to blink. Suddenly there wasn’t enough space in my lungs to fill them with the air I needed to breathe. If I had remembered any curse words in that moment, I would have used them all at once. Nic just waited, politely, while I connected the word “assassin” with a seventeen-year-old boy who had big, beautiful brown eyes and an easy smile.