A dumpster keeps me from going any farther. Just as I put the car into park, the phone trills again.

UNKNOWN NUMBER

Before I slide the dot, I ask myself a question.

How would Dario answer this call?

He wouldn’t say “hello?” and wait to be told who was there and what they wanted. He’d know already—and I do as well.

I slide the dot and start talking before I hear a sound from the other side.

“Massimo’s shot and here’s how it’s going to be—”

“Whoa, babydoll.” It’s Sergio. He’s not even Colonia, but he’s somehow weaseled his way into a position where he can call my brother’s phone. “Pull the reins back a little. Who shot him?”

Me. I shot him. He doesn’t need to know that.

“You give me Dario Lucari, unharmed.”

“Uhh… oopsie on the unharmed part.”

I expected this, but I’m still thrown by the thought of anyone getting close enough to my husband to hurt him.

No. Dario wouldn’t be thrown an inch off course.

“Deliver him to me and I’ll give you Massimo alive.”

I glance back to check my brother’s reaction to the threat, but his eyes are closed and his face is a deathly shade of gray. The flickering neon of the Tommy’s Pizzeria sign lights his cheeks red, then not, then red again. I suck in a breath then turn back to the front. Dario can’t be dead. Can he?

“Then I’ll deliver Massimo dead.”

“That would make my life real easy,” Sergio says. “He was supposed to watch the henhouse but went off to do I-don’t-even-know-what with the foxes. That’s you. In more ways than one.” He turns a compliment into a threat. “So let me check that, see if it’s a body for a body.”

The grounding of my plan’s been ripped out from under me. What I have to trade isn’t what they want. What they have is what I need.

“Hey, buddy boy!” Sergio calls to someone on his side. “You dead?”

I hold my breath.

“Fuck you.” It’s Dario. He’s alive. The relief is so overwhelming, it almost drowns out that I don’t have a replacement for my plan to trade Massimo for Dario.

“So nah… yeah?” Sergio asks. “Cool. So, tatertot, let’s say I take you up on this offer. You bring number one son home and I give you this hunk of meat. What are you going to do with it?”

The answer, obviously, is I’m going to run away with him to live happily ever after. We’re going to make babies and he’s going to teach me everything about the world. We will swim with sharks in sapphire blue waters.

“Not your business.”

“Sure, sure, but this guy here, he’s kinda pissed off and I get the impression he can hold a grudge. Can you guarantee he won’t come back with a bazooka? No, you can’t, because nobody, and not no woman especially, is gonna keep this guy away. So why don’t you—”