Vendetta (Blood for Blood #1)(67)
“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.
“How many?” I stammered, as numbers ran through my mind — five people? Ten? Fifty?
He slow-blinked at me, but I knew he understood. I spelled it out for him. “How many people have you killed?”
“I don’t know.” Lie.
“Ballpark,” I demanded, but my voice wavered. Did I really want to know? Would it be worse than my guesses?
“Not that many.” His eyes grew, and I caught myself noticing the flecks of gold inside them.
I refocused. I was not about to let him smolder his way out of this. “Anything over zero is ‘many.’ ”
Nic had the good sense to look away from me, even if he was feigning the shame he should have been feeling.
“So how many?” I asked again.
“I can’t discuss it, Sophie. I’d get in trouble,” he said, almost pleadingly. “Just know they were bad people. People a lot worse than Stenson. And it’s my job.”
“How could that be your job?” I finally managed, though it came out with an eye-watering shrillness.
“It couldn’t be anything else,” he replied simply.
“It could be lots of things, Nic!” I was screeching without meaning to. “You could be a teacher, a doctor, a barista, a fishmonger, an accountant, a — ”
“Sophie,” Nic interrupted softly. “Just calm down …”
I clamped my mouth shut until the hysteria subsided, and when I had finally calmed my breathing down, I conceded, “I’m scared.”
“I told you I would never hurt you,” he said quietly. “It’s just a job.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “How could it be?”
“The Falcones have earned our position as one of the most honorable and respected lineages in the American Mafia. The other families always come to us, for one reason or another, and we always respond. That has been our calling within the underworld. And it is how we operate within omertà.” The last word rolled off his tongue.