More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Visconti women love a pissing match at funerals. It doesn’t matter whether the deceased is their mama or their twelfth aunt twice-removed, it’s always a fucking competition to see who can mourn the hardest.
It’s the cries on the other end of the scale that make me want to dive in the dirt with the dead. The shrieks, the wails, the screams.
The fucking gurgles. “Gesù Cristo,” my cousin, Tor, mutters from the pew behind me. “I slit a bastard’s throat last week. He made the exact same noise.”
Nobody throws a party like a recently deceased Visconti, let alone two of them.
Mama, ever the optimist, would remind us that while it was colder in the wintertime, it was always warmer in the summer, too. Life is all about balance, Angelo. The good always cancels out the bad.
Side by side. Together for eternity. There will be a sanitized version of their love story etched onto a joint headstone. I think of all the mid-morning joggers and wayward tourists that will stop to read it and believe it’s their daily reminder that love exists. Meanwhile, the sinful truth is buried six feet underneath them.
Made men know love doesn’t exist. Uncles and cousins grip their wives’ and girlfriends’ wrists instead of holding their hands. They offer clipped comfort in the hope they’ll shut up, all while checking their watches, calculating when they’ll be able to slip away to their whores, loosen their ties, and forget about their duties to the Cosa Nostra.
Visconti men in particular don’t fall in love. Because falling suggests it was accidental, and everything this family does is cold and calculated. A shaky hand
Mama is lowered first and I find myself sinking with her; the only woman I’ll ever get on my knees for. My balled fists disappear into the mud. Another hand rests on my shoulder, and by the glint of the citrine ring, I know it’s Rafe’s.
Rafe crouches next to me, brings his fist up to his mouth, and blows. With a flick of his wrist, a pair of dice scatters across the lid, rolling off the curve and falling into the gap between the coffin and the soil. “For my Lady Luck,” he rasps, running a hand through his hair. “Good luck up there, Mama.”
Gabe sinks to his knees too. Instead of throwing in the rose in his hand, he leans over, plants his lips to the wood and mutters something long and heartfelt. It’s the most I’ve seen him speak in years.
“A fortune cookie,” Rafe says weakly, a sad smile stretching his lips. “Why didn’t I think of that?” Mama believed in fate as much as she believed in God. But while she was content having never seen or heard the big man in the sky, she constantly sought out proof that fate existed.
And goddamn fortune cookies. Mama lived by them; she’d crack one open after dinner every night, gently peeling out the little strip of paper like it was a treasured artifact. She’d find meaning in whatever vague prophecy it contained, then work on tweaking and molding her life around it.
You’re vicious, son. A great trait for a capo to have. Not.
If Angelo jumped off the cliff, would you do it too? Mama used to ask my brothers that every time I’d lure them into some stupid shit when we were younger. Burning down the old barn down the road, or cutting the brakes on our bikes to see who could get from our house on top of the hill to the lake at the bottom the fastest. Their answer hasn’t changed. Yes.
The beaded chain is wrapped around my wrist twice, the cross swaying in the wind like a pendulum. He never took it off. Until I took it off for him.
A strike of lightning flashes across the horizon. God trying to smite me down.
As I pass, I slap a brick of notes against his muddy chest. “Dig her up,” I growl. “My mama doesn’t belong here.”
A bitter laugh escapes me. It was always going to come to this. Me, standing on the edge of Devil’s Dip’s highest cliff and thinking bad thoughts. Which is ironic, because, for the first time in three years, I’m doing a good thing. A completely selfless, self-sacrificing act that nobody in their right darn mind would do if they weren’t desperate.
Adrenaline zaps down my spine, and for a moment, I close my eyes and stick out my tongue, tasting the salt and moisture and danger. I let the wind take control of my body. Is this the closest I’ll ever get to being free? Then I taste something else. Something thick and bitter. “You hoping to fall, or fly?” Oh, sparrow.
Smoke. That’s what I could taste.
“You have reached Sinners Anonymous,” a woman’s robotic voice says. “Please leave your sin after the tone.” After the long beep, I take a deep breath and let my soul bleed.
I can feel Tor’s amused grin heating one of my cheeks and Dante’s blistering glare scorching the other.
I learned quickly it’s better to vent my frustrations silently, usually by balling my fists until my fingernails carve half-moons into my palms. Oh, and spitting in his mouthwash.
of dinner service. How the hell did I end up here? Two-and-a-half months ago, I sank to my knees on the doorstep of Alberto’s white colonial mansion and begged for mercy. Now, I’m living a life I don’t recognize; playing a side character in a story I don’t understand.
Embarrassment creeps across my chest, and instinctively, my eyes drop to the steak knife laid out neatly in front of me. Tempting.
I knew of Tor Visconti long before his father put a rock on my finger. Every girl on the Devil’s Coast knows Tor, some more intimately than others.
In the short time I’ve personally known the Viscontis, I’ve learned two things about them. The first, is that they aren’t just a powerful family, they are in fact, the mafia. Cold-hearted, hot-blooded Sicilian-Americans who live and die by the Glocks tucked into the waistbands of their Armani suits. The second, is that whatever they want, they get. Including one ice cube in their lowball glass.
If I didn’t need him to visit my father twice a week, I’d cut his car brakes.
Angelo couldn’t give two swans about the million-dollar rock on my finger. As much as I dislike him, the little act of rebellion against the almighty Alberto excites me.
“Your ring. It looks heavy enough to weigh you down if you choose to fall.”
The stubble of his jaw grazes against my cheek, and his now-familiar scent makes my head spin. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Aurora.” The delirium that comes with the unknown transports me back to the cliff edge. And for the first time, I genuinely wish I’d jumped off it.
Angelo Visconti. He’s leaning against the bar, holding a whiskey glass so loosely that it looks like he’s about to drop it. Dante is in his ear, talking animatedly while he remains still and silent. The contrast between them is like fire and ice.
I watch as he cocks his head and slowly swirls the liquid around his glass with a lazy roll of his wrist. A flicker of sympathy ignites in my stomach, and guilt settles on my skin like dust.
Growing up in the Preserve has sharpened my instincts, and standing in a dark corridor with this man gives me the same sense of unease as hearing a leaf crunch on the forest floor, or a howl in the distance. He might not be much of a made man, but it feels like I’m face to face with a predator.
He clears his throat, and when he finally speaks, his voice has a rasp to it. “Stealing is a sin, Aurora.” I wince at how he wraps his lips around the vowels in my name.
The Angels of Devil’s Dip. That’s what the locals used to call me and my brothers growing up, because we were the deacon’s sons. That and the fact we were pale, blond, and angelic-looking. Back then, we didn’t look like we had an ounce of Sicilian blood running through our veins, but as we grew upward and outward, our hair turned black and our skin more tanned, despite living in a town that saw about thirty minutes of sunshine a year.
He and his two brothers were the first generation of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra to cross the Atlantic. New York was overcrowded and Boston was dominated by the Irish, so they traveled up and west until they found the isolated Devil’s Coast. It had nothing but three shitty towns running along the length of it. They drew straws to decide who got what turf, and my father got Devil’s Dip, seemingly the worst of a bad bunch.
The smallest towns have the biggest secrets, Angelo. That’s what my father would always say when I was growing up. When I’d look at the bright lights of Devil’s Cove or see my cousins in Devil’s Hollow sealing seven-figure deals in business meetings with investors from New York, and ask him why he’s still here. And the bigger the secrets, the more power we have.
“I’ve found it.” “Found what?” Dante grunts. “The most depressing place on earth. I bet even the cockroaches have fucked off.”
I’d rather shit in my hands and clap than move back to Devil’s Dip and take my rightful place as capo, but the way his beady gaze shifts around my features, the way he white-knuckles his glass, it makes me realize he’s nervous. So, I’ll let him sweat it out a little longer.
It felt good to be vicious.
Tor’s right—I fly back for Christmas and funerals and very little in between. I stay just long enough to shake hands with my uncles and fist-bump my cousins. To kiss aunts on the cheek and to let them pinch mine as they tell me how big I’ve grown. Being in this town for too long makes me feel like I’m losing brain cells. Plus, there’s only so many times I can hear the question: When are you coming back?
I don’t like Dante even nearly enough to tell him that I’m here because of a goddamn fortune cookie.
“But when I do decide to take over Devil’s Dip again, you’ll be the first to know,” I add. “Thanks for keeping it warm for me.”
It started when we were just kids; he always thought my brothers and I were childish because of the special game we’d play. And then that disdain turned into jealousy when our game meant we killed a man long before he was even allowed to pick up a gun. Oh, and then I fucked his prom date. Can’t remember why, though.
I lick my lips, ignoring the rattling sound of Vicious Visconti trying to escape his cage.
“Why are you really here, Angelo?” Turning my attention back to the sea, I drag a knuckle through my beard and steel my jaw. “Dante?” “Yeah?” “Mind your own fucking business.”
The Cove clan loves a fucking get-together. I’d rather stick my dick in a car door, but instead of telling him that, I lift my hand up in a half-wave and crash out into the parking lot.
Whoever is on the other side of the line clearly doesn’t have much to say, as she’s doing all the talking. What the fuck are you doing here, girl? And who are you talking to?
