Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78893 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78893 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Romeo’s lips thinned. He didn’t want an audience. He wanted one minute, just one minute, where he didn’t have to take care of someone for once. One minute where he could just be himself for a little while. One minute where he wasn’t Romeo Rossi, the youngest kid in St. Anthony’s ninth grade, already wielding more power as the Underboss-to-be in the Family than soldiers under his father’s command twice his age.
“Nonna’s almost got dinner ready,” Orlando said. “Let’s go.”
“No,” Marialena whined. “I wanted to see the co-ree.”
“Quarry,” Romeo corrected, reaching for her hand. He noted how little, how cold it was, and fanned his fingers to warm her. “And no. It’s getting cold, and we need to get home to dinner.”
Clouds covered the moon and the quarry was plunged into temporary darkness, when a scream and shout broke out behind them. When the clouds parted, Romeo’s eyes met Ottavio’s. He picked Marialena up in his arms to keep her from following and shoved her at Orlando, the largest of the bunch and the one most likely to keep the willful three-year-old in place. “Stay here.”
The brothers froze. Marialena fussed and pushed at Orlando but he held her tight. “Hush, Lena,” he said, using their pet name for her. “Let Rome go see what it is.”
Romeo pushed through brambles and branches undeterred, even as his heart smashed against his ribcage. His trusty knife lay tucked in his palm.
“It’s Romeo!” someone shouted ahead of him. “Rome! Oh, God. Rome!”
Santo, the Family’s best friend and adopted brother, stood in front of a small clearing surrounded by small, bare birch trees, his eyes wide and terrified. “Stay back, Rome.”
Romeo froze. “You okay, Santo?”
Santo slowly shook his head from side to side.
Romeo’s eyes fell to the ground.
A body.
Sprawled out on the ground behind Santo, partially covered by leaves, and obviously dead.
He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat and used the sternest voice he could muster, the voice that even his most willful younger sibling always obeyed.
“Don’t fucking move.”
Santo stood stock-still, obeying, as the sound of footsteps came up behind them.
“No!” Romeo slammed his palm out as if the very air would stall his siblings from coming any closer. “No.”
He glanced over his shoulder and drew in a breath. “Santo, you stay here. Tavi, come here. Orlando, you take the younger kids back to the house.”
“No!” Marialena, who managed to escape Orlando’s grip, protested. “No! I stay!”
Romeo swiveled to face her, prepared to toss the toddler over his shoulder and carry her back to the house himself, when Orlando spoke up.
“Come, little Lena. You help Nonna with the table, okay? It’s cold out here and Mama will be worried if you ruin your pretty new shoes.”
Marialena stared down at her brand-new shoes, pretty patent leather they’d gotten in Boston the day before, and nodded. As the largest of the bunch, Orlando firmly took the younger kids’ hands and dragged them back up to the brightly lit road, but not before he gave Romeo a meaningful look. They were not finished, and he would tell him what happened later. Romeo gave him one curt, quick nod.
When they were far enough away, Romeo turned back to Santo. “Step aside, man. Let me see.”
Santo obeyed and watched. It wasn’t lost on Romeo that Santo was the one who had found the body. Only ten years old himself, he was far wiser than his years and had come to the Family as the resident grifter. He was gifted in swindling, and rarely told the truth.
He was Narciso Rossi’s favorite. The one child unrelated by blood, the only one Romeo’s mother, Tosca, would let him corrupt to his heart’s content.
Ottavio came up beside Romeo, and the two boys stared at the body. Romeo fell to one knee while Ottavio turned and dry heaved beside him.
“Couple days old,” Romeo said in a cold, detached voice that belied the fire that churned in his belly. “Maybe a week.”
He stared at the legs, askew and obviously broken, and wondered what torture had hurt the worst. He stared at the fingers, cold and stiff with rigor mortis, and flexed his own fingers as if to defy the thought of death freezing his own limbs. He stared at the leaves that served as a makeshift coffin before their own decay.
Santo nodded. “Smells like ass.”
“You shouldn’t curse like that,” Romeo protested absentmindedly. He cursed like a sailor himself, but felt anyone under the age of thirteen should be held to higher standards of purity.
“Fuck off,” Santo muttered. Romeo didn’t hear him.
He was too fixated on the bloodied body before him.
“Knife up the back of the skull,” Ottavio noted, voicing the brutality that lay before them on the bed of leaves. He didn’t offer any other notes.
Both Ottavio and Romeo knew it was their father’s signature move, the move that got him nicknamed “The Skull.” Romeo was six years old when he caught his father practicing his move in a woodshed on their property.