Dark Heart (Dark Heart 1)

I inhale as I realize… “Yeah. It upset my mom. I remember hearing her talk about it.”

“Bullet killed the stylist, too,” Alesso tells me. He’s still running his mouth when I turn around and sit squarely in my seat. I rub my closed eyes with my fingertips—hard, until I see gold spots.

Anyway, they got her.

I saw her today. Pictures of her. “Bert” Arnoldi had them everywhere. He had a fucking shrine to her.

I think about a bullet slicing through her torso. Maybe through one of those thin little sweaters first, the soft kind that Elise wears sometimes. Then a silk blouse. And out her back, between two of her ribs. Blood blooming. And then the other woman. In my head, I picture her as Dani. I imagine them both falling to the salon’s floor, bodies clapping on those rubbery mats as the chair spins and dark blood mixes with the cut hairs.

I think of Lamberto Arnoldi’s kitchen counter, sticky like it needed wiping.

“Why did he want me?” I manage, turning partway around, so I can see Alesso.

“Don’t tell Tony—” his brows rise— “but he said the old man heard about you.”

“Heard about me?” I’m cold now. All over. “What the fuck does that mean?”

Alesso’s mouth flattens. “You know what it means.”

“I thought Lamberto has been out of the picture for years.”

“Tony told me Roberto is ‘hung up’ on you.” I blink as Alesso’s hands bend into air quotes. “Everybody knows,” he adds. “You’ve got the biggest balls in Red Hook.”

Something hot tingles through my body—like that feeling from the schoolyard when you’re playing tag and someone’s fingers come within an inch of your arm.

“Leo.” I gag hard behind my hand, and Leo hits the brakes, eliciting a cacophony of car horns from behind us.

“What the fuck?” Leo says, at the same time Alesso shouts, “Don’t throw up!”

I don’t. Throw up. I swallow a few times, feel a little sweaty for a second, and then the feeling passes. When it does, Alesso makes a heavy, sigh-like sound.

“Was that my fault?” he asks in a low, muffled sort of voice.

“What?” I turn around to face him, putting on my bullshit face. “Was it your fault I felt sick?”

He nods, wide-eyed, and for a second, we’re in kindergarten—Alesso too scared to hide inside the tractor tires that formed our little crew’s playground hideout.

“Nah, dude. It’s this tunnel.” I turn back toward the windshield. “Guess I was wrong about it. Being in here so long is making me dizzy as shit.”

Alesso makes a crack about me and motion sickness, but it doesn’t take him long to get back on topic. Especially with Leo asking him so many questions. I can see a different side of Alesso as he answers. He might hate his brother, but I think he loves knowing the answers.

I think about Lamberto and the hump in his thin back, the way the bread crumbs stuck in his white moustache. I think of his son, Roberto.

“I would like a number of things. What can you offer me, Mr. Galante?”

I remember Roberto’s dark eyes from the shoe store that day years ago. They were unsure for a second, like he was either going to throw a punch at me or laugh his ass off.

“Tony told me Roberto is hung up on you. Everybody knows. You’ve got the biggest balls in Red Hook.”

I think—with some dismay—about my riverside plans for tonight. I shut my eyes and see Elise bleeding. After that, I bar myself from thinking about the late Mrs. Arnoldi.

A few minutes later, I see light. We’re in Manhattan.* * *EliseI twine my arms around Luca’s neck and giggle as I kick my heel-clad foot back.

“What are you doing, woman?”

He grins down at me, and I reach up and poke his dimple.

“That’s a dimple.”

“No it isn’t.”

“That’s what you always say.”

“Because dimples are for baby butts and little kids.”

“Then what is this?” I lean my head against his shoulder, closing my eyes. His chest vibrates beneath me as he chuckles.

“It’s a man indention.”

I hear our friends laughing. It makes me laugh, too. The balmy breeze tosses my gown around my ankles as more of our classmates spill out the school’s front doors.

Luca rubs my back as he holds me up against him. “I’m gonna have to talk to Ree.”

“What? Why?”

“For getting my date drunk in the ladies’ room.”

I’m amused. “The ‘ladies’ room?”

He’s amused. “I guess I shouldn’t have mistaken you two for ladies.”

I punch him lightly, then tip my head back so I can smile up at him. “It was just a little whiskey.”

I feel his body move again as he laughs. “That’s what they all say. That’s what they all say.”

“I’m so sleepy though! No one told me that would happen.”

His hand cups the back of my head, fingers careful around my hairdo. “I think that’s true sometimes. It can make you sleepy.”