Page 45 of The Viper's Wife

Alessia tells me how her next art exhibit is going—one of her artists had taken the theme ofdecayand ran with it. Flies had swarmed the art gallery for days until Alessia tracked down the source. The artist had hidden chunks of raw meat inside their piece.

“So I got him blacklisted from every art gallery in New York. The next time someone buys his art, it’ll be under a bridge.” Alessia laughs. It’s not a nice sound.

I groan as I turn the corner. My bagel cravings spin to nausea.

“What?” she says. “The guy fucking sucked anyway?—”

“No, it’s not that.” Giovanni’s huge form takes up most ofthe bagel shop window. I consider turning tail and scrounging up something at my place, but a deeper, stronger need to piss off Giovanni at every opportunity takes the helm instead. Maybe I’ll throw up on him. “I have to go. Your boyfriend’s here.”

“He’snotmy boyfriend, and I want details onyourwife next time I call you! Hobbies, interests, favorite wine!”

I hang up as I enter the bagel shop, the smell of warm bread and coffee wrapping around me. A few retirees are sitting around the café tables, nursing their lattes at a leisurely pace.

In the corner of the restaurant, Giovanni’s reading an honest-to-god newspaper and sipping from a tiny mug. He pretends not to notice me shooting him a dirty look as I stand in line to order.

After I grab my bagel and a massive coffee, I sit down at the table next to him.

“Are they bringing steam engines to the big city, Grandpa?”

Giovanni folds the paper with a beleaguered sigh. “You have a job tonight.”

“Round two with the Irish? Or gambling with the Russians?”

“Neither. You will take the contents from one of your warehouses to a shipping truck and send it off to the Russians. As a show of friendship.”

“Kind of seems the opposite of a job. Money’s supposed to flow in, not out.”

“Most of this business is maintaining relationships. Something you need to learn. Stefano will join you.”

I take a long drink of my coffee. “Pass. Tell him he can find the nearest dog shit and eat it. And send me pictures.”

Giovanni waits until an old man passes our table tocontinue, “You picked your wife, which means you picked her family. If they are not going to be of any use to you, then I will remove them.”

Valeria probably wouldn’t like that. Her family’s shit, but she seems determined to protect them. Between that and her pie-in-the-sky ideals about her work, I have the sneaking suspicion that she might be more virtuous than her scowls and all-black wardrobe would suggest. And if she is? If someone that good exists in a world like ours?

It’s a little too philosophical for a mind still mostly soaked in alcohol and not nearly enough caffeine.

“Why?” I ask, sipping from my coffee and dragging myself back to the present. “Salvatore already punished them. They can be just as useless as they were before, but from a distance.”

“The Russians want them gone. They are a reminder of mistakes made. You will need to prove to Salvatore they are better off alive than not.”

I tear off a hunk of bagel. Why would the Russians give a fuck? They already had me kill their traitor. They wouldn’t care if we had a few defective Italians in our midst.

But maybe this is for the best. Alessia brought up a good point—I need to learn more about Valeria, and what better source than her own family? If Stefano doesn’t have any useful information, I can invent a reason to beat the piss out of him. And if he does? It wouldn’t hurt to keep Valeria on her toes. Maybe I’ll surprise her with her favorite wine, and she’ll pull me into the nearest bathroom for another round of let’s-just-get-this-out-of-our-system sex.

“By the way,” Giovanni adds as he stands, the chair scraping underneath him. “I like this place. Good coffee.”

“Of course you do. I have great taste.”

By the timeI get to the warehouse, it’s pitch black and freezing cold outside.

I park and watch the men move boxes from a nondescript warehouse to a nondescript shipping truck, great white clouds billowing from their mouths like steam from hot engines.

It reminds me of all the shit I used to do before I went to jail. For all the power and luxury the Family gives you, there’s a lot of scraping and clawing in the dark to hold on to those gifts.

After I left prison, I was finally able to see it all for what it was—the slow, dreary machinations of evil. Any man in the Family would scoff at a 9-to-5 job, at grinding themselves down for a corporation, butthiswork is the exact same, sans health insurance.

I step out of the car and slam the door shut behind me. Stefano’s head snaps up, and he moves a little faster once he sees it’s me.