Vicki Pettersson - The Given

But when the smoke cleared, they were standing on another street corner, this one more modern, and facing a house that was even grander than the first. They watched through Gina’s gaze as a sleek black Mercedes backed from the drive, the platinum-white curls of an older woman sprouting above the driver’s seat as it sped away. The car was a late model, something that still sailed the streets today, so as Gina approached and knocked on the front door, Kit knew that a significant amount of time had passed.

It was confirmed when the door whipped open to reveal a man in his mid-forties, relatively handsome and obviously related to Sal DiMartino.

Oh, my God. It’s . . .

“Hello, Ray.” There was no mirror to reflect the passage of time on Gina, but her voice had grown creaky with age, and Ray’s responding scowl was mirror enough.

“Gina fucking Alessi.” Of course Ray would know exactly who she was. He was seven years old when her charge, his cousin, had been kidnapped from his front yard. Even a young child remembered an event like that.

“Can I come in?” She hurried on before he could slam the door. “I have a message for Sal.”

Ray, curious despite himself, tilted his head. “Who sent you?”

“Your mother.”

Ray scoffed and began to swing the door shut. “That bitch isn’t my mother.”

Gina stopped him cold without moving at all. “I mean your real mother. Theresa.”

And for just one moment, Ray DiMartino looked like the young boy Grif had once described. It was hope; it flared, odd and uncomfortable on the set face, and he erased it as quickly as possible. Kit would’ve cried for him if she could. Even knowing what he’d become, that he would one day try to kill her, she still felt sorry for the boy who’d ever feel hope for his mother. Then his expression hardened again, and he led Gina in to see his father.

Sal DiMartino was dying, no doubt about it. His arms and legs were scrawny, loose skin pooled around his chin, a testament to too much weight lost too fast, and the wingspan of his once-great shoulders had shrunk, making a physical mockery of his former strength. In contrast, it made Theresa’s illness look tame.

“Why are you here?” Sal asked Gina.

“I was supposed to stay away from you. Theresa made me swear to never go near you again. She said it was the price of my freedom and life. But it’s been thirty-seven years, Sal, and I can’t run anymore. I’m tired of hiding.” Gina steeled her spine and lifted her chin. “I want you to make her leave me alone.”

“Who?” Ray butted in, knowing he was missing something important, that there was subtext at play that he didn’t understand, but Gina and Sal only continued to stare at each other.

“And why would Barbara be after you?” Sal finally asked, voice souring over his wife’s name.

So he knew, thought Kit. He had at least some idea that the woman he’d married had her own dark secrets.

Huffing at that, Gina just threw something down on the table before him. Nobody moved. Sal stared at the lone diamond for almost a full minute before reaching out to pick it up. He leaned back, holding the diamond so close to his face that he almost looked like he was going to kiss it. Then he closed his eyes. “She still wants it all.”

“And only Theresa saw it,” Gina said.

“Wants what?” Ray asked, inching forward. “What did my mother see?”

“Stop talking, you damned fool!” Sal demanded, his voice suddenly rounding out with his old authority. Ray cringed.

“You knew all along,” Gina said to Sal.

“That Barbara set up Mary Margaret’s kidnapping? That she led my nephew, Tommy, to his death? That she pinned it all on that sap of a P.I., Griffin Shaw?”

Yes. He knew.

“And you still married her? You lived with her? All these years?”

“I was alive, but that’s different from living, isn’t it? And I can’t say that I did that, not really. Not after Theresa died. When she was gone . . . living was just another job.” He shook his head, deflating again. “But maybe I didn’t want to see what Barbara was all about. She stayed so long. She mourned the end of the good days with me. She stayed throughout my prison sentence. She stayed after I came home, crowded her space. Her house.”

“Because she still wants the other two,” Gina said without emotion.

Ray couldn’t hold his tongue anymore. He reached for the gem. “Wait, there are two more of these?”

“Don’t touch it, you idiot!” Sal’s voice thundered through the room, and for a moment Kit glimpsed the feared mafia don beneath the sagging meat suit, the criminal patriarch who had run this city like it was his own. He glared at Ray until the younger man backed away, and then turned that fierce gaze back on Gina. “I swear, he’s more her son than he is Theresa’s.”

Ray’s face fell slack in stricken surprise. Sal pushed into a seated position and turned away before Gina did, so he missed the way his son’s face hardened in hatred.

“Help me up,” Sal told Gina, and she did. When Kit and Grif next blinked, they were standing before a safe, which Sal opened with shaking fingers. A bank of security cameras displayed different parts of the house in black and white, and tilted angles. Ray was nowhere to be seen.

“I found this when I got back from the pen,” Sal said, handing Gina a slim, folded slip of paper. “It’s the birth certificate she used to change her name when Theresa ran her out of Vegas the first time. Tuck it away,” he said, before she could open it. “Use it as insurance.”

Then he reached in for something else. “And this . . . this is mine.”

Very carefully, he unfolded a thin, delicate slip of paper, then held it up to reveal a series of nonsensical lines. Tracing paper, Kit saw. Did they even make that anymore? Reaching down, he laid it atop the safe’s only other item, a map of the city and the surrounding terrain.

“Your drop zones,” Gina whispered, and her accompanying thought hurtled through Kit’s and Grif’s minds. Where all the bodies are buried. Sal smiled bitterly, then pointed to the largest circle, the darkest mark. “This is—”

A loud blast sounded, and Sal jerked back. His gaze narrowed as he caught sight of movement on the cameras above. Barbara was back. And she’d brought two cops with her.

Dad, Kit thought, seeing the fuzzy black-and-white images through Gina’s gaze. Oh, my God. Grif, it’s my dad. But then, in the past, Gina looked away. “She knows I’m here.”

Sal’s mouth thinned, his bushy brows drawing low. “Stay here in the safe box. I’ll take care of this.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Fulfill Theresa’s last wish,” he said, nodding down at the map, then back at the cameras. “Barbara will never see those diamonds.”

And he left. But Gina didn’t stay put. Instead, she grabbed the gem, the map, and the birth certificate—and ran, like she always had. Out of the safe box, through the kitchen, and out the back door. She glanced back only once, when she heard her name shouted from behind. Ray DiMartino was pointing her way, and one of the officers was squinting at her quizzically, then rushing to follow . . .

No, Kit implored her father, though the memory was already fading, sulfur again crowding in to obscure the past, but not before Kit saw the plasma swirling around her father’s ankles. Please don’t follow.

They came to in the morgue with the sound of pounding at the door. Sucking in a deep breath of air, Kit gasped, and then turned into Grif’s shoulder. The sulfur was gone, and Gina Alessi’s face had disappeared again, along with her memories.