How, once Ari found Lena, he was too cowardly to kill her himself. How he wanted to maintain deniability if Aldo ever found out what had really happened.
How Ari tasked me, his fixer, with the job.
How my brother fabricated the evidence against Lena believing it would be sufficient to convince me to kill her, no questions asked.
How, when I rebuffed the order, he implemented a back-up plan, including tapping her phone and bugging her apartment, hiring theArkhangel(real name Alik Valentin) to take her out, and then another soldier from San Luca—the one who attacked her and Bianca in the parking garage—when Valentin refused to complete the job.
“Does Ari know why Valentin backed off?” I ask.
“No,” Aldo answers. “Only that Valentin said it was a Family matter and he wasn’t getting involved.”
“How did Ari take that?”
“Badly,” Aldo confirms. “Seems he added a few more scars to the ones Alik already has.”
Mentally, I put finding theArkhangel—Valentin—on a future to-do list. To thank him for bowing out and taking the punishment he knew would come when he failed to complete the job. “If Ari was the one framing Lena, was he framing our soldiers as well? Planting all that bogus evidence to get our guys locked up? He’s done some heinous shit, but colluding with the Paganos…”
“No,” Aldo says firmly. “That wasn’t Ari. We haven’t gotten to the bottom of that mystery yet but I’m working on it. Same goes for the car bomb. Your brother didn’t conspire with Rocco Pagano, of that I’m sure.”
“Are you?” Aldo’s expression says to drop it so, for now, I do. “What about Lena’s aunt? How did he explain that?”
“That was truly unfortunate, a loss we’ll never be able to atone for.” Aldo white-knuckles his way through explaining that burning down Mable’s house was one of Ari’s contingency plans for killing Lena, that through the wiretap on her phone he knew she was supposed to be there and had his men tamperwith the gas valves in the house. When Lena changed her plans, it was already too late to reverse course, too much gas had already leaked into the house. When Mable Fisher turned on her stove, it was all over.
“And that’s when he tasked theArkhangelwith executing her in her own home. The same night I’d gone there to try to find evidence she was working with the Paganos.”
“You saved her life, Rem. More than once.”
“I lead her straight into the monster’s lair.”
“I don’t think she sees it that way.”
The monitor next to the bed starts beeping rapidly. It takes me a second to realize it’s broadcasting just how fast my heart is beating. “That’s the second time you’ve said something like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like she’s still alive.”
Aldo comes to stand next to the bed. He grips my face in his cool, strong hands and plants a paternal kiss on the top of my head. Before he pulls away, he presses something into my lax fingers. I stare at the gold necklace in the center of my now trembling palm.
Ignoring the giant fucking elephant in the room, Aldo gives me a steady look. “You haven’t answered my question. What will it be: will you pursue Ari yourself, or let me handle him?”
“I hate him. I fucking hate him. And I’ll give you the same answer I gave him when he dared me to choose: I pick Lena. Always, over everyone. Do what you need to do,capo, just tell me what the fuck has happened to my wife.”
Aldo smiles and for the first time in what feels like forever, I feel a shred of hope. “I think I’ll let her do that instead.”
43
REM
Without another word, Aldo leaves. I strip the wires and needles from my body, trying to ignore how much my hands are shaking. Those hands freeze when I hear someone enter the room.
“You’re awake.”
I clench the bedsheets so hard they rip, Lena’s necklace pressing painfully into my palm. My vision is blurry as I watch my wife walk toward me. “You’re alive.”
Lena’s smile wobbles. “So are you. It was touch and go there for a while.”
I barely register her comment. I’m struggling to process everything as I reach out and trace one finger down her arm, bare skin exposed by her sleeveless dress. She is warm, soft. Solid. Not a figment of my desperate imagination.