SWNOVELS Chapter Sinners Anonymous : Prologue
pissing match at funerals. It doesn’t matter whether the deceased is their mama or their twelfth aunt twice-removed, it’s always a fucking competition to see who can mourn the hardest.
Whimpers, sobs, sniffles. The ones muffled by a borrowed handkerchief or dabbed away with a crumbling Kleenex, I can almost tolerate. It’s the cries on the other end of the scale that make me want to dive in the dirt with the dead. The shrieks, the wails, the screams.
I drag my gaze away from Bishop Francis and pin my Great Aunt Esme with a blistering glare.
The fucking gurgles.
“Gesù Cristo,” my cousin, Tor, mutters from the pew behind me. “I slit a bastard’s throat last week. He made the exact same noise.”
There’s a ripple down my row, and I glance left to my brother, Rafe. He’s biting down on his bottom lip to suppress a snigger. He catches my eye and cocks a brow as if to say, what? It was funny. Next to him, my other brother, Gabe, stares straight ahead, jaw steeled.
Bishop Francis drones on, chipping away at the liturgy. As Aunt Esme’s gurgles get louder, a second cousin who’s come over from Sicily especially for the occasion decides she won’t be outdone. She lets out a screech before squeezing her way out of her pew, click-clacking down the aisle toward the altar, and letting out a wail that sounds like a deflating balloon as she sinks to her knees in front of the coffins.
I can’t even remember her name.
Apologies muttered in clipped Italian. Feverish glances in my direction. A male cousin is on her heels and drags her back to her seat, lifting the hem of her lace veil to half scold, half comfort her.
But Bishop Francis has lost his train of thought. Now he’s stammering over his words and shuffling papers, and behind me, I can feel the mood shift.
I get it. Roman Catholic funerals are excruciatingly long. Longer when there are two bodies to bury, and one of them is a deacon. The wooden pews are getting harder by the second, and minds are drifting away from grief and towards the Grand Visconti Hotel over in Devil’s Cove, where the wake will take place.
Nobody throws a party like a recently deceased Visconti, let alone two of them.
The Bishop glances down to the front pew, meeting my eye. I give him a small nod as permission to wrap it up. No one in this church wants to get out of here faster than I do. He clears his throat and turns his attention back to the clergy.
“Dearly beloved, the family requests that you join them in the courtyard for the committal.”
Eyes filled with pity and unspent tears land on me. My brothers and I stand, and with one last lingering look towards the coffins, I swallow the knot in my throat, roll my shoulders, and lead the way to the back of the church.
I stride through the sea of whispers, eyes fixed on the wrought iron doors ahead.
Nearly there. Nearly over.
My cell buzzes in my breast pocket. I hope it’s my assistant letting me know the jet is refueled and ready to take me back to London.
An altar boy heaves open the doors, and for a moment, I stand on the steps and close my eyes, feeling the icy wind slap my cheeks, the frost nipping my nose. The weather has always been more extreme up here on the cliff than it is down in the town below; the winds harsher and the rain heavier. Mama, ever the optimist, would remind us that while it was colder in the wintertime, it was always warmer in the summer, too.
Life is all about balance, Angelo. The good always cancels out the bad.
When I open my eyes, Rafe is standing on one side of me, Gabe on the other. They both follow my gaze up to the low-hanging clouds, their bellies pregnant with the incoming storm.
Rafe lets out a hiss. “What a beautiful day to bury our parents.”
Gabe says nothing.
We take the gravel path that snakes through the tombstones, until we are standing just yards from the edge of the cliff. There are two rectangular holes cut out of the muddy grass.
My fists clench.
Side by side. Together for eternity. There will be a sanitized version of their love story etched onto a joint headstone. I think of all the mid-morning joggers and wayward tourists that will stop to read it and believe it’s their daily reminder that love exists.
Meanwhile, the sinful truth is buried six feet underneath them.
No matter what romantic prose is chiseled into a marble headstone, true love doesn’t exist. It’s nothing but hope in a different form. A concept for the poor and the powerless to latch onto when there’s nothing else.
My eyes turn to the tide of suits and lace filtering through the graveyard toward us. Made men know love doesn’t exist. Uncles and cousins grip their wives’ and girlfriends’ wrists instead of holding their hands. They offer clipped comfort in the hope they’ll shut up, all while checking their watches, calculating when they’ll be able to slip away to their whores, loosen their ties, and forget about their duties to the Cosa Nostra.
Visconti men in particular don’t fall in love. Because falling suggests it was accidental, and everything this family does is cold and calculated.
A shaky hand grips my shoulder.
“Alonso would love this resting place,” Uncle Alfredo says, voice choked with emotion. “Now, he can look up at his church and down at his town. He built both of them from nothing, you know?”
Staring down at the pile of dirt that is about to weigh down my mother, I offer him a curt nod. He pats me on the back and takes a step back. I’ll give Uncle Alfredo one thing, he knows how to take a hint.
Mama is lowered first and I find myself sinking with her; the only woman I’ll ever get on my knees for. My balled fists disappear into the mud. Another hand rests on my shoulder, and by the glint of the citrine ring, I know it’s Rafe’s.
“Heavenly Father, because you have chosen to call our sister Maria Visconti from this life to yourself, we commit her body to the earth where it will take its final resting place,” Bishop Francis booms, his words quickly snatched away by the wind.
White heat seeps through my blood, and there’s that bitterness again, burning the back of my throat. It tastes of secret and sin, and no matter how much whiskey I sink on the plane ride home or thereafter, I know I’ll never get rid of it.
“…Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…” the Bishop drones on.
Incense burns, wisps of smoke merging with the morning fog. Then come the roses. Blood red and full of thorns, landing with a dull thud on the mahogany lid. Rafe crouches next to me, brings his fist up to his mouth, and blows. With a flick of his wrist, a pair of dice scatters across the lid, rolling off the curve and falling into the gap between the coffin and the soil.
“For my Lady Luck,” he rasps, running a hand through his hair. “Good luck up there, Mama.”
Gabe sinks to his knees too. Instead of throwing in the rose in his hand, he leans over, plants his lips to the wood and mutters something long and heartfelt.
It’s the most I’ve seen him speak in years.
The flowers and the cards stop falling, and eyes turn to me, expectantly.
Slowly, I dig something out of my pocket. The wrapper crinkles in my hand, and I place it carefully on the coffin so it doesn’t break.
There’s a small laugh next to me.
“A fortune cookie,” Rafe says weakly, a sad smile stretching his lips. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Mama believed in fate as much as she believed in God. But while she was content having never seen or heard the big man in the sky, she constantly sought out proof that fate existed. She searched for it everywhere. Five-dollar tarot readings by gypsies at the fair, the little eight-ball key ring attached to her house keys.
And goddamn fortune cookies. Mama lived by them; she’d crack one open after dinner every night, gently peeling out the little strip of paper like it was a treasured artifact. She’d find meaning in whatever vague prophecy it contained, then work on tweaking and molding her life around it.
It was a fortune cookie that had brought her from New York to Devil’s Dip, Washington, in the first place.
Seek hope where the air is salty and the cliffs are steep.
She loved this damn town because she thought it was her destiny to start a life here. I wonder, whether hunched over in a gypsy wagon or with the shake of her eight-ball, she ever saw that this town would be the death of her, too.
My father is lowered next. There’s a purple veil draped over his coffin and his green and gold robes are folded on top. The sobs start again, louder than they were for my mama. I rise to my feet and turn to the sea, feeling every pair of Visconti eyes burning into my back.
I know what they are all thinking. The death of my father marks a new era for the Cosa Nostra, and it starts with me.
The new capo of Devil’s Dip.
As I stare out to the fishing boats and the cargo ships bobbing over the waves below, I realize I can feel other eyes on me, too. I turn my head right, my gaze stretching across the graveyard and to the other side of the small public road, where a crowd huddles under the bus shelter.
My jaw locks.
Fucking locals. Some are sitting on the bench, others are leaning against the phone booth with their arms crossed. All are watching my parents be lowered into the ground, and judging by their glares and brightly-colored clothes, none of them are here to pay their respects.
I lock eyes with an old man. His face is leathery and weather-worn, just like all the workers who have spent a lifetime fighting the elements down in the port below. He’s wearing a brick-red coat and a yellow scarf, and after a few moments, he pulls his lips back to form a shit-eating grin.
My father always said my temper was different from my brothers. Their anger burns slow like a candle and is easy to extinguish, whereas mine is like a firework. Light my fuse and I explode mere seconds later, with no thought to the irreparable damage I will cause. You’re vicious, son.
A great trait for a capo to have.
Not.
“Angelo, put the damn gun away,” Uncle Alberto hisses in my ear, suddenly appearing beside me.
I don’t even remember pulling it out of my waistband, let alone pointing it at the smug bastard across the road. But now the crowd is scattering like a shaken flock of pigeons, mouthing panicky words that are lost in the sound of the crashing waves and wind.
I glance behind me. Bishop Francis has stopped talking, the Visconti women have stopped sobbing, and everyone is staring at me in either sympathy, anger, or confusion. Everyone except for Rafe and Gabe, who have their hands hovering over the guns in their waistbands. Rafe catches my eye and gives a slight shake of his head.
Not a good idea, bro.
Despite standing a few feet from my dead parents with a damn gun in my hand, I huff out a laugh.
If Angelo jumped off the cliff, would you do it too?
Mama used to ask my brothers that every time I’d lure them into some stupid shit when we were younger. Burning down the old barn down the road, or cutting the brakes on our bikes to see who could get from our house on top of the hill to the lake at the bottom the fastest.
Their answer hasn’t changed. Yes.
“They’re here to make sure he’s really dead,” I growl.
“No, they are here to catch a glimpse of the man who will replace him.” Uncle Alberto steps in front of me, blocking my view of the locals piling into trucks and cars, and grips my jaw. His eyes are a cocktail of pride and sorrow. “I can’t wait to see what you do, Vicious. You’re going to make your father proud.”
My jaw muscle flexes against his thumb pad, and eventually, he lets go. With a strong hand on my shoulder, he guides me back to the graveside, and Bishop Francis takes this as his sign to carry on.
More flowers in the grave. Uncle Alfredo slides in a bottle of special-edition Smugglers Club whiskey, and, next to me, Uncle Alberto takes the Rolex off his wrist and tosses it in. “I won it off the old bastard years ago. Your old man was never good at poker.” He cranes his neck to look at Rafe. “I don’t know where you got your talent from, kid.”
It’s my turn. I don’t sink to my knees like I did with my mama; instead, I lean over the coffin, his black rosary in my hand. The beaded chain is wrapped around my wrist twice, the cross swaying in the wind like a pendulum.
He never took it off.
Until I took it off for him.
I pause, curl the cross into the palm of my hand and slip it back into the pocket of my slacks. When I look up, my cousin Dante is glaring at me from the other side of the grave.
With the committal over, earth falls down on my mama with heavy thuds, each slap sounding more final than the last. I turn back to the sea, just as the first drops of rain start to fall.
I bring the rosary back out of my pocket and to my lips. “Forgive me Father,” I mutter into the cold metal as a raindrop lands on my cheek, “for I have sinned.”
Rafe appears beside me. Gabe strides over soon after. Behind us, everyone is hurrying to the row of waiting cars, shielding themselves from the rain under umbrellas and hymn books.
A strike of lightning flashes across the horizon.
God trying to smite me down.
“It’s like that scene in The Lion King,” Rafe murmurs into the collar of his shirt, tucking his hands into his pockets. “Whatever the light touches is your kingdom now, or something like that. It’s all yours, bro.”
I look down at my supposed kingdom. The creaky port on the left and the small town nestled into the dip of the cliff to the right. Then I turn to look further down the coast, to the darkness of Devil’s Hollow and then to Devil’s Cove, which, even through the mist and rain, is lit up like a fucking Christmas tree.
“I don’t want it.”
The words slip from my tongue like I knew they would.
Rafe slaps my back, hard, like we’re not standing on the edge of a cliff on a very windy morning. “Big shoes to fill, my brother. But if anyone is up for the job, it’s Vicious Visconti.”
“My flight to London is in twenty minutes and I’m not coming back.”
The silence pierces through the wind. It’s deafening. Eventually, I meet the hard gaze of my brother, squaring my jaw under his scrutiny. He cocks a brow, eyes searching for a trace of amusement on my features, but, unlike him, I don’t joke.
Gabe, as always, says nothing.
“You’re not coming back to Devil’s Dip?”
I’m not coming back to this life.
I don’t explain. Instead, I nod toward the lone car still on the side of the road. Rafe’s driver rolls down the window and stares at us impatiently. Next to it, Gabe’s Harley is parked under a tree.
“Go to the wake. I’ll catch up with you another time.”
The vein in Rafe’s temple pounds, his glare burning with all of the questions he won’t ask. Turning back to the sea, I slip the rosary back into my pocket and drag a knuckle through my wet beard. A few moments later, the soggy crunch of gravel underfoot tells me my brothers have left. Only when the roar of Gabe’s motorcycle fades out of earshot do I turn back to my parents’ graves.
One of the gravediggers stops piling soil on top of my mother. He leans his weight against the handle of his shovel and stares up at me, warily.
As I pass, I slap a brick of notes against his muddy chest.
“Dig her up,” I growl. “My mama doesn’t belong here.”