Chapter 2 - The Back Room of Castellano’s
The back room of Castellano’s smelled of bleach, old flour, and the sweet, metallic tang of copper.
Amelia came back to the world through a gray fog that tasted like salt and cold iron. The first thing she felt was not the pain in her jaw—though that was a white-hot coal buried under her left ear—it was the sensation of something soft and dry being pressed against her temple.
"Don't move your tongue around," a voice muttered. It was Angela, her voice thicker than usual, her fingers surprisingly gentle as she held a frozen bag of peas wrapped in a tea towel against Amelia’s cheek. "If you cracked the plate, you're going to be eating broth through a straw until Christmas, and trust me, Tony's broth tastes like dishwater."
Amelia tried to sit up. The ceiling tilted ninety degrees to the left, then settled back into place.
"Where is..." She swallowed, her throat dry as sand. "The guy. The customer."
"He's being processed," Angela said grimly, though a tiny, vicious smile twitched at the corner of her heavily lined mouth. "Castellano had two of his boys carry him out through the grease trap like a sack of garbage. Nikki went with him, mostly because he looked like he was about to fill his trousers right there on the salt shaker."
The door to the storage room clicked open. Vincent Castellano stepped inside, ducking slightly beneath the low lintel. He had taken off his overcoat, revealing a collarless gray shirt and suspenders that held up trousers worn shiny at the knees. In his left hand, he held a small, clear glass of amber liquid—grappa, by the smell of it.
He stopped three feet from the cot where Amelia lay. He looked at her the way he had looked at the floor out front—not with pity, which would have insulted her, but with an intense, clinical assessment, like an inspector checking the foundation of a bridge before letting heavy traffic across.
"You're the one from Kensington," Vincent said.
Amelia went very still. The gray fog cleared from her brain with the snap of a whip. Her hand—the one that wasn't holding the peas—went automatically to her left eyebrow, her fingers finding the thin, pale thread of the scar she had spent three years running from.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she whispered.
"The girl who got out of the Dodge with the Georgia plates three summers ago," Vincent continued, unbothered by her denial. He pulled a folding chair over with his foot, sat down, and set his glass on an empty flour barrel. "Lived in the room above the dry cleaner’s for two months without turning on the television once. Paid your rent in crumpled twenties. Worked three days at the diner before you realized the grease on the walls stayed the same no matter whose name was on the deed."
"Who told you that?" Amelia’s voice was shaking now, not from the blow, but from the old, familiar terror—the cold thing that lived in the marrow of her bones.
"Nobody had to tell me," Vincent said softly. "I own the dry cleaner’s, Amelia. And Castellano’s. And the three blocks between here and the river where people like Raymond Fletcher think they can throw things at women because their fathers knew someone with a badge."
At the name Raymond, Amelia’s breath caught in her throat. The room seemed to shrink, the walls closing in until the flour dust tasted like ash. She closed her eyes, waiting for the door to kick open, waiting for the heavy hand on her wrist, waiting for the three years of quiet to turn out to have been nothing more than a very long, very cruel dream.
"He's not coming here, child," Vincent said, and for the first time, his voice lost its gravel and sounded simply like an old man who had buried too many people to lie about who was left standing. "Raymond Fletcher is currently three hundred miles west of here, wondering why his bank accounts have all been frozen by the IRS and why his favorite car was found at the bottom of the Schuylkill River with a brick on the accelerator. We are very thorough about our real estate management in this district."
Amelia opened her eyes. The silver-haired man was looking at her with a heavy, steady gaze.
May you like
"Why?" she asked.
"Because," Vincent said, standing up and picking up his glass, "a man who hits a woman in my diner is an amateur. And I have spent forty years making sure amateurs stay out of my neighborhood. Rest your face, girl. Tomorrow, we have to talk about your new job."
