Burned Dreams (Perfectly Imperfect #7)

“How are you doing?” her mother asks offhandedly as she takes a small folded piece of paper off the coffee table and leans toward her daughter as if to straighten the collar of her blouse. The folded paper changes hands in a split second.

“I’m fine, Mamma.” Mrs. Pisano smiles. “How’s work?”

“The same. I’m going to clean Mrs. Natello’s house tomorrow, and again on Friday.”

“I’ll drop by before Friday, then.”

Mrs. Pisano adjusts her sunglasses, which she still hasn’t taken off, and glances over her shoulder. “Where’s Vitto?”

“You know your brother. He stayed at Ugo’s last night.” The older woman shrugs.

“They still hang out?”

“Yes. At least he stopped playing cards after . . . you know.”

“Good. Do you need help with anything?”

“I’m fine, Ravi.”

“What about your back? Still hurts?”

“It’s good, but I think I pinched a nerve this morning when I tried to wash the windows.”

“Geez, Mamma.” Mrs. Pisano shakes her head as she stands up and retreats into a small kitchen on my right.

She takes out an old rag from a drawer and grabs a spray bottle from beneath the sink before depositing both on the counter nearby. Then, she rolls up the sleeves of her silk blouse and climbs onto a rickety old chair she’s pulled away from the small kitchen table nudged against one of the walls. As I watch, Ravenna Pisano, the wife of a Cosa Nostra capo, picks up the cleaning items and starts washing her mother’s windows. I stare at her, stunned, for almost an hour while she finishes the glass, then wipes all the kitchen counters and cabinets, and, finally, mops the floor.

***

When I get home that evening, I spend an hour going over the Pisanos’ garage blueprint Felix had sent me. It looks like it was a small service building at one point that was later expanded and renovated into a garage. It has an alarm installed, but it’s nothing complicated enough to present an issue. The electrical panel is located inside by the side door, making the wires heading toward it easily accessible. Perfect.

Picking up the blueprint off the table, I walk into my bedroom and pin the paper to the wall, next to the printout of Rocco’s bank account. Then, I step back and take a long look at the sight before me. The entire surface of the wall is covered in a mosaic of papers, photos, and notes.

I know every single detail pinned to this wall. Over the years, I’ve collected countless tidbits of information—some with Felix’s help, and some I extracted either through bribery or by force. Many were dead-ends or false leads, but I kept them anyway. I don’t like staying in one place for too long just in case Kruger may still be looking for me, so I’ve moved frequently over the last eight years to make sure he doesn’t pick up my trail. Each time, I’ve removed the items off my revenge wall and meticulously repined them—in the exact same pattern—at a new location. Every action in that process reopened the wound in my chest, but the pain is good. The ritual helps me maintain my focus.

The first item I always place at the center of the wall is a photo of Natalie. In it, she’s wearing an orange dress that has white polka dots all over. I thought that thing was atrocious. But the bright pattern made her whole face light up when she saw it, and we ended up buying the dress. Pinning her smiling face to my revenge board is always the hardest part. With each relocation, it feels like a sledgehammer hits me right in the chest, reminding me of what was taken from me. Every. Single. Time.

After that, I add the doctor’s report detailing what they tried to do to keep her alive at the hospital, and the police report on the traffic incident which was labeled as a hit-and-run. The next items to go up, surrounding the focal point, are the scantly written witness statements claiming that they didn’t see anything, not even the color of the car. It took Felix several months to obtain these for me because someone conveniently forgot to input the info into the system, and he had to pay off the clerk to find the paper statements made by the two people who were present during the collision.

When I finally got the chance to speak with the two witnesses directly, both admitted that they saw a red sports car but couldn’t remember the make or model.

It took me almost a year to find the mechanic who worked on the banged-up red sports car around the time Natalie was killed. Seems he ran a custom body shop in Jersey but was paid generously to fix up a busted front end and windshield of an Audi R8 at his private garage. He didn’t seem interested in sharing much info at first but changed his mind after I broke his legs. We had a rather productive chat after. I left his place with a couple of important details.

The man who showed up with a smashed car was in his late twenties, clearly intoxicated, and seemed a bit shaken up. An hour later, an older man arrived, and they argued in Italian. The mechanic didn’t speak Italian, but he remembered the older man sayingfamigliaseveral times which he recognized by being a big fan ofThe Sopranos. The old guy then put a gun to the mechanic’s temple and instructed him to fix the car and to keep his mouth shut. Although the shit-for-brains couldn’t provide the men’s names, I got enough. The guy responsible for my wife’s death was a member of the Italian Mafia.

My father was Italian, so I thought it would be easy to get into Cosa Nostra, especially for someone with my skills and the background Felix fixed up for me. I was wrong. The establishment changed less than a year before, and the new don was very strict on who was allowed inside the organization. It took me nine months to get in. Four more years passed before I worked my way into the inner circle and got the opportunity to dig deeper. Time didn’t matter, though. I was hell-bent on finding the man responsible for my wife’s death no matter how long it took.

I knew I was looking for someone from the higher-ups, a lowly soldier wouldn’t have had money or influence to cover up Natalie’s death. As years passed, I still couldn’t find out who it was. But I stayed. And I listened. When you don’t talk much, people tend to forget you’re in the room or believe you’re not interested in their conversations. I don’t say much. Never have. But I hear everything.

A month ago, I was playing poker with some of the men—mostly lieutenants working under a couple of different capos. I always make sure to lose more often than I win. People like that. They get excited. And when they’re excited, they talk. Carmelo won the last hand that night, and he was yapping about smashing into a store window when he was drunk and tried to park his car a couple of nights prior.

“Maybe I should ask Elio to fix that for me,”he said, “like he did with Rocco’s run-in with that woman at a crosswalk. God, remember that? Rocco was so shitfaced, too.”

I still don’t know how I managed to keep my ass in that chair instead of storming out to slaughter both of those motherfuckers. But I made myself stay there the whole evening, feigning calm and disinterest, while the rage brewed inside me. When I got home that night, I added more photos to my wall.

Rocco Pisano—my wife’s killer. I pinned his photo above Natalie’s and drew a red X over his face.

Elio Pisano—Rocco’s father, who helped him cover up the crime. Another X.