Burn this City by Aleksandr Voinov

39

Hours later, Jack could still feel the vibrations of the music in his bones while he steered the car. If this were a normal night, he’d drive home just like that, so he tried to stick as close to his normal routine as possible. It was eerie knowing what else was going on, but he’d lived in two realities for most of his life, as a made man on the one hand, and a legitimate “consultant” on the other. He’d have to navigate those for the rest of his life, though it seemed increasingly likely that he’d add “turncoat consigliere on the run from the Cosa Nostra” to the identities he had to manage.

Though who was he kidding? It hadn’t exactly been a “normal” night at The Matador, either.

Once he reached his street, the restlessness sat so deep that there was no way he’d be able to sleep, so he started the engine again and drove. This time of night, the streets were empty except for insomniacs or nightshift workers, or very late revelers. Driving usually helped, so he drove aimlessly around until a sudden impulse turned him toward Memorial Bridge.

He parked the car exactly in the middle, with the same view toward where the river poured itself into the sea, and while he usually avoided the bridge and the whole area for fear of another psychotic break—or whatever it had been—this time he only experienced melancholic peace. On the bridge with the dark water flowing beneath and the wide-open sky above, he leaned on the railing and focused on his breath mingling with the clean air and the smells from the water and ocean blowing in.

Only when the humidity had crept through his clothes and to his skin, did he straighten and reach into his pocket. He turned Andrea’s phone over and over in his hands, imagined Spadaro driving bare-footed around town in Andrea’s Lamborghini, and likely still enjoying the ride like some girl-faced angel of death. To transport a body in that car, the passenger seat was the only option, and Jack figured that that was the only time in his, well, life, that Andrea would be wearing a seat belt. Jack couldn’t help but smile.

He rubbed his face and shook his head. Things were fucked up, Andrea was dead with nobody at the helm of the Lo Cascio, and no one could or would do a damn thing about it. More heads were going to roll, and this whole nightmare scenario he’d fought so hard and so long to prevent simply felt as inevitable and cleansing as a hard late-summer rain. And all of that because Andrea had been a very small man deep down—unkind, petty, and not worth Jack’s loyalty.

“Fuck you, Andrea”, he murmured and hurled the phone into the river as far as he could manage.