"What happens now?" Adriana asked sitting on the floor of her freshly cleaned apartment. She sat leaning against the couch, underneath her lay the cool freshly mopped floorboards. The grey throw rug Claudia picked up at a closing down sale now gone. It lay wrapped up in one of the bin bags by the front door.
The dawn light now flooding into the apartment while the men casually drank their coffees as if they had merely come home from an all night bender. "Have some coffee," Salvatore urged holding his cappuccino out towards her encouraging her to get some caffeine into her system. "You can't miss your shift at work today, I need you to do exactly what you would do every other day Adriana. Do not change your routine. Not today understand?"
She nodded while pushing away the mug in front of her. She could accept going about her daily routine, but there was no way she could stomach anything right now. Not after the bloodshed before her during the last few hours. How they could stand around drinking coffee and snacking on almond cookies was beyond her right now, all she wanted to do was hurl at the sight of food.
She watched as Luca made his way over and sat next to her on the ground with his back up leaned up against the couch. "What's that?" She questioned eyeing the cell phone and an unknown electronic device in his hands.
"Well" Luca began, "it's a sim card reader." He removed Mike's sim card from the back of his cell phone and placed it in the reader as he continued. "This little guy" he held up the device, "will now copy all of Mike's contacts into its memory storage. Then all we have to do is connect it to a compute and we have all his contacts. Pretty handy in our line of business." He smiled triumphantly impressed with himself. "Did he make any calls in front of you?"
"No" she replied quickly, "he just had some sort of problem with Salvo. Said something about wasting his time moving into this apartment and how I was supposed to lead him to more. I don't know what he meant, I don't know what he expected me to know." The more she spoke about the last few hours with Mike, the more frustrated she became with herself. How could he be so kind yet so conniving and evil at the same time all right under her nose?
"Have you been to his apartment Adriana?" Salvatore asked.
"No, he only ever came here. He's apartment 204."
"Stefano," Salvatore called him over, "you and me, let's go check it out. Luca stay here with Adriana." The pair left immediately to break into apartment 204 while Luca continued to transfer all of Mike's contacts.
"Are you ok Ade?" Luca's voice genuinely filled with concern for her. This wasn't something she should've been involved in. None of this should've happened to her. Now they had to figure out what Mike wanted and why. Did he work for someone? Was he alone in this? How did know Adriana was involved with the Abandonato family? There were so many questions, Luca even considered dumping the questions on her now, but he knew it was too soon. Too soon so ask her to put all the puzzle pieces together.
"I'm fine," she stated with little enthusiasm in her voice. She sounded anything but convincing. "As fine as I can be I guess" she added feeling as though she had to elaborate.
"I'm sorry," Luca added taking the sim card back out of the device and inserting it back into Mike's cell phone. He would later get rid of the phone along with the many body parts piled up within the apartment. "I should've shot him when I had the chance." His mind thinking back to the standoff moment the three of them shared. Had he only shot first and asked questions later things would not have spiraled out of control.
Adriana shook her head immediately disagreeing. "Seriously? Fairly certain we wouldn't be friends right now if you did."
================================================================================
"Two cappuccinos, one latte and an espresso macchiato coming up!" Sandra called out retrieving the customers money then sliding the ticket over to Adriana who seemed to be in quite a bit of a daze today.
The shop was pumping with customers which had never affected Adriana before, in fact she thrived on the busy lunch hour spurts. Today however was different. She was almost at a standstill while orders continued to come in and pile up before her.
"Are you ok?" Sandra queried for the third time now. She watched Adriana literally shake off her thoughts then turn her head with a forceful smile on her face.
"Yeah. Sorry."
Sandra wanted to ask further questions and make her elaborate, but the customers continued to pile in and place their orders. She continued to work the busy rush hour as fast as she could noticing the coffee tickets now piling high. Soon enough the complaints would start to roll on in.
As if on cue one of the waiting customers began to pipe up voicing his annoyance for everyone to hear. "Where's my coffee?" He questioned stepping towards the section of the counter where the coffee machine sat. "Some of us have to get back to work." He glared at Sandra before directing it at Adriana behind the machine.
"Sir, if you could just wait a few more minutes, we won't be long," Sandra replied in an attempt to keep the situation at bay.
"I think most of us have waited long enough for a goddamn coffee, don't you? Where's your manager?"
"Sir, unfortunately he's not here at the moment. I can pass on any complaints, or you could call a little later on?"
The customer rolled his eyes in annoyance, "as if I haven't spent enough time here today!" He directed his attention back to Adriana, "you" he pointed, "cappuccino to go, two sugars, now!"
Adriana adjusted the group handle into the head of the machine, she screwed the unit it then smacked it across violently ensuring the handle was more than securely in place. She pressed a button and the brewing of an espresso commenced. "Is that so?" She stared at him dead in the eyes waiting for his next smart ass remark. She didn't have the patience for this. Not today.
"Yeah," the customer retorted. "That is so! Now I've got a job to get back too so chop chop!"
"I ought to spit in your coffee." The words left her mouth. When she would normally feel the pang of regret the emotion was being replaced with pure anger. Just like her multiple espressos brewing loudly in the background, her anger was rapidly brewing into rage. "You men think you can waltz on in here and demand whatever you want whenever you want it."
"Yeah well that's kind of the point of a café! You can cancel my order." He looked over at Sandra who was already retrieving his payment back from the register. "I'll be back to speak with your manager. We'll see what he has to say about the threat of spitting in customers coffees."
"Oh yeah!" Adriana responded loudly rolling her eyes, "of course you'd assume our manager is a man! Arrogant asshole!'
"Adriana!" Sandra cut her off but unfortunately not before her ranting about men being assholes. "I'm calling one of the girls from the kitchen to replace you. You need to go home now."
================================================================================
She walked aimlessly down the street passing by numerous bus stops. She felt lost, confused, angry. All the emotions which constantly pushed her in making irrational decisions. Before she knew it she was sobbing, she didn't even know where she was walking too. She knew her ultimate destination was home and she knew she couldn't walk all the way, but she needed air. She needed to breathe. Mike's bloodied face haunting her along the way.
Before she even knew what she was doing her cell phone was against her ear as she sobbed louder and louder in the middle of the street. People constantly giving her awkward looks along the way, some looks of pity. She probably looked like she had just broken up with someone. Little did they all know she had just helped three men cover up a murder.
"Adriana?" Salvatore's voice beaming through the phone as she continued to sob. "I-I- Salvo," her voice cracking. She didn't know what she wanted to say, why she even called?
She heard him sigh through the phone. Is he frustrated? Angry? Will he kill me? The thoughts were consuming her. Eating her alive.
"Where are you?" She stopped instantly sinking to the ground to sit on the curb. "I don' t know. Near work I guess. Haven't walked far." She listened to his voice, he was saying something about not moving. Something about picking her up. How can he be so calm? The thought invaded her mind as he spoke to her gently while on pursuit to find her. How can he speak to me like nothing ever happened? How can he go through life without... Feeling.
It wasn't long before Adriana found herself sitting in the passenger seat of Salvatore's car. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve suddenly not wanting him to see her like this. Like a mess. "You're going to kill me aren't you?" She blurted out irrationally. He turned his head sharply to face her disgusted that she would think that way.
"What the fũck? Are you serious? Are you seriously asking me this right now?" He hit his steering wheel angrily making her jump in her seat. "Fũck Adriana!" He practically yelled. "Get that stupid thought out of your head. You need to stop this bullshĩt and trust me. You need to trust that I trust you."
"But I can't handle this," she sobbed once more, "we're horrible people. We did a horrible thing!" She watched him drive barely flinching at her words. "Don't you feel like a horrible person?"
"No." His answer short and firm as he parked his car, neither noticing the fact that they had parked behind Adriana's car. The car Claudia had been using to get to and from work. "It was him or us Adriana. Do you understand that? Him or us! I don't know about you, but I wasn't going to give up on life this morning and I wasn't going to let him take yours."
================================================================================
Hello there! So this was the update which was clearly intended for Friday... Not sure if you guy's all received my private message rant about wattpad not working (pretty sure it didn't work for anyone, but mine simply never went back to normal so I was forced to push this update back).
In good news... 10k reads on this book? Whaaaat? I know, I know, that's really nothing compared to the millions of reads on wattpad haha. I'm proud of it though, no one has ever read my work, friends, family, you name it... Wattpad is my little secret so to have 10k reads for someone who hides their stories from everyone, well that's pretty awesome =)
I'd also like to make a quick note to welcome some new followers - late last night all my notifications started to come back through so I only just realized all these new followers, comments and votes. Thank you for all your support - I hope to continue to entertain you guys with my crazy story!
So, it seems as though Ade is slowly but surely losing her mind. Can you blame her really? Is she cut out for this sort of thing? Salvo's mother did warn her though...
If you have been enjoying the story, I would really appreciate it if you went back to place some votes & even leave me some comments. This would help others discover Silence in New York =)
I am currently in the process of writing Book Two - Whispers in New York. There is only a small preview up at the moment as I don't want to reveal anything about the ending of Book One.
Please take the time to vote and comment with what you think is going to go down in Book Two ;-)
See you all for our usual Friday update, or maybe even an earlier one if I get a ridiculous amount of votes haha (well if wattpad allows it LOL) x