by Sophia Reed
I raised an eyebrow, the promise of a round-two already seeping down south. “Well, that’s good, because I’m not either.” I rolled around so that I could give him a proper kiss. “Breakfast first?”
Gabriel’s eyes finally drifted open. When they landed on me, my entire body shook. “Breakfast first.”
Though there was still a heavy reluctance to Gabriel’s arms as I pried them off of me, he eventually let me go, and I climbed out of the bed. I slipped on a silk robe I had slung over a chair next to my bed and started for the stairs. I risked a look back over my shoulder at Gabriel, but he was already sitting up in bed, and even with his hair a mess around his head, his eyes were dead set on me, watching me like the most interesting movie he’d ever seen.
“What?” I asked.
Gabriel shook his head. “Nothing.”
I continued down the stairs and into the kitchen, all the while trying to ignore the stupid smile I couldn’t get off my face. If he stayed all day and another night, I wouldn’t mind. Gabriel was special. I didn’t know to what degree, but somehow, I knew.
I worked on our breakfast over the course of the next twenty minutes. I made a veggie omelet with cheese for myself and one with bacon and cheese for Gabriel. I carried the plates into the living room and set them down on the coffee table before heading back for a couple of glasses of orange juice. Hopefully, Gabriel didn’t mind pulp. It was my preference. When I was on my way back into the living room, Gabriel was wandering down the stairs with only his pants on, and I wasn’t about to complain about the view. He was clicking through his phone, not paying much attention, but he did have a look of confusion on his face.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Gabriel responded. He looked up at me with a smile, sliding his phone into his pocket. “I was expecting a thousand angry texts from my brother, but he left me alone.”
I grinned, hiking up my shoulders and presenting the juice like some sort of award. “Lucky us.”
Gabriel wrapped an arm around my waist and closed in on me. I had to hold the glasses of orange juice out of reach as he planted a kiss on me. First, my lips, then my cheek, then my neck. I was already shivering with excitement. It felt so natural.
“We decided on breakfast first.”
Gabriel grumbled. “We did.” He held up one finger, seductively sliding it against my bottom lip. “One breakfast.”
I found myself leaning forward with my lips parted, so much so that when Gabriel pulled away, I almost fell. He played innocent, but there was something deep inside him. Not quite a demon, but something inhuman. He reminded me of a Grecian statue. Perfectly designed on the outside and may even have fabric designed to look soft and real, but underneath what was meant to look serene and fragile was actual stone. I had a feeling that more than one thing about Gabriel was going to surprise me as we got to know each other better.
Gabriel walked over to the couch and sat down, and I followed, setting the juice down. I was about to settle in myself when I realized I forgot silverware and napkins. I handed Gabriel the controller, having already navigated my smart TV to Netflix.
“Wanna look for something?”
Gabriel nodded, took the remote, and started flicking through. I watched him for a moment. It was like he was using foreign technology. He got the basic gist, but his fingers kept losing the buttons, and he needed to look down to find them again. Was his job that busy, or was he more of a beatnik than I was? I didn’t ask. I turned around and walked into the kitchen for silverware. I was pulling them out of the drawer when I heard the quick trailer of a mobster show I liked. They covered new crime families every week. The voices came and went with barely a linger compared to the ten or so seconds Gabriel was giving everything else.
“Oh!” I called over my shoulder. “Can we watch that one? I love it.”
“No.” Gabriel’s voice was rough and short. I didn’t know how to respond.
“Come on.” I grabbed a couple of napkins, the silverware, and ran back into the living room. “It’s really good.”
“I’m not really into those.” It was an obvious lie, but what a silly thing to lie about.
I reached over him and tried to take the remote, but he pulled it out of reach. I tried again, and he switched hands.
“Gabriel,” I growled. I dropped the silverware and napkins on the couch and foisted myself over the back, leaning across Gabriel, and the unexpected action caused him to slip up. I pulled the remote from his hand and stuck my tongue out at him. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to me winning.”
Gabriel didn’t laugh. “I don’t want to watch that.”
“Fine,” I conceded. “Just let me add it to my queue, and I’ll pick something else.”
I threaded back up the list, with Gabriel still protesting, and found the show. I opened my mouth to scold him for being such a brat about it when my eyes caught something shocking on the screen.
“In this week’s episode,” the quick trailer began as soon as I landed on the title, “we’ll cover one of Philly’s most notorious crime families, the Varassos.”
I watched in horror as the show dramatically scanned across three men, all with Gabriel’s same dark hair and mysterious, void-like eyes. When they scrolled over a fourth man, I felt like I was going to throw up. Standing there, with an expression that was unrelenting and cold, was Gabriel.
8
Gabriel
I watched my face flash across the television screen under the rain of dark, horror-film music and lighting that made me look like a serial killer, and my stomach bottomed out. I couldn’t believe my dumb fucking luck. Stacy was leagues better than any woman I’d ever dated before, and it just so happens that the morning after we spend the night together, she happens across a show that I didn’t even know existed about my family.
Didn’t they have to have permission to put that sort of shit on the television? Surely they weren’t just allowed to use our faces and names without our consent. I imagined telling Luca about it, and my bones were already going brittle from the pressure. Things had gone so south with Marco and Kelly because she found out who he was, and now I was sitting next to a woman as she discovered that the family business I’d spoken about earlier was not landscaping or a law firm as she was hoping, but actually an underground crime organization.
Stacy let out an awkward chuckle. “Wow. I’d always heard that stuff like this was scripted, but I never believed it. It was always cooler to think it was true.”
I could feel my face flush with confusion. “Wait, what?”
Stacy didn’t look over at me. In fact, her body was so rigidified that her knuckles were turning white around the remote.
“Yeah.” She forced out another laugh. “I mean, obviously, this stuff isn’t true, right?”
I didn’t know what to do. I could plainly see that Stacy was trying to convince herself just as much as she was waiting for me to confess I was actually a high-profile actor, and those other three men just happened to be guys who looked a devastating amount like me. I wanted to say those words to her, and more than anything, I wanted them to be true.
“Um.” I stammered over the best way to tell her that what she was looking at was true, or at least that the notion was true. The documentary was already putting a spin on events I knew the facts about.
“The Varasso family leaves a trail of bloodshed behind them wherever they go.” Luca’s worst-self appeared on the screen, one who looked like our dad and had none of the warmth his family brought him behind his eyes. “Luca Varasso, a man tasked with kidnapping and enslaving a young woman for slandering his family’s name.”
I hunched my brow. Yes, Molly had been kidnapped, but it was Luca who saved her from my father’s wrath and trained her in our business when everyone else just wanted to kill her and get it over with.
“Marco Varasso, who still wears the scars of a mysterious fire that is only dwarfed by his using an innocent waitress to launder money through a downtown
eatery.”
That one stuck a bit closer. Yes, Marco had used Kelly’s restaurant to launder money out of in a desperate attempt to patch where my father had gone wrong with the Binachis, but he didn’t use Kelly. In fact, both of them have sworn on the bible itself that Marco did his best to keep Kelly out of it. It was her own brother who used her more to his benefit. The fire, however, happened when Marco was born because of a scorned runner for our family. Yeah, that runner didn’t survive that mistake, but how could my father let him? He succeeded in killing three of my would-be cousins and nearly ended both Marco and his mother’s lives.
“Alessandro Varasso.” I perked my ear for what the television host had to say about that. Alessandro was as close to me as any of my brothers were in terms of clean hands. He’d rough a guy up if he had to, but he’d never murdered before. “A California rowhouse turned into a bloodbath with him at the helm.”
My stomach twisted into a knot. I’d blocked that out. I’d blocked everything that happened after Alessandro snapped. Luca and I rushed to California after Luca went rogue. Some of the Binachis were threatening Marco’s family and had to be dealt with. Luca shoved a gun into my hands and told me it was time to show my true Varasso colors. In the end, I could only cower outside, protecting Willow and Ricky, when in truth, they were the ones looking out for me.
“Possibly the darkest of them all is the youngest, Gabriel Varasso.” I let out an audible scoff. How was I, in any way, shape, or form, the darkest? “Always keeping his head down, the youngest Varasso is always by his brothers’ sides, no doubt the slyest and the one most likely getting away with everything.”
I held my arms out wide, briefly forgetting where I was. “I’m not getting away with anything. I’m not doing anything.”
The sneak peek trailer ended, and Stacy finally looked at me. “Gabriel.”
My eyes snapped to her. “Yeah?”
There were already a few tears wettening the corners of her eyes. “Tell me this stuff isn't true. It’s just scripted. Right? Please tell me that.”
I stuttered and stammered for a minute to try and find the right words. I started a couple of times and stopped short before I finally started stringing words together. “The way they make it sound isn’t true.”
Stacy’s face went from desperate shock to white rage in a second. “Don’t mince words with me. You know I’m not asking if their account of it is true. Unless you’re saying that they’ve somehow confused your family’s woodworking business for being in the mafia.”
I sighed. “No. That part is true.”
Stacy’s hands cupped over her mouth. She slid back from me on the couch, and it killed me. The first woman to ever make me feel the way she does, and she’s staring at me like I’m a cold-blooded killer. “But listen, they’re stretching the truth. Like really stretching it. I’m not the darkest one of my brothers. All that stuff he talked about. The fire, the restaurant, the shootout—yes, my brothers were involved in all of that stuff, but I wasn’t, and even the stories around them are totally different.”
“He said you’re always by their side,” Stacy said.
“I mean, I am as much as I can be. I wasn’t there for any of that except the shootout, though, and even that I was all the way across the street trying not to piss my pants.” I knew Luca would strangle me if he heard me demean myself so badly. Not because he cared about me, but because he cared about the Varasso name. It felt worth it to me, though. If I could get Stacy to believe me, it was worth it. “I’ve never killed anyone. I’ve never even beat anyone up. There are mules working for us that have done worse shit than me. I swear.”
I clapped my hands out of frustration, and Stacy jumped. It was awful. She was afraid of me. I reached out for her hand, but she recoiled, so I returned my hand to my lap.
“Stacy. I don’t even like what my family stands for. I swear. I’ve never wanted this life.”
A glint of hope flickered into Stacy’s eyes. “So, you don’t really have anything to do with them? You’re not part of all of that.”
It would have been so easy. I could have just told her that I wasn’t. I was my own man. I didn’t even work for my brother. We were trying to find our way out of it anyway. If I could just keep the facade up until then, I’d be golden. But my brothers’ smiles flashed across my mind, and that stupid, Varasso, family-first trait kicked off in me. The one thing I’d always found commendable about my family was about to cost me such an amazing woman.
“I didn’t do that stuff,” I explained quietly, “but they’re my family. I love them, and I’d do anything for them.”
“Anything?” Stacy pointed at the screen. “Even that?”
I thought about the shit my brothers had been through. I thought about the rage I felt when my dad was killed or the way I was compelled to do whatever necessary when the Binachis were threatening Marco’s family. Even when Alessandro ran off, and Luca told me it was time to step up. I was afraid, but if for a second, I thought that Luca and Marco didn’t have things under control, I would have swallowed that fear and did what it took to protect my family. That’s what this life meant. That’s why my dad snatched me from my mother’s hands and brought me to his house and beat his older sons until they at least pretended to love me the way he did. That’s what it meant to be a Varasso.
“Gabriel.” Stacy still had her arm outstretched, still waiting for an answer.
I settled for just repeating myself. “I’d do anything for them.”
Stacy’s arm shakily felt to her side as she turned her beautiful, green eyes away from me. “Then I need you to leave.”
9
Stacy
I was in my parents’ bedroom, trying to carefully arrange their various trinkets on a shelf when I heard my phone ringing in my purse from the living room. I didn’t even flinch in its direction. I already knew who it was, and I wasn’t interested. I was just trying to power my way through my mom’s OCD as she decided if her tiny, wooden hippo looked better on the left or right side of her tiny, wooden giraffe so that I could go and see my childhood best friend, Mira.
“Hmm,” my mom said, her left hand petting her chin. “When it comes right down to it, is the aesthetic more important than the wildlife accuracy? You know? Would a hippo stand behind a giraffe? That’s the question, Stace.”
I shook my head. This back-and-forth had been going on for the better part of two hours. Each individual item had to have a place that contributed positively to my parents’ qi, and I was cursing myself for not taking a picture of their shelves before they moved out of our old home so I could just mimic the design.
“I don’t know, mom,” I responded. “I don’t think the animal kingdom is going to take offense. If they do, they’ll tell you.”
My mom giggled. “I suppose that’s true.”
“So right side or left side?” I asked.
My mom wrapped a few strands of her hair around her fingers. “Right.” My phone screamed out again, and I sighed. My mom looked back towards the living room and then at me. “Do you need to get that, sweetheart?”
“No. It’s just…” I didn’t want to involve my parents in even the little bit of interaction I’d had with Gabriel and his dangerous lifestyle. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
My mom perched herself on the edge of her bed. “Now, Stace. What have we taught you about holding things in?”
My parents weren’t the kind who pressured me to talk about things I didn’t want to, but they lived in constant fear of my aura darkening. Holding emotions in was just one of the things that could make one’s aura darker, and I had to imagine mine definitely was after what had happened with Gabriel.
“I’m going to see Mira after this, Mama,” I replied. “I’ll get it all out with her, and then, if my aura still feels heavy, I’ll come over so you can clean it.”
My mom raised an eyebrow but seemed to accept my plan. “Okay, baby.”
I set the tiny hippo down on the shelf and then inst
inctively walked over and sat on the edge of my parents’ bed. My head fell into my mom’s lap, and she pet me gently.
“A little cleaning right now?” she asked.
I nodded without a verbal response, and my mom immediately took to waving her hands above my head, picking invisible objects out between two fingers while humming softly to herself. “Very murky, Stace. It wasn’t like this yesterday. Did something happen? You don’t have to tell me what, just let me know you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.”
It wasn’t really true, though. Physically, I was fine, and even in spite of what I’d learned about Gabriel, I had no fears I was in danger from him. If anything, I was perturbed with how much I missed him. It had only been a day, and I’d been ignoring his back to back calls, but I desperately wished I could rewind time twenty-four hours and have our date and night together all over again.
“Guy stuff,” I finally admitted. I didn’t often keep things from my mom. I didn’t want to start, so if I had to save some details to protect her, I at least wanted to share what I could. “We went out last night, and it went really, really well, but I don’t think it’s going to work out.”
“Oh, that’s why it’s so dirty up here,” she replied, referring to my aura. “Nothing brightens an aura or darkens it more than love.”
Love. It was weird hearing that word, not because it described Gabriel and my situation, but because I was actually relating to it. I didn’t love Gabriel. I’d known him less than a day, and yes, we spent the night together, and yes. it was the most natural feeling thing that had happened to me in my entire life, but still, instant-love wasn’t possible. If I just kept saying that to myself, it was bound to be true.
I chose not to respond to my mom’s statement, and she didn’t try. She continued to finger herself through my aura until she either finished or gave up, I wasn’t sure which. Her hand settled on my forehead to pet while looking down at me sweetly.