by Tessa Thorne
“Don’t be silly.” She gives him a light hug. He hesitates before clumsily returning it. It’s one of the only times I’ve seen Gio awkward, and it helps lighten the morbid mood.
As we head out of the private room, my dad taps Gio on the arm. Gio stops and turns to him.
“Alessandra is the light of my life.” His eyes bore into Gio’s. “If you break her heart, or let anything happen to her, you'll pay the price.”
Gio doesn’t back down from my father’s stare. “I understand.”
“Good.” He pats Gio on the shoulder, and lets him head out ahead of him.
I wait for Gio and take his hand as we head out of the restaurant into the pleasant night air. My father’s car is already waiting for him, eliciting honks from impatient cabbies. Marco is waiting on the curb, but he completely ignores us as we walk past. No idea why he’s acting so incredibly rude, but I don’t care. I can barely contain myself from grilling Gio about his family before we’re alone.
I wave goodbye to my parents as we walk toward Gio’s car, miraculously parked on the same block as the restaurant. He opens the door for me and I climb inside.
I wait until we're on the road to speak. “Why didn’t you tell me about your family?”
“I didn’t want to involve you with my troubles.” He stares directly ahead, one hand on the wheel and the other on the gearshift. His knuckles are still white.
“When you care for someone, you share what pains you,” I say softly. I put my hand on top of his and I feel the tension leaving his muscles.
“I should have told you.” He looks at me, the pain clear in his eyes. “I’m going to fix that now.”
“What do you mean?” I look at the road. We're heading away from the city to the suburbs. “Where are we going?”
“My family’s home.”
We drive the rest of the way in silence.
He pulls the Camaro into the driveway of a small townhouse in Bensonhurst. It’s a cute little two-story home with a shared yard. It's obvious the garden used to be well-kept, but it’s overgrown now. The siding is painted light blue, with the storm windows and the front door painted yellow. In the dark, I almost miss the police tape crisscrossing the door.
I notice the light coming on in the window across the street and the silhouette of someone watching us as Gio digs a ring of keys out of his pocket and unlocks the front door. He holds a strip of the tape up for me and I duck under it as I walk into the living room.
The home looks as cute on the inside as it did on the outside. It’s clear it used to be tastefully decorated in a minimalist, art deco style. Also evident is that whoever picked the quirky coloring of the outside paint also used the same flair in decorating the interior, but it’s all smashed up.
A lamp with a base that's a modernist sculpture of a dog is broken in half, with pieces of it scattered across the hardwood floor. I gasp as I step around the broken light and see a fake polar bear rug stained reddish brown, the color of old blood.
The place looks like it was tossed apart and broken by men in a hurry to find everything of value. The TV is missing. There’s no sound system or speakers, but there are torn wires dangling from the walls. There’s spots of dried blood on the floor, too.
I grip Gio’s upper arm, pull myself close to him, and look up in his face. He’s trying to keep himself passive and emotionless, but I can see him clenching his jaw, and his eyes are filled with a mix of anger and sadness.
“I’m so sorry, Gio.” I wish you’d told me. But I can’t tell him that. I don’t have any right to expect him to have told me about this. I don’t even want to know how I would react if I found my family murdered like this.
He nods toward the bloodstain on the rug. “That’s where they killed my mother. Her face was slashed, and she was shot in the forehead. The forensics team had to dig bits of her skull from the rug.”
I gasp and grip his arm tighter.
He points toward the stain on the carpet on top of the hardwood flooring past the couch. “That’s where my dad fell.” His voice quavers with the emotion he's held back for so long. “He was shot eleven times.”
“Your dad was right,” he says. He looks at me, eyes glistening. “He was a beast. It took probably at least eight shots to bring him down. He was shot twice in the heart, and once in the head, too. To make sure he stayed down.”
I follow his eyes to the last bloodstain on the floor. This one's in the hallway heading toward the kitchen. He opens his mouth as if to speak, but he hesitates.
“It’s okay, Gio.” I squeeze his arm with both hands. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“No.” He speaks through gritted teeth. “It’s not. You need to know why…”
He pauses long enough for me to ask “Why what?”, but I don’t want to push him. I’ll let him open up to me on his own terms.
“That’s where they killed my little sister, El.” He blinks away a tear and it rolls down his cheek down his jaw.
Hot tears fall from my eyes. I pull him toward the couch and tug on his arm until he sits down stiffly next to me. I put my arm around his shoulders and squeeze him tight.
“This is why I came back to New York early.” He turns back and looks at where his sister was killed. I can’t even imagine what must be going through his head.
“I’d promised her I’d be home in time to drive her to her junior prom.” His eyes fall to his feet. “I was never around much. My job kept me traveling constantly, and too busy to think about much else. But I was going to keep this promise to her.”
He leans back on the couch, and lets his head fall back, eyes glued to the ceiling. “She loved that Camaro.” He turns his head so he can look at me. “She was a real gearhead, even though she was a girl. My dad had other cars, probably ones better suited for prom, but she wanted that one.”
I brush away a tear rolling down his face before it drips onto the couch.
“And she wasn’t willing to accept any other driver than me.” He stands up suddenly from the couch and his voice grows angry. “I should've been here for her. I should've been here for my family. I could've protected them from this.”
I stand up and put my arms around his waist. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened. You couldn’t have known this would happen.”
“I was trained by this country to protect us from the bad guys.” His eyes sweep over the broken home. “And I couldn’t even protect those who meant the most to me. But I could avenge them.”
“What do you mean?”
He turns in my arms and looks into my eyes. His eyes have a darkness in them I haven’t seen before. “You asked me who I was looking for when I first came to Hush.”
I drop my arms from him and take a step back, wary of him. The look in his eyes is starting to scare me. “What does that have to do with this?”
“Do you still want to know?” He takes me by the arms and pulls me close. “You're not going to like what you hear if I keep going.”
My mind is racing. What is he talking about? His eyes are so intense; I have no doubt he’s telling me the truth. But what could he have done that would make me turn away from him? I’ve come to accept what my father does and still love him all the same, so couldn't I do the same for Gio?
“I want to know.” But a part of me just wants to cover my ears so I don’t have to hear what he has to say.
“I came in that day looking for Rizzo.”
That name hits my stomach like a punch. I want to ask him why, but I can’t summon the breath to sound out the words.
“He was one of the men that was here that night.”
My eyes go wide and my heart hammers in my chest. “That’s impossible…”
“Think back on that Thursday, four weeks ago.” He points to a broken clock on the fireplace mantle. The time reads 1 a.m. “Was he at Hush that night?”
I try to think back to that night, four weeks ago. Rizzo was always at the club, but there was one night when he didn’t come in. And
the next night he had a fresh cut on his face. I remember insisting on applying Neosporin to the cut and changing his bandage.
I look up at him, my eyes wide and glistening with tears.
“There were three of them here that night.” He looks around the broken home. “My family never stood a chance.”
Tears are streaming down my face, and I can’t manage to speak.
“I found Tommy first.” His voice is a mix of emotions. Anger, sadness, and despair.
“He told me who the others were.”
I turn on him, my lips trembling and I pound my fists against his chest. “What did you do?”
“I did what I had to do.”
“No…” I turn away from him, refusing to look at him.
Blood pounds furiously in my ears and I start to feel lightheaded. Rizzo and Tommy are both dead. I was just at their funerals.
“Why wouldn’t you just go to the cops?” I can taste the salt of my own tears as I speak.
“The police never cared to solve the case.” He laughs darkly. “No one came forward to tell them what they saw, and they gave up, claiming they had no leads. They just called it another unsolved home invasion.”
I hang my head. I know he’s right. The cops never bother us over the things they bother other clubs about. I know we get a pass from them because of who my father is. How far would that go? Would they turn their eyes from murder? Probably if they were paid enough.
“Then how did you know it was them?” I sniffle. “How did you know to go after Tommy?”
“My neighbor would never go to the police.” He walks up to the window and opens the shade. I can see the light is still on in the front window of the house across the street. “He’s an old school guy. He knows better than to snitch on the mob. But I’m a different story. He’s known me my whole life. I grew up on this street. He told me what he saw that night.”
I nod sadly.
“He described the men who came into the house that night, and their car. His eyes weren’t good enough to get the full license plate, but a partial was all I needed to track down the car.”
My mind reels, trying to escape the truth, but it’s impossible. “They couldn’t have open casket funerals…”
“Tommy didn’t break easy.” His voice is like steel now. There’s no emotion left in it. “He made me work for what I needed. He gave me Rizzo and Michael’s names.”
“Rizzo was always so nice to me.” My voice fades into silence.
“Everyone’s always nice to the boss’s daughter.” He looks back at the stains left on the floor by his sister’s lifeblood. “Others don’t get the same courtesy.”
That last sentence feels like a slap in the face. “Why are you telling me all this?” My voice cracks, and my lip quivers as tears fall freely down my face.
He presses his hand against my face, and he brushes away the tears falling down my cheek. He’s so gentle despite his strength.
“Because I love you.” My heart swells in my chest. I feel his warmth returning to his voice. He sounds like the same man I sat with under the moonlight, watching the majestic hawk circling the skies above us. “I want you to know who I am, and what I've done.”
I want to tell him I love him, but I can’t. I pull away from his touch. This same hand that can so gently stroke my face is the same hand that tore apart a man I knew.
“I’ve never lied to you,” he says. “But that wasn’t enough. I wanted you to know what I’ve done.”
I look up at him. Can I judge him for what he's done? If my family was killed, wouldn’t I want to do the same to their killers? “Are you finished?”
He looks away from my eyes and his voice is barely a whisper. “I don’t know.”
My blood feels like it's burning me underneath my skin. I grab him by the shoulders and try to shake him, but he’s as solid as a tree. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Someone else is responsible for all this.” He looks away from me to hide the guilty look in his eyes.
I pound him on the chest uselessly with my fist. “You mean my dad, don’t you?”
But he remains silent. I drop back down onto the couch and put my head in my hands, breathing, trying to steady the world around me.
“I’m sorry,” he says uselessly.
“No!” I glare up at him. “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry like this is a foregone conclusion. My dad had nothing to do with this.”
“I heard it from his own men.”
“No!” I shake my head, sending my tears flying from my cheeks. “Sit down. We’re going to talk this through.”
He slowly sits down next to me, and turns to face me.
I close my eyes and breathe in deeply, trying to steady myself. Then I turn back to him and lower my voice. “How could you even think about killing my father if you care for me?”
He blinks. I can see him tempted to turn away from my eyes. I put my hand on his cheek and pull him back, forcing him to look at me. “Vengeance is all I have.”
I tilt my head at him and smile softly. My heart aches at the pain he must be going through. As mad as I want to be at him for what he’s done, and what he's planning to do, I can’t really blame him. I’d want to do the same in his place. But I can’t let him. I know my father, and he would never do something like this. No matter what people may think about him.
“No, Gio. You're wrong.” I cup my other hand on his cheek and brush my lips against his. “You have me.” I pull back from him, immediately missing the feel of his lips on mine. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes.” I’m so happy to hear the confidence back in his voice. If I have his trust, I know we can get past this.
“You asked me to trust you when you came into my house and we made love in my room.” That day feels so far away right now. I wish I could just go back to that moment. “I risked my world for you.”
“I remember.” There’s a small smile on his face. I can tell from the heat in his face that he’s reliving that memory right now.
“Now I’m asking you to do that for me.” I get up on my knees on the couch and I lean over him, his face still cupped in my hands. I kiss his forehead and move my hands back, and fist his hair in my hands. “I don’t pretend to know everything about my father. But I ask you to trust that I know him. Do you understand?”
He puts his hand on my back and pulls me closer to him. “I do.”
I kiss him down the side of his face and to the corner of his lips. “I know deep in my soul that my father would never have something like this done in his name. I don’t care what anyone told you. I know this.”
I move my lips to his and I kiss him with a passion I’ve never felt before. I reluctantly pull myself away from his lips and stare into his eyes. “If you want to be with me, I need you to forget whatever you were planning to do next.”
I see his eyes wavering, so I grip his hair tighter and kiss him again, forcing my tongue between his lips and tasting his. I break the kiss and look at him again. “Will you do that for me?”
The silence is unbearable. The seconds pass like minutes, and the minutes like hours. I see it in his eyes first. Then I feel the tension easing in his body. A tear drops down the corner of his eye, and I kiss it away, tasting the salt on my lips.
“Yes.”
I laugh and cry at the same time, and wrap my arms around him, and press his face into my breasts. He wraps his arms around me and holds me tightly. We rock together on the couch until my tears are done.
I brush his hair back on his forehead and look down at him.
I’m going to ask my dad to look into this. I’ve never asked him to use his power before, but I know if anyone has the power to find out who did this to Gio’s family, it’s him.
Chapter Twelve
Alessandra
I rub the sleep out of my eyes and fumble with my phone to turn off the alarm. Lord, it’s six in the morning. I pull the sheets over my head and close my eyes to go back to sleep when I belatedly rea
lize why I set my alarm so early. I want to make sure I get a chance to speak to my dad before he heads out for the day.
I throw the sheets off me and crawl out of bed to get dressed. Mom’s already cooking breakfast by the time I make it downstairs.
“Morning, princess!” She looks over and waves her spatula at me.
“Hey, Mom.” I pad into the kitchen on my bare feet. I notice she hasn’t started making the espresso so I grind some beans to help her out. “What’s for breakfast?”
“Nothing fancy.” She smiles. “Eggs, sausages, custard and some roasted vegetables.”
I laugh softly as I pack the grind into the two portafilters and pack it in. It’s going to be rough when I move out and can’t wake up to my mom’s breakfast. Though, I know if she could have her way, they’d just build a second house on the property for me to move into with my family. Like in the old country.
I brush the old grinds out of the machine and run the water to clear out what the brush doesn’t get. It’s weird even thinking about having a family. I feel like a stupid little girl thinking about this when I’ve barely started dating Gio. But it’s hard not to. He’s the first guy I’ve met who just refuses to leave my mind.
I slide the portafilters into the machine and pour out two cups of espresso. A pair of single shots for my mom and me. I love watching the black espresso pour into the cup and how the caramel colored foam settles in over the coffee.
My mom glances over at me with a weird smile on her face. “You’re thinking of Gio, aren’t you?”
I glance at her and bite my lip. “Yeah.”
“You really like him, don’t you?” She accepts her cup and takes a quick sip before setting it aside to take the roasted potatoes and carrots out of the oven. The smell is intoxicating. She cooked those little waxy purple potatoes I’ve loved since I was a kid.
“I do.” I start on the third cup, a double shot for my dad.
“Enough to give me the grandkids I’ve always wanted?” Her eyes are bright and hopeful.