by Shay Savage
“I do.”
“Aunt Ginny said I had to string all these together, and I’m not allowed to eat them. They’re going to decorate the tree at the antique shop!”
“That’s an important job,” he said. “You are a very important girl. Did you know that?”
“I am?”
“Oh, yes. You’ll know all about it someday.”
Had my father been right there in our house, and I hadn’t even known who he was? Had he visited other times as well just to check in on me? Why did he tell me I was important, and should I reveal this to Nate and the others?
No, at least not right now.
Part of me is thrilled that I may have actually met my father at some point in the past even if I didn’t know who he was at the time. The rest of me is just in a daze. Despite how important it is for me to find out about my lineage, all this information has me wishing I’d never found out at all. Clearly, Nate feels the same way.
They continue to pour over the information, lining up the clues and pointing the proverbial finger right at me.
“Cherry not knowing about any of this,” Nate suddenly says, “even if I believe her, doesn’t make any difference. I can’t go against what Pops says.”
I glare at him. I’m so officially tired of his questioning my word, I clearly miss what’s happening around me. Again, I want to defend myself, but when I look at the faces of Nate’s family, I realize something else is going on.
They aren’t looking at me. They’re all focused on Nate.
“Pops?” Nora shakes her head.
“Nate, dude, what are you talking about?”
“He’s right there! What the fuck is wrong with all of you?”
I look in the direction Nate points and see a painting of a severe man hanging on the wall. I assume it’s Nate’s late father, but something isn’t right. Nate keeps talking about his father in the present tense and making references to him like he’s standing in the room with us.
Nate had never mentioned his father’s death to me, and I’d wondered why on many occasions. The rare times he had talked about him, it had been as if his father were very much alive, but I didn’t want to push him on such a sensitive topic even after Nora told me.
“Oh my God,” I whisper as I start to understand.
Nora approaches Nate and places her hand on his arm. Antony moves up behind her as if he thinks Nate might try to hurt her, but I don’t see any anger in his eyes, just confusion.
“You heard him,” Nate says as he turns to me, his eyes wide. He looks terrified. “He was right here when I was…was asking you…”
“There wasn’t anyone else here,” I whisper. “It was just you.”
Again, Nora tells him that his father is dead, and again, Nate doesn’t seem to hear her or comprehend what she’s saying. He’s white as a sheet. His mouth is open, but no sound comes out. His gaze moves from one face to another, then back to the empty corner of the room.
“He’s right there,” Nate whispers. “He’s there. He has to be there. I can’t...not without...it was Micha’s casket…Micha…”
Another moment passes, and Nate looks at me right before he drops to his knees.
“Nate!” I leap forward, but Nora and Antony are there first.
Antony catches Nate just before his head hits the floor, and Nora grabs his face in her hands, yelling his name, but he doesn’t respond. He continues to stare at the wall, his eyes glassy.
“Jesus,” Threes mutters, “can this get any more fucked up?”
If it can, I don’t want to know.
After a few, forever-like moments, Nate sits up and grabs onto Nora with shaky hands. Antony moves behind him, helping him stay upright. He looks all around the room, searching with wide, panicked eyes.
“He’s gone,” Nate whispers, still staring at the wall.
“Nataniele,” Nora says gently, “he’s been gone. He’s been gone for months.”
Nate just shakes his head as tears begin to stream down his face.
“Get off of me!” he suddenly cries, pushing Nora and Antony away. “I’m not…I…” He pulls his knees to his chest and squeezes his eyes shut, unable to continue.
Nora kneels beside him, trying to reach out, but he pushes her hand away again.
“Where’s Cherry?” Nate asks abruptly. He turns slightly, trying to look around his sister. “Cherry!”
“I’m right here.” I have no idea what I should do right now. I mean, what’s the protocol when your boyfriend who was just accusing you of being a spy for a rival crime family calls out for you when he realizes his father has been dead for months? Popcorn?
I shake my head at the imagery of popcorn strands on a Christmas tree and my likely father standing over me, smiling. I can’t cope with what’s going on in my own head, let alone whatever is happening in Nate’s. This is too much. Too much.
“Please,” Nate says as he extends his hand.
I glance at Nora and then take a few awkward, unintentional steps forward. I want to turn and run in the other direction, but Nate’s tortured expression keeps me in the room. I can’t leave him like this, no matter what he’s done.
I place my hand in his, bracing myself since I assume he wants me to help him to his feet. Instead, he pulls me closer to him, and I have to lower myself to the floor to keep from losing my balance. He reaches up to wrap his arms around me as a shudder runs through him.
“I can’t...I can’t do this…not alone.”
I don’t know what “this” is, but the tone in his voice is so broken, I can’t help but respond. I blink back tears as Nate holds me tighter. His body shakes with his sobs.
“You’re not alone. I’m here, Nate. I’m here for you.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispers through choked breaths. “I don’t know… He told me not to trust you… He said…” Nate pauses and takes a sharp breath. “He wasn’t even there, was he?”
“It’s all right,” I say. It isn’t, but I don’t know what else to tell him. Nothing about this is all right. Nothing about this even makes any sense.
“Don’t stand there gawking,” Nora says from behind me. “Get him some water or something.”
“Fuck water,” Antony mumbles.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Antony grab a bottle of bourbon as Threes comes up behind Nate.
“Come on, bro,” Threes says, “get on your feet.”
Threes helps Nate up, gets him settled on the couch, and Antony places a glass of bourbon in his hands. I rise and stand off to the side, literally wringing my hands and fretting. I’m still angry and hurt over Nate’s earlier behavior toward me, but seeing him like this makes me feel positively sick to my stomach.
I look at each of their faces in turn.
Threes leans against the arm of the couch with his hand on Nate’s shoulder, his voice calm but his eyes full of concern and disbelief. Nora bites her lip and looks as if she’s holding back tears. Antony shakes his head slowly as he takes a swig from the bourbon bottle.
Finally, I look at Nate. The glass shakes in his unsteady hands, and his body rocks slowly as tears continue to stream down his cheeks. I’ve never seen anyone look so…so broken.
“He’s really gone?” Nate whispers.
“Yes, Nataniele. Pops is gone.” She kneels next to him. “How long, Nate? How long have you been seeing him?”
“I…I’m not sure.”
“Are you seeing him now?”
Nate glances over to the corner of the room, and I see his throat bob as he swallows. He shakes his head before looking down at the glass in his hands. He sniffs, wipes his face with the back of his hand, and looks at me with that same, pitiful, shattered expression. With a long huff of breath, he glances at his sister and whispers something to her.
“I think Nate and Cherry need to talk before we go any further,” Nora says as she stands.
Nate’s expression quickly changes back to horror.
“Nora, I—”
“Nat
aniele Carlo Orso, you need to come clean!” Nora snaps. “You need to tell her everything, and try to fix this before it’s too late. You’re lucky she hasn’t walked right out on you already. Is that what you want?”
“No,” he whispers, staring at his hands.
“Then tell her.”
He nods.
I consider moving toward the couch but hesitate. I’m not sure if I want to be left alone with Nate right now.
“Cherry?” He looks at me, his eyes pleading. “Can we…can we talk? Please?”
I cross my arms over my chest, not answering verbally but not leaving either. I do want some answers. I don’t know if it will change anything at this point, but I feel like I should hear him out. While I debate internally, the others exit the room slowly and silently, leaving Nate and me alone.
“What did Nora mean?” I ask. “What is it you need to tell me?”
“Are you still willing to talk to me?” Nate asks quietly.
“At the moment,” I reply, still keeping my distance, “but I have some conditions.”
“Conditions?”
“Yes. Honesty. I want total and complete honesty from you, Nate.”
“There are things I can’t talk about, Cherry.”
“Bullshit.” I glare at him, and Nate raises an eyebrow.
“Don’t you think that I deserve to know it all?”
“Not everything.”
“Then there is no point in talking.” I start to leave, but he jumps up and rushes to the door before I can get there.
“Don’t go!”
“You brought me into this, Nate!” I yell at him. “All I wanted was to find out who my parents are, but you are the one who brought me into this family and made me feel like I was a part of it. You did all that, but you’ve been lying to me the whole time, and I’m not going to put up with that anymore!”
Nate stands there, mouth agape and eyes bulging. He opens and closes his mouth as if he’s trying to find the right words. I continue to glare at him, and when he doesn’t respond, I start to make my way around him to the door.
“All right,” Nate says quickly, “I’ll try. I reserve the right to leave out some details though. Can you live with that?”
“Maybe.” I stop in my tracks but don’t lower my guard. “It’s a start anyway.”
He reaches out to me, but I don’t take his hand. Hesitantly, I follow him to the couch so we can sit beside each other.
“Let me start by apologizing for the beginning of this evening,” he says. “I’m sorry I overreacted.”
“Overreacted? That’s what you call it?”
“We’ve had spies sent by the Ramsay family before. When we found out you were being followed, I assumed they were watching you for a reason.”
“You mean by Aaron. Aaron was following me.”
“Yes. When Antony told me someone was following you, and that person was not only a guy you went out with but someone who was working for the Ramsays, I kinda lost it. That’s what started it. Then all this other stuff started coming out, and I thought…well, I guess since I’d been trying to manipulate you, I thought you must have been manipulating me too. I wasn’t thinking straight, and Pops…Pops kept telling me you were working against me.”
“Your dead father.” I don’t intend for my words to be so blunt, but I can’t help it.
“I didn’t know,” Nate whispers. He reaches for my hand in my lap, and this time I let him take it. “I…I don’t know why that was happening.”
“It was all in your head. Something inside of you didn’t trust me.”
“It’s hard to trust people,” Nate admits. “The thing is, I did trust you. I do trust you. It just scares me to put faith in someone else. Maybe Pops was just my paranoia about being wrong. He always told me I was wrong, and that didn’t seem to stop even when he was dead.”
“What about now?”
“He’s gone.” Nate glances around the room. “I hope he’s gone for good.”
I stare at his face, examining him intently. His expression isn’t one I’ve seen before. It’s a strange combination of fear and contriteness. I feel his hand trembling in mine, and I finally relax my fingers enough to wrap around his.
“When Antony showed me the file Micha had on you, it seemed clear. I was sure that if he knew about you, you must have known about all of us.”
“I didn’t. I don’t know anything about this, Nate.” I feel tears creeping back into my eyes. “I swear, I don’t. I never met your brother, and I had no idea he was investigating me. Aunt Ginny was still alive then, and I didn’t start looking for my birth parents until long after she died.”
“I believe you, Cherry. I’m sorry I ever doubted you at all. It was stupid of me. I should have trusted my instincts more than I did.”
This time, I can feel his sincerity. Though my anger hasn’t diminished, it’s subdued enough that I can think straight again.
“It was stupid. I’ve never been anything but honest with you.”
“I know. I mean, I realize that maybe if I hadn’t listened to Pops, I could have been honest with you from the start.”
“Could you have?”
He looks at me questioningly.
“What about your family, Nate? Would you have been honest about all of that from the beginning?”
He looks away, his expression pained.
“Are you finally going to come clean about what your family really does?”
“We’re into real estate,” he mutters.
“Right. Real estate. Property and syrup. That’s a great cover for whatever else you have going on. Do you really think claiming to be everyone’s landlord will make me think that’s why you’re treated with such reverence around here? People don’t act like that toward their landlords.”
“What are you implying?” He’s clearly trying to sound nonchalant, but I’m not buying it for a second.
“You’re a gangster.” I all but spit out the words.
“A gangster?” He places his hand on his stomach as he laughs. “Did you really just use that word?”
“You said you were going to be honest with me!” I shout.
“I don’t even own a fedora.”
“Don’t mock me.”
“I’m not, Cherry. I’m sorry. It just…makes me think of guys carrying violin cases, hanging out in speakeasies.”
“It’s accurate though, isn’t it?”
Nate pauses for a long moment before he answers.
“Even after all of this, I don’t want to say it.”
“I figured.” I move to stand, but he grips my hand.
“Please, hear me out!”
I glare at him but remain seated.
“I will tell you, Cherry. I’ll tell you everything, but I don’t…I don’t want you to know all of this. I don’t want to put you in this position. I find myself wanting to lie not for the sake of being deceitful but to protect you. I don’t want to put you in danger.”
“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”
“And it doesn’t matter anymore,” he says softly. “Now that we know you are part of the Ramsay family, it was only a matter of time before it came out anyway. I just didn’t expect to have these feelings for you in the middle of it all. Even if you hadn’t moved to Cascade Falls, no secret can be kept forever.”
Nate goes quiet for a few moments until I finally have to prompt him to go on.
“The Orso family makes most of its money forging documents. The majority of our business is with other mob families, but we serve most anyone from crime lords to rich, underage college students wanting to get into bars. We have control over the licensing bureau, so our forgeries are as good as it gets. We make driver’s licenses, birth certificates, illegal contracts—you name it. We do run completely legitimate businesses like the syrup factory and the real estate, but those are fronts for the rest of it. Money laundering takes a bit of effort, and we have to operate legitimate businesses in order to keep the feds
away. Those businesses generate tax revenue, so the government doesn’t complain. The Big O is a general pick-up and drop-off location for the documentation people buy from us.”
I swallow hard. It’s a lot to take in but also not as bad as I had feared.
“I thought organized crime was only in big cities,” I say. “Wouldn’t those places be more profitable locations?”
“Big fish, small pond,” Nate says with a shrug. “We’ve managed to thrive in this environment. Everyone knows who we are and what we do, at least to some degree. They respect our power. In a small town, there is very little police presence, and the feds focus their energies on the big players, not us.”
“Is that all you do?” I ask quietly, not sure I want an answer.
“What do you mean?”
“What about…other stuff?”
“You mean the drug trade?”
“Drugs, murder for hire, human trafficking…I don’t know, Nate. This is totally foreign to me.”
“No, we don’t do those things. Decades ago, we made money off cocaine and heroin, but we haven’t done that in my lifetime. That’s what the Ramsays do.”
“They’re drug lords?”
“I’m not sure I would ever refer to them as ‘lords,’ but they do act as a mid-level supplier to the cartels.”
A shudder runs through me. I’m so out of my element, I don’t even know any of the terminology. All my knowledge comes from television and cheesy novels.
“There’s more to it though,” Nate says. “As I’m sure you can imagine, this isn’t exactly the, uh, safest occupation. Prison is an obvious risk, but there are other threats as well. As far as such things go, and despite the events of the last year, we are in a good position compared to a lot of families.”
“What do you mean?”
“In comparison to the big families in big cities—Chicago, LA, Seattle, New York—we’re small potatoes but also very much in demand. Everyone needs what we have to offer. No one wants to deal with it themselves, and they’re happy to pay us to do it for them. They all want us to stay in business, and that gives us an advantage.”
“But not the Ramsays.”
“No, not them.”
“Why the rivalry? I mean, what exactly are you fighting over?”
“I think we’ve been fighting for so long, we don’t even remember,” Nate says with a humorless chuckle. “It started decades ago when both families were doing forgeries and involved in the drug trade. Territory was an issue as well. That’s why my father and Roland Ramsay came up with the treaty that we currently abide by.”