by Bethany-Kris
• • •
April, 1988
Dante Antony Marcello made his way into the world quietly in the middle of the night with little fuss. He cried for the first two minutes of his life on earth and then his father held him, and the boy stilled, watching Antony with hazy eyes, contented.
Antony knew love. Of course, he knew love. His family, his wife, and his life. Antony loved all of those things. To varying degrees and in different ways, sure, but he loved them.
Dante was not the same.
It was instant. Like peace in Antony’s soul, pride in his heart, and life in his arms.
Right there …
In his arms.
Life.
He made that.
“Oh, mio bambino,” Antony whispered to his son, taking in all the newborn’s features for what felt like the millionth time. Dante looked like his father but with a good dose of his mother mixed in as well. “So perfect, my boy. You are so perfect.”
And loved.
He was so loved.
Cecelia thought the baby would be a girl. In fact, she’d been so sure of the gender she bought very little boy clothes for Dante. Even the child’s nursery had been painted a pale yellow, although Antony was correcting that issue. Dante would go home to a room fit for a little Italiano Principe. Complete with four blue walls.
Antony reminded himself to thank Paulie for doing that.
“Damn, he’s a handsome boy, man,” John said, coming to stand at Antony’s side. “He looks just like you.”
“And Cecelia.”
“Yeah, but … you couldn’t deny this kid, Antony.”
Antony grinned, proud as hell. “I know.”
“When you hand him over to your wife for five minutes, we should go celebrate with a cigar and a bottle of wine.”
Antony laughed. “Yeah, if I hand him over.”
“You’re going to have to sometime. He needs to eat.”
True enough …
“Be his Godfather,” Antony said to John.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, John. Be my son’s Godfather.”
“I’d be honored.”
John reached out to stroke Dante’s little head, a smile playing on his lips. The sadness lingering in his gaze, however, didn’t escape Antony’s notice.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” John murmured.
That seemed to be a mantra for his friend lately.
• • •
Fall, 1989
“Vacation?” Cecelia asked, balancing a squirming Dante on her hip.
“Yeah, kind of.”
“Kind of?”
“Of a sort,” Antony added.
Cecelia’s gaze narrowed before she put Dante to his feet on the floor. Instantly, the nearly two-year-old boy shot toward his father with arms outstretched.
“Papà!”
Antony picked his son up without missing a beat and said, “Of a sort, Cecelia. We’ll do whatever you want, but there are some things I want to check out in Italy. Andino had property from the family over there and it’s mine, now. Besides that, he owned a few businesses. So yeah, of a sort, okay.”
“Work, then. You’ll be working.”
“Milk,” Dante said, smacking his father on the cheek with his tiny palm.
“Ouch, shit, Dante, don’t.”
“Shit,” his son mocked.
“Cristo, don’t say that,” Antony chided. “Bad words, Dante. Bad. No, I said. No, son.”
“No, no, no!”
“Exactly, no.”
“Shit no,” Dante said, grinning.
Antony couldn’t help it. He laughed. Now that his boy had finally figured out how to talk and mimic other people, Dante’s bad language couldn’t be stopped. It was a losing battle.
Cecelia, on the other hand, didn’t find anything about the situation amusing. “How am I supposed to explain his cussing when we go to church, huh?”
Antony shrugged. “However in the hell you want to, Cecelia. He’s a kid. He doesn’t know any better.”
“It’d help if you would stop taking him everywhere with you.”
Nope, wasn’t going to happen.
“He likes spending his days with me,” Antony said.
“And what does he see, anyway?” Cecelia asked.
His future, likely.
Antony chose not to say that.
“Are you going to take this trip to Italy with me or not?” Antony asked.
Cecelia’s hand fell to her slightly rounded midsection. Their second child had come about almost as soon as Cecelia stopped breastfeeding Dante. Conceiving their first child had taken years. The second? Not so much.
Antony understood his wife’s hesitance, though. This pregnancy had not been an easy one. She spent most of it being sick, tired, and in bed. Which was one of the biggest reasons why he wanted to get Cecelia away for a while and give her time off from life before their baby made his or her appearance.
Antony was kind of hoping for another boy. Girls scared the shit out of him. Boys he could handle. Girls … probably not.
“A vacation would be good for you,” he said quietly.
“I don’t know if I should be flying at this point, Antony.”
“You’re not due until mid-January.”
“What about work here?”
“It’s a two-week trip. I’ll have it all handled.”
Cecelia still didn’t look convinced. “But—”
“It’s Italy, Cecelia. Italy. Our families came from Sicily and neither of us has ever been. I want to let my son see where his roots were first made.”
She glanced at Dante in Antony’s arms.
“It-lee,” Dante babbled. “It-lee.”
“All right,” Cecelia said, laughing. “A kind of, sort of vacation it is.”
• • •
“Miss, I am sorry, but you cannot go back there!” a man shouted in Italian.
“But my son,” Cecelia cried. “I need to be with my son!”
Antony held a lethargic, feverish Dante cradled in his arms, wishing the heavy sensation in his chest would go away so he could breathe. Fear was a fucking killer. It was sucking the life right out of his goddamn soul. Every begging plead from his wife echoing through the halls of the drab, shoddy village hospital cut him to the bone and took away his ability to function.
He wanted to reassure Cecelia everything would be okay. He wanted to hold his wife and apologize for demanding she take this trip with him. He wanted to pretend like his son wasn’t close to death and that it wasn’t all Antony’s fault.
What would happen, now?
What could this hospital in a small Sicilian village with little to no medical care worthy of the situation be able to do for his child?
What?
His fault.
Every last bit of this was Antony’s fault.
“Let me see my son!” Cecelia screamed. “Please!”
Dante barely stirred in his father’s arms as Antony was led further down the corridor. His son’s skin was littered with red, swollen, sore-looking splotches. From his tiny, pale neck, over his arms, across his back, and all the way under the diaper he wore. The nurses had stripped the child of his clothes, explaining they needed to see how far the virus had already traveled through Dante’s tiny body.
Everywhere.
It was everywhere.
It snuck up on them so quick.
It’s been all but eradicated, Antony remembered Cecelia saying once.
Why give him unnecessary needles?
Why put him through the pain, Antony?
He didn’t blame his wife at all for this.
Cecelia couldn’t have known. No one had warned them when they visited the villages that the virus was sweeping through.
“We cannot take the risk of you being exposed to the virus, Miss. Not in your condition.”
“But my baby …”
Cecelia’s voice was drowned out by her own desperate cr
y.
“I am sorry about your wife,” the nurse said.
Antony nodded. He was, too. “Thank you.”
“She shouldn’t be exposed any more than she already has been. Because of her pregnancy, it is risky. It could cause termination or stillbirth. I’ve seen it happen. It’s awful.”
“I understand. She will, too.”
Eventually.
“This way,” the nurse directed Antony in Italian.
“Sì,” Antony whispered.
Inside a small room, the nurse waved at a metal framed hospital bed with a sunken mattress covered by a seemingly clean sheet. Instead of placing his son down to the bed, Antony got on and laid down, tucking Dante in at his side.
“You may be too hot for the child.”
“Then I will take my clothes off,” Antony replied drily.
He knew the nurse was only trying to be helpful, but really, he just wanted them to go. They’d already said Dante needed to break through his fever before they could do much else. What medication could be given had been. Now, it was nothing more than a waiting game.
“I will bring you cold cloths. We will have to keep the fever from getting any higher. It is dangerous, he may seize through the night.”
Antony kept running his hands through Dante’s soft, sweat matted curls.
He was too hot. His body temperature would only raise his son’s.
How was he supposed to leave him?
Antony forced himself up from the bed and stripped his clothes off. It was cold as hell in the hospital, enough to make him shiver, but little Dante was burning up with every passing second.
“Bring them to me,” Antony demanded, getting back into the bed with his son and drawing the child in close again. “The cold cloths, get them.”
Anything.
He’d do anything for his son.
Chapter Thirteen
December, 1989
Dante sucked happily on the arrowroot cookie, blissfully unaware of the conversation happening around him. Antony wished he could be as ignorant as his toddler son for the moment. Instead, he had to sit quietly and respectfully while a doctor explained the likely outcome of Dante’s situation.
“Entirely?” Cecelia asked.
The doctor nodded, giving the child sitting on his father’s lap a sad look. “More than likely, yes. Because the Rubella virus was allowed to spread to his lower regions without any sort of intervention to stop it from infecting his testis, there is a good chance he will be sterile.”
“But he’s just a child,” Antony said, confused. “He doesn’t … it doesn’t need to work like an adult male’s does, right? How can something that happened at this age affect him after puberty and into adulthood?”
“It’s the nature of the virus,” the doctor explained.
Antony hated how little information was being given. They’d come to this specialist because he was supposed to be the best doctor for the circumstances. Instead, Antony thought the man was a goddamn quack.
“We can, of course, do testing to be sure when he reaches puberty and again when he comes of age. If he is found to be sterile, there is a chance that as he gets older, his fertility may return, but it’s rare. Incredibly so.”
“Sterile,” Cecelia echoed softly.
She blamed herself, he knew. Because she thought certain vaccinations were useless, Dante had gone without one and it cost him dearly. Antony still didn’t fault his wife for the innocent error in judgment. He just wished she would stop blaming herself, too.
“Tesoro—”
“How do we tell him that?” she asked her husband.
Antony didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know, Cecelia.”
“I need to know how we’re supposed to tell him this, Antony.”
Her heartbreak was clear. He could practically feel it a foot away.
“I don’t know,” he repeated.
“Me, either,” Cecelia whispered.
Who would Dante blame?
• • •
January 1990
“Roll it in,” Antony ordered, pushing the warehouse door up the rest of the way.
He watched as the truck of stolen goods disappeared into the building before he closed the metal door just as quickly. Sometimes, Cosa Nostra’s money was made from trafficking, racketeering, laundering, or other things … but usually, it was all about the schemes. Hitting a major retail truck full of anything and everything worth a decent price on the streets was one hell of a catch.
“Well done,” Antony praised the four members of his crew that had managed to pull the stunt off. “This is going to pay well, boys.”
“That’s the idea, Skip.”
Antony grinned. “Open it up and let’s see what is all inside. We’ve got a lot of work to do. This shit needs to be on the streets and selling by morning. We need it gone and cash in hand before tomorrow night. Is that clear?”
“Crystal,” came the collective agreement.
“Get to fucking work, then.”
Antony wasn’t an asshole, as far as that went. He didn’t make his crew do all the work while he sat back, did fuck all, and collected money. No, the quicker the goods got on the streets and sold, the less likely cops would figure out where it had gone to.
“Where’s the phone in this goddamn shithole?” Antony asked no one in particular.
One of his younger guys peeked out from the back of the truck. “It’s broken, Skip.”
Damn.
“When did that happen?”
The kid shrugged. “Don’t know. Maybe someone forgot to pay the tab or something.”
Antony waved the guy off, ordering him back inside the truck. This was not good. He was going to be stuck inside this warehouse for the better part of the evening getting things unloaded and ready for the streets.
He never stayed away from home now without first letting Cecelia know. It wasn’t that he had to, but he promised his wife he would if he were able. Add in the fact she was close to being due with their second child, and Antony was nervous. On the other hand, he couldn’t leave his crew because if Vinnie found out Antony let his guys go AWOL with a scheme and didn’t supervise them, there would surely be hell to pay.
There was also the fact he had to make tribute for seven in the morning at the Don’s favorite restaurant. In no way would it ever be acceptable for Antony to miss tribute.
That would earn him a bullet, no questions asked.
Cosa Nostra had to come first for this.
“Cazzo,” Antony cussed.
Instead of worrying about it, Antony yanked off his suit jacket and climbed into the truck with his guys. A second pair of hands would get it all done quicker. The faster it was done, the sooner he could get home to Cecelia and Dante.
“Hurry up,” Antony barked inside the truck’s trailer.
“Got it, Skip,” came the agreement.
It was well after six in the morning before Antony watched the unloaded, untagged goods be loaded inside the backs of several vehicles. They’d unpacked most everything to ensure no one had proof of where the items came from. They removed any identifying tags, and then sorted the crap into piles of similarity and preference for where it would sell best on the streets. It wasn’t the first time they hit a load like this full of purses, jewelry, shoes, and clothes.
Checking his watch, Antony cursed under his breath. He still had tribute to go to before he could go home, but at least he could find a goddamn payphone and call Cecelia on the way.
Even still, something nagged at him. Antony palmed the back of his neck, sighing harshly. The heavy feeling in his stomach had only seemed to grow over the course of the evening and into the morning hours. It still wasn’t going away.
“Giovanni!” Antony shouted.
The youngest member of his crew who was pulling off the license plate on the back of the truck poked his head around the fender.
“Yeah, Skip?” the kid asked.
Antony liked Giovanni. He was quick on his fe
et, cunning as hell, and he followed the damn rules. That was more than Antony could say for the rest of his crew. They were all good guys, to be sure, but Giovanni understood if he wanted to get further than the streets, he needed to damn well listen. Not talk, listen.
“I need to make tribute in thirty minutes and I need you to go to my place and check on Cecelia,” Antony said.
Giovanni shrugged his shoulders. “Sure, Skip.”
“Now, if you wouldn’t mind.”
The kid stood and brushed off his pant legs. “She sick, or something?”
“No, she’s due and I just want to make sure she’s okay. I’ll try to call when I get to the restaurant, but I want someone over there to physically see her. Dante keeps her running nonstop and she doesn’t understand how to complain, you know.”
“All right, Skip.”
With one last goodbye to his crew and a warning that he’d be checking up on them later to see how they made out with the goods, Antony left the warehouse. He made good time traveling to the restaurant, given he went ten over the speed limit, and managed to make it five minutes early. Everyone else was already there and waiting when Antony entered the private section of the restaurant.
“Cutting it close, Marcello,” Vinnie said. “I was just about ready to send a couple of cafones out looking for you.”
“Sorry, Boss,” Antony replied, ignoring the curious gazes landing on him. “Hit a load last night and just finished getting it prepped thirty minutes ago.”
The Don clapped his hands together and waved at the chairs. “Perfect, more money. Sit, then. Eat.”
“Actually, I need to make a phone call first.”
“No, you need to sit, let me have my breakfast, and then pay me your tribute. Then, maybe you can make that call.”
Antony felt his jaw tighten. It was his only show of irritation. What a boss wanted, he got. That’s just how it worked in Cosa Nostra. It likely wouldn’t help if Antony explained to Vinnie it was about Cecelia because knowing his boss, the man just wouldn’t give a good goddamn.
It was tribute, after all. That meant money.