by Sophia Reed
I shut my eyes. I should’ve known our family couldn’t come away from something like this without casualties. Francesca had been taking care of our home for the past ten years. She’d served as both housekeeper and personal shopper. Along with Greta, she was the only employee who’d chosen to live on the premises. And now she was no more.
Yet I was so thankful that it hadn’t been Molly or Anna. So glad I almost couldn’t breathe.
“She had no family.” Gabriel said.
“Just us,” Sandro put in.
“We’ll lay her to rest, have a nice service for her,” I told them. Then, something suddenly occurred to me. “Fuck!”
“What? What is it? Are you in pain?” Molly fluttered around me like a hummingbird.
Damn. I hadn’t meant to scare her. Especially since all that fluttering had caused her limp to become more pronounced. All my reactions felt out of whack. Still, I wasn’t putting this off for one more minute. It might not make a difference in the long run, but at least it would be one less regret I’d have to face if something else happened.
“Could you guys leave me alone with Molly?” I waited for Alessandro to make some rude quip about me hitting that or something, but he didn’t. Apparently, he was all quipped out. Good.
They departed without fanfare, and I took her hand in mine. “I had a special plan for this. I was going to surprise you once you were totally healed. We’d go on this walk down through the Dream Garden, then I’d kneel and do this right. But I’m starting to think if I wait any longer, we’re not going to get the chance.”
She furrowed her brow, puzzled. “What are you talking about?”
Her expression suggested maybe she thought I was loopy again. Yeah, not so much. This was for real. “Molly RaeAnne Greene, would you please do me the privilege of becoming my wife?”
In movies, TV, and books, this sort of thing is typically followed up by a yes or no answer. But Molly didn’t provide me with either of those. “What?”
Maybe she needed me to repeat the question. So be it.
“Will you marry me?”
She blinked several times, but the bewildered look never left her. I was beginning to worry now. I loved her and she loved me. We had a baby on the way. How could her answer be anything but yes?
“Luca, we’ve just been through two incredibly dramatic experiences in a row. Both of which happened in the past two weeks. Do you really think now is the time to propose?”
“Now may be the only time to propose,” I told her, a bit exasperated. I didn’t want to be short-tempered with her, but it was like she wasn’t taking me seriously.
“But you nearly died today.”
“Yes, I know. And you nearly died, too. I can’t take it anymore. I want to experience this with you, make a commitment with you, before…” I trailed off. What I was going to say was way too morbid.
“Before what? One of us bites the big one?” she asked, incredulity at the max.
Well, I wouldn’t have put it as crassly as that, but yeah. I didn’t speak the words out loud, but she must’ve been able to tell what I was thinking.
“Wow.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You sure know how to make a girl feel important.” She looked insulted. Why the hell did Molly look insulted?
“You are important. You and Anna and this baby are the most important things in the world to me.”
She huffed out a breath. “Okay, I understand that we’ve had a lot of emotionally charged days in a row. Death and destruction and fear. Injuries and fires and pain. I get it. But you’re being too rash about this. I don’t want you to do this out of some sense of urgency, like things are going to go to hell in a handbasket any second so we’d better get engaged.”
She turned away from me.
“I want it to be more like what you said before. Some leisurely time together. A natural conclusion to the love we share. But this?” She pivoted back around, waving her hand back and forth between us. “This is bogus. This is fake. It’s like you think we’re in a zombie apocalypse or something. It reeks of desperation.”
She was right about one thing. I was feeling desperate.
Desperately alone.
And now it looked like I was going to stay that way.
39
Molly
Now he seemed all dejected. Shit.
We couldn’t seem to make any headway, Luca and me. If it wasn’t one thing it was another. If I hadn’t been so in love with him and pregnant with his child, I might’ve cut my losses then and there. I’d never been in a relationship before, but surely, it wasn’t supposed to be this hard.
It took me a minute to absorb that he was taking this as a no. A rejection. And that’s the last thing I wanted it to be. I knew it was time to clarify my position.
“We’re under attack, Luca. Someone has been attempting to kill us. Literally.”
“Yes, I know,” he said, quietly.
“So what I’m saying is that until that whole situation is dealt with, I think everything else should take a back seat.”
“And what if something else comes along? Another attacker? Another disaster? Another tragedy? What if we wait for some semblance of peace, but it never happens?”
“It will.”
He pinioned me with his gaze. “Are you sure? Can you guarantee that?”
“Well, no.”
“Molly, I lost my mother’s wedding ring in that fire. The ring I was going to offer to you. It was this stunning emerald one with all these diamonds and now it’s gone. The only thing I had left of my mother’s and it’s gone like it never existed.”
“And that mansion?” he continued. “It’s stood there solid and sturdy for sixty years. We bought it fourteen years ago and made it into our home. Now it’s gone, as well. Burnt to the ground in less than an hour. I had three years with Alana, but the minute she gives birth, she’s taken from me, too.”
I was beginning to see a pattern here. A frightening one. He didn’t want to put off having anything anymore because he doubted he’d be allowed to keep it. Including me. I tucked my hand under his chin and pulled it toward me.
“I’m not going to die in childbirth, Luca.” I could tell from the absolute hollowness in his eyes that he didn’t believe me, that maybe he couldn’t believe me. Time to nip that in the bud. “I’ll even get a full body scan if you want.”
He chuckled softly, but with zero levity. “Promise?”
“Yeah, I promise. And I’ll do you one better.” I sighed. “Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, I’ll marry you.” He didn’t so much as crack a smile. He was waiting for me to drop the other shoe, I could tell. We were going to have to work on that. “But you’ve got to have faith in me. And you have to have faith that things will be okay.”
“I have total faith in you. It’s the other kind of faith that isn’t my forte.”
“I’m not an expert in that, either, but I’d like to believe that we can have a happy ending together. Don’t you?”
His eyes lost their hollowness as they filled with love. So much love that it almost made me tear up again. “More than anything,” he said. “So does that mean we’re engaged?”
I nodded, grinning at him and watching his face finally lift. “We’re engaged.” I’d just leaned down to give him a kiss when Alessandro careened through the hospital room door.
“Uh, sorry to interrupt. But we got the bastard.”
“Who?”
“Roman.”
Before meeting and falling for a Varasso, I’d never given much thought to fate. Things happened or didn’t happen, but I never needed a reason for it. I’d call it luck or coincidence. I never saw any method in the madness. Then I came into Luca’s life, and everything he’d endured made me question my previous beliefs on the matter.
I decided I still didn’t believe in fate, or at least not the way he did. I didn’t believe a curse was at fault for all the tragedies in his family line. I mean, research anyone’s history and you’d
find similar misfortunes. Premature deaths and illness. Acts of God. Accidents. All sad, true. But a curse?
Not to me.
And maybe not to Luca either anymore. He’d challenged my beliefs, but I’d challenged his, as well. Hopefully in a positive way.
Roman Petrella had turned out to be so much more than any of the Varassos had thought. Though his surname was Petrella, he claimed Angelo was his father. He had no evidence of this, though, and he refused to submit to a paternity test. What we determined after watching him tied up to a chair for about twenty minutes, was that the guy was off his rocker.
He did not have any issues with low intelligence, though. He might be certifiable, but he was also smart as a whip. He’d pretended to be mentally challenged to pull the wool over our eyes. And he’d succeeded. It frightened me how easily he’d duped us all.
He reminded me of Charles Manson in the way he could be so brilliant and psychotic at the same time. He was the reason my sister was dead. He was the reason Francesca and two of the trusted Varasso guards were dead. And he’d killed them believing this delusion that he could take over the Varasso clan.
We’d underestimated Roman Petrella, but he’d underestimated us, too.
The Varassos were not your ordinary affluent family from the Philadelphia suburbs. They—correction, we—were one of the oldest and most established families of organized crime. We were members of the Italian mafia, and we conducted all our business subtly and with great efficiency.
I wasn’t the little woman sipping brandy and eating bon bons. I was Molly Greene Varasso, otherwise known as Queen Molly, and I wasn’t going to put up with any threats to my family.
And neither was my husband.
The runner formally known as Roman Petrella disappeared without a trace the night Luca and I were engaged. And if anyone asked, we would say we weren’t aware of his last known whereabouts, but he had mentioned something about needing a vacation.
A permanent one.
After experiencing a violent and wretched winter, Luca and I were married in the spring. As the petals of pink cherry blossoms danced in the air of Fairmount Park during the second week of April, we vowed to love each other not till death do us part, but for always.
Through trial and tribulation, we’d both come to believe one thing: that no matter what—including hell, high water, fire and death—our love would never die.
I adopted this as my belief for all my important relationships. As I stood over my sister’s casket, I told her my love for her would never die. When my father succumbed to his cancer two months later, I told him the same thing.
My mantra had always been stand tall, stand strong. And I continued with that, but the addition of knowing my love for my loved ones would never die helped me to mourn them, and then to begin to heal.
While the mansion was being rebuilt, Luca and Anna moved in with me in my little cottage. Though it was much smaller, it was cozy, and we were all three very happy there. Had we not needed to be closer to business operations, we might’ve stayed there indefinitely. But the demands of work would only be ignored for so long.
Once my injuries became nothing but scars, I went back to running the corridors of the drug trade again. Like always, I enjoyed it, and now that Luca was by my side again, I enjoyed it even more.
By that point my pregnancy had become obvious, and I was delighted to be shown even more deference than before. It was one of the many things I loved about this generation of the Varassos and their employees, women were both protected and revered.
It was a lovely combination.
Marco had gotten through the most grueling part of his recovery and after four months, he was making substantial progress. He would be scarred heavily on his back and shoulders, but he would survive. And we were all grateful for it.
My husband, too, had his scars. In addition to the various bullet wounds he’d had before—now I had nearly as many as he did—his legs also had scars from his compound fracture surgery and his burn scars. His weren’t near as deep or extensive as Marco’s and had healed much more quickly. Still, when we were pronounced husband and wife, he’d still displayed a noticeable limp.
Six months after the place had been burned to the ground, a brand-new mansion had been built over the remains of the old. It seemed fitting, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. After a day of traveling, Luca and I returned to our room, settling into a new king-sized bed. Anna crawled up with us, sitting by my side as I put her little almost two-year-old hand on my belly.
“There, feel it? You feel your baby moving?” I asked her.
She giggled, her blue eyes round. “Uh huh.”
Luca laughed, too, watching the two of us. We’d decided to include Anna in as much of the process of this pregnancy as we could, not wanting her to feel left out in any way. So far, it was working well.
I had that battery of tests done, just like I’d promised him, and no medical conditions or anomalies had presented themselves. I hope it took a load off his mind, because it did off mine.
He’d already been essentially widowed once. And even though we’d sworn our love would never die, I was going to be damn sure I did everything I could to keep it from happening to him again. At least not for another seven decades or so.
Once Anna was in her crib asleep, I did the same thing with Luca’s hand as I had with hers.
“You feel your baby moving?”
He smiled as the baby kicked harder. This always happened. It was as if our son or daughter recognized their daddy and wanted to connect.
“I do,” he said, and his hand traveled north, pausing over my heart. Then he put my hand over his. “Do you feel me?”
I ran my lips along his neck, up his cheek and to his lips. “I do.”
Luca
I looked down at my wife holding our infant son in her arms.
Luca Antonio Varasso Jr. had been born on a boiling late August day at the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. Weighing in at seven pounds even, he had my eyes and curly hair, but otherwise was Molly made over.
Just like Anna, our baby boy was perfect.
He’d been born this morning, and we’d be going home soon.
I’d already made good on my deal with God or whoever was up there and had come through for me. I’d created scholarships for local urban high school kids so they could go to college on our dime.
I’d donated to forty churches, twenty-five charities, and had pledged to provide monthly supplies to every shelter and food bank within the city limits.
It’d all come up to the tune of a cool five million, and I’d pay far more to ensure my family’s continued safety.
If that’s what I was even doing. Maybe one had nothing to do with the other, but I always kept my word. And it was nice to know I was making a positive difference.
As I put Anna up on the bed, watching her kiss her baby brother’s mop of dark hair, I felt more elation than I would’ve thought possible before Molly had come along.
She arrived in my life through less than desirable circumstances, frankly. Seeing that masked woman on YouTube, I never would’ve suspected that she’d change my life so radically for the better.
Yet, she did.
“Marco,” she said, pulling me out of my reverie. “Should you be up right now?”
“I’m fine, Queenie,” he said, using the nickname she pretended annoyed her to no end but which she told me in secret she actually liked.
Since the fire, Marco had been in and out of the hospital for surgeries and repeated skin grafts. It’d been a long and difficult road for him.
I felt so much gratitude for him. He’d risked his life to save mine and had then put himself through pure torture in order to protect me.
As much as we’d been oil and water over the years, if I ever doubted what we meant to each other, all I had to do was remember what he’d done for me during that fateful night.
I stood at the head of the bed, leaning down over Molly as s
he held our son with one arm and wrapped her other around our daughter. I blinked at a flash of bright light.
“There,” Marco was smirking, though I knew getting a skin graft felt closer to cringeworthy or even scream worthy than anything else. “A sweet and sappy family portrait.”
From his mischievous expression, I expected him to yank my chain as he brought his cell phone over to us, displaying the picture he’d taken.
But when I studied it, I realized he wasn’t being mischievous at all. Instead, he’d captured the four of us like you might capture lightning in a bottle. Luca Jr. had been staring up at his mom, Molly had been looking at Anna, our daughter had focused on me, while I stared down at our son.
I thought of Alana and imagined her hovering over us, a smile on her face. Seeing this picture was like witnessing the best part of my past joining with my present to create a blissful new future.
A professional photographer couldn’t have done better.
I opened my mouth to thank him, but my throat seemed to be clogged. From the raspy I’ve-got-a-cold quality of her voice, my wife felt the same way. “God, Marco,” she said. “I don’t know how you did that, but it’s awesome. Pure magic.”
I couldn’t agree more.
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