by Seth Eden
I fought the urge to roll my eyes at the insistent mention of newlyweds. My father was stubborn as a bull; that was where I’d gotten my own hardheadedness from.
The carriage house he was referring to was an old converted cottage on the vast Varasso estate. Traditionally, it would have housed servants, but our maids and butlers and chefs lived in their own homes in other parts of the city. For Alana and I, it would have admittedly made a charming starter home, but neither one of us wanted to be that close to the heart of the Varasso empire with a newborn baby. Even though I was destined to become the patriarch one day, I wanted at least some small semblance of freedom before then.
“Father, I told you that Alana and I found a lovely apartment downtown for ourselves,” I replied.
Another humph was his disgruntled response.
“So, you’re gonna raise my grandson miles away from me?” snapped Angelo.
Alana tensed. We hadn’t chosen to know the gender of our child before birth, wanting it to be a surprise, but my father’s unyielding persistence in declaring that it was another strong Varasso boy always made Alana bristle. I knew she wanted a daughter. In fact, I wanted a daughter, too. There was already far too much masculine energy in the Varasso family, especially now that Valentina was dead and my father’s mistress was banished. The family needed to be softened, lightened.
“Your grandchild will be around plenty,” I replied.
Across the table, Marco, Alessandro, and Gabriel quietly pushed their food around on their plates, doing their very best to mind their own business. They were lucky. Lately, all of the attention and disapproval had been directed at me during our Sunday dinners. Angelo preferred to nitpick everything his oldest son, his heir, did, rather than bother correcting the behavior of his younger, less important sons. Less important in his eyes, of course.
Angelo took another sip of whiskey.
“Well, Alana,” began my father. “Once my son decides to grow a pair of balls and propose, I think you will make a lovely wife for him. A beautiful mafia wife,” he said, chuckling to himself. He leaned forward across the table and Alana nervously met his gaze. “You remind me of my Valentina. So pretty, in different ways, of course, but you are also supportive. You are the kind of woman that my son can depend on, especially in our line of work.”
I could tell that Alana was insulted, and my stomach squirmed. She would always support me, yes, but that wasn’t her only purpose in life. Our relationship was more about equality; supporting each other in balanced ways.
Still, Alana bowed her head and replied with a polite, “Thank you, sir.”
I placed an assuring hand on her knee underneath the table. She shifted slightly in her seat, rubbing soft circles on her stomach. She’d been so uncomfortable lately in the final stages of her pregnancy; I knew we were both eager for it to be over and to finally meet our child.
“Valentina was supportive,” muttered Angelo, continuing on in his soliloquy. “She was the perfect wife. Devoted. Patient. Submissive.”
I could sense the response coming from Marco, who immediately tensed up and fixed our father with a practiced, piercing glare. I knew that whatever was about to come out of his mouth wouldn’t end well, but it was like watching a trainwreck happen right before your eyes… I was frozen, unable to stop the disaster before it occurred.
“If she was so perfect, why did you cheat on her for thirteen years?” Marco hissed.
About ten things happened then, all at once.
Gabriel glanced up at me, eyes wide. He always tended to shrink into an invisible shell the moment our father’s infidelity was mentioned; his mother had been Angelo’s mistress, after all.
Angelo snapped, standing up and chucking a china plate against the far wall in one smooth motion. In perfect synchronization, Marco also stood up, squaring his shoulders against our father with a determined frown on his face.
Alessandro’s phone rang.
Alana cursed quietly under her breath, her grip tightening on her stomach.
A maid hurried into the room, dustpan in hand, quickly cleaning up the shattered china. It was like she’d been standing outside the dining room waiting for that very thing to happen. I didn’t blame her; Sunday dinners usually resulted in an unfortunate twist of events. Having a dustpan at the ready was simply smart planning.
I sat frozen in the middle of all the commotion.
With a low growl, our father gripped the front of Marco’s perfectly pressed oxford button-down and threw him against the wall as if he were nothing more than a sack of potatoes. Marco flinched, but he was used to violence. Even as Angelo pressed his forearm firmly against his second son’s throat, Marco maintained his furious eye contact with him.
The room was so quiet, I was sure I would be able to hear a pin drop on the plush red carpet.
“We do not criticize each other in this family,” snarled Angelo, his face mere inches away from Marco’s as he put more pressure on his son’s throat. Still, only the tiniest gasp for air betrayed any discomfort on Marco’s part. He was exhibiting the strength and resolve that was expected of Varasso sons. In just an hour, I was sure Angelo would praise him for his honorable behavior in the face of a physical threat.
Angelo wasn’t done giving Marco his lesson, though.
“We face threats every damn day of our lives,” he growled. His voice was a deep rumble. Like an earthquake. “Do you think we built this empire turning on each other? Do you think everything we have could survive a Varasso civil war?”
Marco shook his head, mouth open slightly in hopes of tempting in air. Angelo loosened his grip slightly, but didn’t let go of his son quite yet.
“You think you’re tough, asking me about Valentina over the dinner table she brought into our home, in the middle of the dinner tradition she started for us. She was the backbone of this family. You will not criticize me or belittle her contributions or speak ill of your half-brother.”
Gabriel looked at his father nervously. No one thought that Marco was insulting Gabriel, but it was still a sensitive topic even over a decade later. Marco loved Gabriel, just as I and Alessandro did. Angelo knew that deep down.
Alana once mentioned that she thought Angelo was self-conscious of his infidelity. That he maybe even felt guilty about having a mistress when his wife was so faithful. Perhaps, Alana had once suggested, Angelo blamed himself for Valentina’s untimely death.
Alessandro’s phone rang again and he swore, standing up to take the call in the far corner of the room where Angelo had thrown the plate.
“Do you understand me, son?” asked Angelo, his voice still dripping with venom.
“Yes, father,” Marco gasped out.
Angelo removed the pressure of his arm from Marco’s neck, but didn’t back away.
“What was that?”
“Yes, father,” said Marco more loudly.
Angelo stepped back from his son with a shake of his head and picked up his whiskey glass again. Marco slumped against the wall and raked his fingers through his dark hair, cursing under his breath. Suddenly unfrozen, I stood up and picked my father’s chair up off the floor where it had been overturned in his hasty leap for Marco.
Angelo muttered his thanks as he lowered himself back into the chair with a gentle groan.
Simultaneously, Alessandro hung up the call and approached. He kept his voice low, mostly because Alana was in the room and, though she was privy to many parts of the Varasso operation, she wasn’t a cog in the machine like the rest of us. She didn’t need to know every single finer detail.
“Luca, there’s something we need to go take care of on the east side,” murmured my younger brother. Marco glanced over with a grimace at the mention of the east side of the city.
“East side?” I asked.
“It’s the Randolphs, isn’t it?” growled my father.
The Randolphs were a rival family. Smaller, less successful, and much less organized, but still worthy opponents in the Philadelphia drug trade
. Every once in a while they liked to stir up small bouts of trouble with the Varassos, either by intercepting shipments, maiming a runner, or tipping off the police to a deal.
They were a nuisance, like a mosquito buzzing incessantly in your ear, but over the years, the Randolphs had grown braver. They pissed Angelo off; if it were only up to him, he’d massacre the lot of them. But, that many deaths would draw attention, even in the underbelly of a large city’s organized crime world. And the Varassos, though powerful, were always subtle.
Alessandro nodded at our father, his mouth set in a frown.
“They went after Roman, I guess,” he replied, holding out his phone to explain that it was Roman himself, who was one of our smaller, less important runners, that had called. “Broke a couple ribs, gave him a black eye. They’re trying to get in on that side of town, I’m telling you. They took his stuff. Kid thinks they’re gonna move ahead with the deal as if it were their own clients.”
Angelo straightened up in his chair, shooting daggers.
“They stole Roman’s stuff?” I asked.
Stuff, as in drugs. Heroin, probably. I wasn’t sure what type of clients Roman had been delivering to, but it was usually opiates nowadays.
“They stole our stuff?” snapped Angelo.
Stealing Varasso goods was an incredibly risky power move for the Randolphs to make. It was like practically begging for trouble.
Angelo reached up and clapped a firm hand on my shoulder. “Go with Alessandro and take care of it, will you? Take Gabriel, too.”
I wanted to protest Gabriel coming along, but he was, after all, a Varasso. “Taking care of it” was part of the family legacy.
Just then, Alana stood up, both hands clutching her belly. “Oh,” she gasped, looking down at the carpet where a dark stain suggested sudden dampness.
I was at her side in an instant, wrapping an arm around her waist to support her as her knees wobbled and a loud, sharp exhale escaped her lips.
But, Alana was smiling up at me in wonder.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, utterly confused.
“My water just broke.”
“Christ almighty,” chuckled Angelo from his chair.
“Are you sure?” I asked Alana, pressing a hand to her stomach.
She shot me a look. “Um, yeah, Luca. I’m sure.”
“Okay,” I replied. “Okay, okay. Okay. We have the hospital bag in the car, everything’s ready… should we go now? Do we go now? What about the contract--”
Alana cut me off with a loud whimper, folding in on herself as if in sudden pain.
Trying not to look as though I was visibly panicking, I bent over Alana and rubbed slow circles on her lower back as she clutched the edge of the oak table with white knuckles. All the other men in the room were frozen and wide-eyed. Except, of course, for Angelo, who had witnessed four sons coming into this world and was no longer freaked out by the image of a woman in labor, even if she was currently in labor in his gorgeous, expensive dining room.
A moment later, Alana drew in a deep inhale and stood up straight. Her cheeks were red and she looked a little breathless, but she was fine.
Wonderfully, beautifully fine.
“Yep,” she sighed. “That was definitely a contraction.”
“Marco,” barked Angelo. “Make your sorry ass useful and bring your brother’s girlfriend to the hospital.”
I started to protest, but my father’s gaze cut me off before I could get a single word out.
“Son, you and the boys have business to take care of,” he said. “I have no doubt Alana will still be laboring by the time you’re done, as long as you leave right now.”
I knew I had no choice. Family before anything else; that was the Varasso way. I supposed that was a small punishment from my father for not doing things the proper way and marrying Alana before getting her pregnant… because I hadn’t, she wasn’t technically family, and therefore she would have to come second to whatever mess I needed to deal with on the east side with the Randolphs.
Alana pressed a kiss to my cheek. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “I understand. Just hurry back to the hospital.”
I helped her down to my car, hesitant to toss Marco the keys.
“Don’t worry about it, brother,” he said, opening the driver’s side door of the sleek Audi sedan I’d traded in my Audi coupe for the minute I learned I was going to need to start having room for a car seat. “She’s in good hands.”
“Drive the fucking speed limit,” I told him, helping Alana into the passenger seat. “And use your fucking turn signal.”
“Luca, everything’s going to be okay,” said Alana, taking my face in both of her hands and forcing me to be still and meet her gaze. Her eyes were calm and bright, her skin glowing with the lightest sheen of sweat; she looked like a Goddess. “Just come home to me, okay?”
Come home to me.
It was the phrase she told me nearly every day when I left to meet with my father or the rest of the family for any type of business gathering. The phrase she whispered to me at night, wrapped up in the silk sheets, when I got a call from one of my brothers to go take care of something on the streets. They were the words she’d whispered to me any time I left her side for a Varasso-related duty.
I didn’t blame her for her worry. My job was dangerous. Not quite as dangerous as it could be, considering I was just below the leader in rank and therefore didn’t often have to get my hands as dirty as the rest. But, still… there were always guns, always fights, always drugs. And, at the end of the day, we were criminals. That was the cold, hard truth. Nothing about our job was safe.
So, when Alana told me to come home to her, I always promised I would. It was the least I could do.
Come home to me. “I will,” I told her. I pressed my lips to hers and kissed her deeply.
Alana pulled away shortly, clutching her stomach and going pale with another contraction.
“Alright, we need to go,” said Marco, turning the car on and giving me a look that said a million things at once, but among them let go and go do your job and she’ll be fine.
I nodded at him, understanding.
“I love you,” I told Alana.
“I love you,” she replied just as the contraction passed.
And then, though every single cell in my body was screaming for me not to, I closed the car door on the love of my life and watched Marco pull out of the gravel driveway carefully, but quickly. I stood there, my stomach a tight bundle of impossibly knotted nerves, watching until the very last second when the car disappeared around the corner of the street and they were gone.
Alessandro and Gabriel pulled up in the driveway beside me in our father’s Escalade. Gabriel leaned out the passenger side window and offered me a tentative smile.
“Get in, brother,” he said. “We’ve got work to do.”
So, just like that, I got in the backseat of the vehicle and forced myself to flip the switch that I always had to before doing something particularly unpleasant in the name of the Varassos.
Come home to me, Alana had said.
I will, I replied in my mind, hoping she could hear it.
2
A Mistake
According to Alessandro, our poor runner Roman had been scheduled to meet the buyers at an old apartment complex that more closely resembled a junkyard on the east side of the city. I knew exactly which client it was the moment Alessandro said we were heading to that location.
His street name was Chai - maybe a little too cutesy for a guy as rough around the edges as he was, but it added to his flair. His real name was Charles, according to my father, which was definitely far too formal of a name for an incredibly large, incredibly intimidating drug buyer. He was what we referred to as the middleman. He used a little, but mostly redistributed among his circle of smaller buyers to turn a quick profit. Chai was the same age as my father, and had known him for decades. He’d even known my mother.
In short, the Randolphs chose
the wrong deal to get involved in. Chai would know instantly that they weren’t with the Varassos and wouldn’t tolerate the kind of childish behavior from such a low-level gang. I was certain that, even if me and my brothers weren’t on our way over to put an end to this business with the Randolphs, Chai himself would make sure those who messed with Roman would be dead by morning.
“GPS says arrival in seventeen minutes,” said Alessandro from the front. “Roman was meant to meet Chai in thirty.”
“Perfect,” I muttered in response, leaning over to lift up the heavy lockbox we kept below the back left seat in this vehicle. Gabriel twisted in his seat to watch me go through the usual preparations. He was still new to this, even though he’d been a part of the family for over a decade. Our father had been reluctant to get his bastard son involved, which I’d never understood. He was a Varasso; this life was inescapable to all of us. In fact, maybe I envied Gabriel for almost living a life free of violence and danger.
If I’d been that lucky, I’d be on the way to the hospital with my pregnant girlfriend about to welcome my first child into this world.
I shook those thoughts from my head, doing my best to stay in the zone. I could never risk thinking about Alana or our baby when I was about to do a job like this.
With quick, expert hands, I opened up the heavy box and lifted up the cover to reveal a small collection of firearms and ammunition. I picked up my favorite, a gleaming silver pistol, and began loading it with methodic, practiced precision. At that point in my life, I knew I could clean, load, and fire a gun in my sleep.
Which wasn’t, technically, a good thing. Still.
Making his way through the streets away from the polished mansions hidden behind perfect hedges to the dingy inner city neighborhoods of the East Side, Alessandro settled back in the driver’s seat and sighed heavily.
“Dad was a little intense tonight,” he commented. “Wonder if Marco’s gonna cry himself to sleep tonight.”