by Seth Eden
Gabriel was frozen, unable to pull out his own weapon with a loaded gun pointed at him.
Everyone was still. I imagined that any idiot who happened to walk by would think we were nothing more than a particularly violent statue garden. Me, gun pointed at Jackson, who still had his knife in his fist. Jackson’s guy with a gun pointed at Gabriel, who stood with his hands slightly raised where the potential shooter could see them. Jackson’s other guy was still at the back of the Camaro, resting against the trunk as if he’d already seen enough and just wanted to go home. And, of course, Alessandro, who sat with his hands on the wheel, cursing himself for not being able to blow the Randolphs up with his eyes, or something like that.
I was the first to move.
Lightning fast, I flicked the barrel of my gun a few inches to the left and put a bullet through the stranger’s head. The silencer I’d attached to the gun muffled most of the loud bang that erupted and echoed throughout the alleyway.
Immediately, with perfect intuition, Gabriel pulled out his own gun and quickly killed the other guy at the back of the Camaro, who tried to duck behind the ugly vehicle.
But, Jackson had wanted us to be distracted by his foolish excuse for minions. He’d wanted us to think that he’d been stupid enough to bring nothing but a switchblade to protect himself in a confrontation with the Varassos. And we’d been dumb enough to believe him. Dumb enough to assume that Jackson Randolph, who was famously moronic and clumsy, would be unprepared tonight.
In front of me, only a couple yards away, Jackson pulled out a gun of his own, also hidden in his waistband. He aimed it steadily at my heart and I froze. Gabriel instantly trained his gun on Jackson and the three of us were locked in a standoff.
In normal circumstances, I’d be willing to take one for the team if it meant that me getting shot would help my brothers put down one of the most annoying gangsters on the streets. At least, at long as the bullet wound wasn’t fatal. But, I couldn’t stop my mind from flying to Alana and our baby that was, quite literally, on its way into this world.
Come home to me.
I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t risk leaving my son or daughter without a father.
Doing my best to keep my breathing even, I raised both of my hands in the air. The gun remained in my right hand, but my finger was clearly off the trigger. I was surrendering.
The thought make my stomach turn.
Jackson’s eyes narrowed at me. Suddenly, it dawned on me that Jackson had no intention of honoring any type of surrender, especially with Gabriel’s gun still pointed straight at his skull. He’d lived a life of mediocrity, always being tossed aside by his Uncle, the leader of the Randolphs, in favor of his much more talented and dependable daughters. His own parents probably didn’t care much for him either. If Jackson were my son, I’d probably be pretty disgusted, too.
He didn’t come here to wave a gun around and scare a few Varassos. He came here to kill us.
More specifically, he came here to kill me. What better way to get under the kingpin’s skin than kill his beloved heir?.
The entire fiasco with Roman had been a ruse. A distraction; a way to draw out the only Varassos who were on duty late on a Sunday evening: Angelo’s sons. He’d definitely miscalculated with the drugs he stole; inserting himself in a situation with Chai was risky, and he was lucky he still had a head on his shoulders and a dick between his legs for attempting that.
There was no silencer on Jackson’s pistol. When he shot me, the entire block would hear it. It would cause a scene. The melodrama that unfurled in my imagination made me sick. Jackson, tearing away from the scene in his abomination of a vehicle, my brothers weeping over my dead body. My blood pooling in a dirty alleyway on the east side while, somewhere else in the city, Alana gave birth to a child that would never meet their father.
Internally, I found myself cursing my family. Cursing my father, my mother, and my grandfather for starting this whole empire in the first place, and for growing it to such magnitude that all our lives sat on such a fragile precipice. Because Jackson was right; King’s fall. It was inevitable.
If only I’d been some regular guy… I would still have two living parents. Probably would have gone to college, majored in something boring, but lucrative, like business management or bioengineering. Maybe I wouldn’t have met Alana, because I wouldn’t have been injured doing this job in the first place, wouldn’t have needed to stumble into an urgent care center in the middle of the night. Or, maybe I would have met Alana. Maybe we were destined to cross paths, no matter what either of our lives turned out to be. It certainly felt like that. Like we were meant to be together.
I met Jackson’s eyes, and knew that it would be the last thing I saw. He was willing to die by Gabriel’s bullet, as long as it meant that his family would know that he was responsible for the death of the illusive, indestructible Luca Varasso.
When the bang exploded, Gabriel’s gun fired a millisecond afterward. I saw a flash of red, Jackson’s corpse crumpling to the cement, before black spots overtook my vision and swallowed me whole.
-
Pain.
-
In the all-consuming darkness, a memory resurfaced.
Bright red hair, wide blue eyes like the ocean. Perfect porcelain skin, curving around the prettiest smile I’d ever seen.
Alana stared at me from across the table, fingers dancing on the rim of her coffee mug. Delicate steam lifted from it’s contents, the same kind of steam that had wrapped around us just minutes before in the shower.
It had been a good shower. She was still breathless and rosy-cheeked from it.
But, the expression on her face was one of somberness.
“What will I do if you die?” she asked, out of nowhere.
I furrowed my brow at her, reaching out to take her hand. “What’s with the morbidity over the breakfast table?”
“I’m serious, Luc,” she sighed. “How am I supposed to go on without you?”
I stood up from my chair and came around the other side of the table to sit beside her. Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, I pressed a kiss to her temple and brushed a single curl from her eyes.
“What brought this on?” I asked.
She shrugged, pouting slightly. “You just go out every night working for your father and I’m so worried all the time that you’re not going to come home to me.
“Hey,” I whispered, holding her close. “I’ll always come home to you.”
But, Alana frowned at me and wiggled away from my grasp. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Luca Varasso.”
I deflated. “You’re right.”
Alana turned back to her coffee, drumming her fingers on the china the way she did when she felt anxious or unsettled.
“Well,” I said. “I could take out a life insurance policy… we’d have to married for you to benefit from it, though, which my father would love to hear, but I know we both agree that’s not the best reason to get married...”
Alana heaved a loud sigh and stood up from the table. Her chair scooted back several inches and threatened to fall over backwards. I quickly settled a hand on the back of it to keep it upright, watching in confusion as she started pacing the small kitchen of our modest one bedroom apartment. She didn’t usually give in to her roiling moods like this. Most times, she was sweet and graceful, the calm in the eye of the raging, unstoppable storm that represented me. But, now, I could tell that she was on edge. Something was bothering her.
“I don’t mean, like, what am I gonna do, financially,” she replied, raising her voice slightly. “You know I can take care of myself. I just mean… what am I going to, emotionally? You don’t seem all that bothered by the danger you put yourself in all the time, and it hurts me because I feel like you don’t even think about me, waiting for you here in bed, hoping you’ll be back in one piece!”
“Oh, Alana,” I breathed, standing up and going over to her. I immediately folded her into my arms. She felt so small, s
o fragile against my body, but I knew she wasn’t. She was tougher than anyone; stronger than all the Varasso family combined. It was why I loved her so much.
Alana sniffled and then stepped out of my arms, blinking fast against tears.
“It’s just… I… I’m…”
I frowned, watching as she struggled with her words. She was always so eloquent, such a smooth talker. After all, she’d managed to charm Angelo Varasso himself within five minutes of meeting him.
Her hands fluttered at her stomach, bare and smooth. She was only wearing a bra and a pair of my old sweatpants, the drawstring pulled as tight as it would go. My head cocked to the side in confusion, wondering why she was touching her abdomen like that. Was she sick? Was she going to die on me?
“Luca,” Alana murmured, lifting her head to meet my gaze, her hands still resting oddly over her belly button. “Luca, I’m pregnant.”
Oh.
-
Come home to me.
-
I knew I was alive because of the pain. It ripped through the upper left side of my body like fire, leaving me breathless, unable to move. I was vaguely aware of my brothers shouting in the background, their voices muffled by a strange distance, as if I were underwater.
Lights flashed behind my eyelids and I moaned.
“Stay with me, brother,” I heard Alessandro mutter from a million miles away.
I tried to do as he said, but I couldn’t.
I gave into the darkness. And, this time, it wasn’t accompanied by a memory.
It was total, complete darkness.
3
Something Always Breaks
“Mr. Varasso?”
The fire was gone. Or, at the very least, had subsided to a dull, vague, steady smolder.
Underneath my hands, scratchy hospital sheets touched my skin.
What the hell?
Wasn’t there somewhere I had to be?
I cracked open my eyes, only to have them immediately assaulted by the harsh glare of fluorescent bulbs directly overhead. Squinting, I glanced over at the nurse in seafoam green scrubs holding a clipboard and staring down at me with furrowed brows.
“What happened?” I mumbled, trying to sit up.
The nurse didn’t stop me from trying, but she leaped forward immediately and offered me supportive hands as I wiggled my strangely heavy, clumsy body into a sitting position. Pain flared through my left shoulder as I did so and, utterly confused, I glanced down at the mess of bandages that stretched from my collarbone down to my elbow. My left arm had been fixed in a sling, as well.
And then I remembered.
I’d been shot.
I glanced over at the nurse, who was offering me a nervous smile.
But, then a small flash of memory resurfaced. Gabriel, gun in hand, shooting Jackson Randolph in the head. Had they left the body there in the alley? Did another Varasso get called to take care of it? I frowned to myself. Gabriel had certainly killed before, but he didn’t do it as often as I did.
“Mr. Varasso,” said the nurse again. “My name is Carol. I’m just here to check your vitals.”
“What happened?” I grumbled, hoping to get some clear details about the bullet wound from her, rather than having to wait for a doctor to describe the damage to me.
“You were shot in the shoulder,” replied Carol, scribbling down a few notes as she looked through the various machines I was hooked up to. “From what your brother said, it sounds like it was a drive-by situation. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luckily, it looks like the bullet only grazed your upper bicep, and you’ll recover quickly.”
I snorted softly, wincing when the movement caused my shoulder to twinge uncomfortably. Count on Jackson to almost completely miss me in such close range. He really was a fool. A dead fool now, thankfully.
It was also clear that this nurse had never heard of the Varasso family, probably because she wasn’t from Philadelphia. If she’d known about my father, she’d know that any son of his was never simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“What time is it?” I asked. I prayed it was still Sunday evening, that Alana was somewhere in this hospital, and that I hadn’t completely missed the delivery of my child. I’d never forgive myself if I did.
“Just past two in the morning,” answered Carol. “Your brothers are with your wife in the maternity wing, which is nearby. She’s been in labor for quite a few hours now.”
I breathed an audible sigh of relief. I hadn’t been too late.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, clenching my jaw against the stabs of pain. God, getting shot really did suck.
“Now hold on a minute, Mr. Varasso,” sighed Carol, placing a firm hand on my good shoulder to still me. I scowled up at her, but she held firm. “I’m more than happy to bring you over to Ms. Rhodes, but we’re going to do it my way, okay?”
I pursed my lips. I never liked being told what to do. But, I was willing to army crawl my way all the way across the hospital’s sprawling campus if it meant I got to Alana before she had to give birth without me by her side. I figured I might as well obey this stern nurse Carol and get there faster.
Sighing quietly, I nodded and watched as Carol unfolded a wheelchair next to the bed. A wheelchair was the last thing I wanted to be in, let alone one that was being pushed by a patronizing blond lady, but I reminded myself that I had no choice. Sometimes one’s masculinity simply had to take a slight blow in order for us to accomplish what we need.
Trying to keep my groans of pain to a minimum, I let Carol help me up off the bed and into the chair. I was still in my smooth black pants from Sunday dinner, but my shirt had been discarded, I assumed, in favor of a hospital shirt that tied up in the back.
I sat in silence as Carol pushed me down the halls toward the maternity wing, avoiding the looks of other medical staff, patients, and loved ones who fixated on the mound of bandages taking over most of my left side.
“She’s about nine centimeters, last I heard,” chatted Carol along the way, her voice light and conversational. I wondered if this happened all the time; if expecting fathers showed up with bullet wounds the same night their expecting mother counterparts showed up in labor.
“Nine centimeters?” I asked, still a little dazed from whatever drug they’d given me to help with the worst of the pain.
There was a smile in Carol’s voice, though I couldn’t see her face.
“Nine centimeters dilated,” she clarified. “She should be ready to push any moment now. Good thing, too. Poor thing’s been laboring for about seven hours now.”
My heart hammered nervously. “Is that normal?”
Carol reached down to pat my uninjured shoulder gently as we rounded another corner. “It’s very common, yes. Every baby has their own special way of coming into the world. We’re almost there, by the way.”
Sure enough, after only a few minutes, we stopped at a door halfway down the next hall. A flurry of activity was audible from the other side. Carol knocked politely on the door and then opened it up, pushing me inside.
“The father has arrived!” announced Carol cheerfully.
Marco and Alessandro were in the room; I wasn’t sure where Gabriel had gone. Maybe he’d been injured somehow in the chaos on the east side, too.
Alana lay in the hospital bed, red-faced and sweating, clutching onto the handlebars with white knuckles. Her mother stood by her side, focused intently on her daughter’s face, but when Alana looked up at my entrance, her mother followed her gaze.
“Oh, Luca,” gasped Sherry, Alana’s mother. She didn’t leave her daughter’s side, but the affection in her eyes felt like a hug from across the room. “I’m so glad you’re okay!”
Marco wheeled me over to Alana’s bed and I immediately grabbed one of her damp, shaking hands. “Thanks, Sherry,” I replied. “Me, too.”
“Leave it to Luca to upstage me on the day of our child’s birth,” Alana joked, her voice weak, but not totally devoi
d of her usual spark. She coughed lightly before continuing. “...by getting shot. God, you’re an idiot.”
I chuckled and leaned over to press a kiss to her cheek. “Hey, it’s not like I went and shot myself in the shoulder.”
Alana giggled, but the high, tinkling sound was suddenly cut off as her face contorted in pain and she crumpled in on herself, clutching at her stomach with a quiet moan.
“Another contraction,” murmured her mother, quietly running her fingers through her daughter’s hair. Alana squeezed my hand so tightly, I thought I might get nerve damage, but I didn’t mind. Seeing her in pain awakened something strange and animalistic within me. All I wanted was to be able to fight off what was hurting her, but, of course, I couldn’t protect her from the pain of childbirth.
“Just breathe through it, Alana,” said one of the nurses down by the end of the bed. “Breathe through it.”
I watched as Alana pulled in a deep breath and then slowly exhaled. The contraction seemed to pass; together, we breathed a sigh of relief.
“You’re amazing,” I told her.
The door to the room opened again and someone who was very clearly the doctor walked in, quickly pulling on a pair of long gloves.
“Hi, Ms. Rhodes,” she said, coming to stand beside me. She didn’t comment on the fact that the father of the baby had very clearly been operated on just down the hall, and was totally, absolutely focused on Alana. I decided I liked her immediately. “My name is Dr. Seeley. How are you feeling?”
“Like hell,” Alana croaked.
Dr. Seeley smiled and patted Alana’s knee. “Well, let’s see if we can get this baby out of you, okay?”
Alana nodded as the doctor made her way to the end of the bed between Alana’s outstretched legs. Her mother and I held each of her hands, ready to support her through it all. Alessandro and Marco stood along the back wall, very clearly trying to make themselves scarce while the nurses busied themselves about the room with expert efficiency.