Ruthless Empire: A Dark Mafia Collection

by Seth Eden

  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 she 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.

  Devil’s Pawn

  1

  Kelly

  “Spit it out, already. Spit it out,” my brother David insisted, nudging me with his elbow and nearly dislodging the cheesesteak from my grip.

  He’d done this since we were kids, repeated himself until I’d get annoyed and finally tell him what he wanted to know. He’d always been like this, and he was the one person I couldn’t keep secrets from. No wonder he’d become a cop.

  “Quit, you big meathead,” I told him. “That crap stopped working on me once I hit ten.” Totally untrue and he knew it. He was older than me by a mere eleven months, making us almost as close as twins in both age and the way we interacted with one another. David had been my first and best friend, as well as the one who drove me most up the wall.

  But I loved him dearly. Even when part of me wanted to drown him a little.

  “Something’s bugging you, I can tell.” He raised his chin up and squinted down at me. This was his “look.” Even though we were sitting on the concrete ledge here in Rittenhouse Square, my favorite park in all of Philly, his extra foot in height remained apparent. “You might as well give up the goods.”

  To keep him from gathering more information from my expression, I turned my face to gaze at the beauty around us. Behind me stood the locally famous “Duck Girl” statue in the center of the reflecting pool, which was surrounded by a circular walkway.

  The fountain that gushed into it was of Neptune’s head, his long beard framing his open mouth. David had frequently told me the water was vomit—well, he’d used the term puke—something which had made me squeal and run away when I was four.

  Still, this park had been our spot ever since I could remember. In the summer we’d traversed its paths and laid in the grass. In the winter when the pool was empty, we’d brought chalk so we could draw pictures on the smooth cement and play hopscotch.

  The classical Greek urns and figurines throughout the place had excited my imagination as a child. To me, all those characters had been real and alive. Imaginary members of my adventures with my brother.

  But then, I’d needed the distraction. My parents’ marriage had been on the rocks, much like it was now.

  “What if I up the ante?” he asked me, producing a long skinny yellow and red box full of triangular prisms made of chocolate, honey and almond nougat.

  “A Toblerone!” I exclaimed. “That’s playing dirty.”

  “Yep. You know the trade, chocolate for information.”

  “I came home to candles and yelling again last night,” I sighed out the words, not meeting his eyes. I knew his reaction to my news would be a negative one.

  “Goddammit,” he muttered, his lips pursing in an expression that displayed both his frustration and resignation. We’d been dealing with our parents’ financial and marital struggles for our entire lives. The power being shut off was nothing new and neither was the constant arguing between them about their lack of money. “You need to get out of there.”

  I didn’t have that option. My mom needed me, and I didn’t make enough to get my own place. David’s studio apartment didn’t have the room to accommodate me, not that I’d want to burden him with my presence, anyway.

  As a waitress at a local bistro, I made exactly enough to pay for groceries for my mom, my dad and myself for a single week. And that was keeping everything off-brand. I’d been working there since the age of sixteen. Now, as a twenty-three-year-old woman who’d never been able to afford a college education, opportunities didn’t exactly abound.

  I couldn’t complain, though. David had gotten his first job even younger.

  We’d both had to pitch in to help pay the bills. In order to go to the police academy, he’d worked three different part time jobs. He’d managed to make something of himself and was finding his stride as a police officer. He’d mentioned wanting to take the test to become a detective at some point in the future. I was happy for him.

  Even if I did feel trapped by my own life sometimes.

  My mother had been diagnosed with osteoarthritis shortly after my birth, due to a congenital disorder of her hip and knee joints. Before this she’d had a job as a visual manager in a retail store, a position that had required her to go up and down ladders on a daily basis.

  She’d started to experience pain in her legs, and it’d escalated to the point that she needed hip and knee replacement surgery on both the left and right sides of her body. Since my father had insurance through his job as a production machine operator at a nearby factory, she thought this was doable.

  She’d been in the process of recovering from her first hip surgery when my dad got laid off.

  This had been a horrible turn of events, made far worse by the fact that he never told my mom about his layoff. So when she went in for the other half of her hip replacement, she didn’t realize this would mean incurring tens of thousands of dollars in medical debt.

  But it did.

  After about six months he was able to find another job, but it paid only half of what his original position had. We’d had to move out of the middle-class apartment we’d had and to one of the least desirable neighborhoods in Philadelphia. Around this time was when my parents decided to use screaming as their main form of communication with each other.

  Even though my brother and I grew up with a roof over our heads and at least some food in our bellies, my mom and dad’s perpetual bickering over money hadn’t been a pleasant experience overall.

  Which was why I was sick of discussing it.

  Instead, I concentrated hard on the picturesque landscape around us. This park was located two blocks from my bistro, and I spent as much time here as I could. The transition from summer to autumn had started to take place, the trees just beginning to flare into their crimson, tangerine and sunshine yellow glory.

  It reminded me that no matter how bad things could be within the dingy walls of my home, there were still things I could appreciate in the w
orld.

  “It is what it is, Davey,” I said, calling my brother by his nickname. I was the only one he’d let use it. I smiled as he handed over the Swiss chocolate bar, the one he knew was my lifelong favorite. As a kid it’d been more expensive than other candy bars on the market so my parents had rarely indulged me. “It’s not like we can turn back time.”

  The reason my parents fought so much was due to my father’s withholding of the truth. If she’d known about the lack of insurance, my mom would’ve waited to have her surgery until the funds were available, no matter how much pain she’d been in. She continued to be in pain now because she still needed to have each of her knees replaced.

  That surgery wasn’t going to happen anytime soon if at all. The physical discomfort mixed with her anger at him led to some intense shouting matches. And his guilt over the whole thing only served to fuel the flames, especially since he’d been the one responsible for setting their finances into a tailspin they hadn’t managed to recover from.

  At this point, I wondered if they ever would.

  They’d somehow stuck things out in their marriage for over twenty years, which I guess I should consider admirable. I loved them, but sometimes, I wondered if we wouldn’t all be better off splitting up and going our own separate ways.

  “You don’t deserve this, Kelly. You should be out living your life, not standing on your feet around the clock and giving Mom and Dad all your money.”

  “How’s the studying for the detective test going?” I asked him, more than ready to change the subject. We’d covered the ground of my parents’ troubles so many times that we’d trampled the grass down to bare soil.

  “It’s going, though I haven’t had much time for it lately. I’ll get around to it eventually. Busting petty street thugs and helping little old ladies across the street keeps me busy.”

  “My brother, every little old lady’s hero,” I said with an exaggerated sigh, and he bumped his knee against mine. He liked to kid, but he enjoyed swooping in and saving the day. Only unlike when he saved my parents, being a cop meant he’d get accolades and commendations for it, rather than more requests for the same kind of help.

  “Now, back to you,” he said, and I knew my attempt at diverting him had failed. Great. “When are you going to develop some sort of life outside of home and the bistro?”

  “Hey, I hang out with Chloe and Laura.”

  “Yeah, at work.”

  “We do stuff together sometimes,” I protested, but without much conviction. They weren’t any better off financially than I was, so most of our free time together was spent at each other’s homes watching Netflix. They did date sometimes, though, something I’d done very little of since high school.

  Okay, it was something I’d not done at all since high school.

  The thing about socializing with men was that they tended to desire women who’d spend real, significant amounts of time with them. I often picked up shifts at the bistro for the extra cash, which meant my time stayed limited.

  I had dated a bit during my senior year, even managing to attract a boyfriend or two. But after they realized I frequently worked seven days a week, things would fall apart. While I enjoyed going out to dinner or the movies with them, I felt obligated to help my mom and dad more. And honestly, none of those boys had offered me much reason to change my mind.

  I don’t know why, but every member of the male species I’d dated had been fixated on what I could do for them. They’d seem interested in my attention, sometimes even going out of their way to get it. And then, they tended to become obsessed by the prospect of something sexual happening between us.

  But I didn’t like sexual things. They didn’t appeal to me.

  I’d kissed a few of my dates only for nothing to happen on my end. And I mean nothing. No fireworks, no craving, no need for more. I’d heard other women talk about pleasure and even ecstasy, but I’d never felt even a smidgen of that.

  Those same boys had fondled me whenever they got a chance, and a couple of them had tried to push me to go further, but I’d stopped them cold. I wasn’t interested.

  I’d never felt that spark, that thing I thought I was supposed to feel. Not with any of them. And I didn’t feel attracted to girls, either. Sometimes, I wondered if all that talk about passion and lovemaking was a lie. Something manufactured and false. But then, sometimes, I wondered if it was just me. Why couldn’t I enjoy something other girls talked about all the time?

  If it was so important to others, why didn’t it feel important to me?

  Was something wrong with my body? With who I was as a woman?

  This fear, along with my busy schedule, had caused me to put dating on a permanent hiatus at the ripe old age of eighteen. It’d been five years since I’d done anything but flirt with customers in the hopes of getting a decent tip. I’d decided that having a romantic life was overrated. That it must be more trouble than it was worth.

  Lunch hour over, David and I hurried back off to our jobs. Running late, I jogged out of the park, anxious to make up the time.

  On my way I passed an elderly couple holding hands, a young couple attempting to swallow each other’s tongues right there in front of everybody, and a family with three small children meandering down the path, laughing at their dog as he chased his tail.

  Though I’d never admit it, seeing people as happy, impassioned, and content as this made me ache. It made me want more. Made me envy them. To feel jealous of them.

  Nonetheless, I tried to ignore these feelings. The truth was I didn’t have time for any of that. I had too many other responsibilities. Too many drains on my energy already.

  And if I often woke in the middle of the night feeling lonely, I didn’t have to admit that to anyone.

  Especially not to myself.

  2

  Marco

  I woke up the second I turned over on my back.

  Son of a bitch.

  I did this often in my sleep, despite the immediate press of tight pain that made me flip right back over on my stomach. It’d been nine months since Roman Petrella, former runner for the Varasso mafia family, had betrayed us by torching our mansion, leaving it nothing but a huge pile of smoking embers and ash.

  My brothers had made sure he’d vanished off the face of the earth, never to be seen again, but there was no undoing what he’d done. There was no bringing our housekeeper back to life, nor was there a way to take away the permanent limp or burn scars my eldest brother Luca had been saddled with due to that fire.

  Just like there was no pretending the third degree burns on my back and shoulders caused by that same blaze hadn’t left me in so much agony I’d wanted to die.

  It’d been the worst physical torment I’d ever experienced, bar none. And considering that I’d suffered through being shot, that was saying something.

  When the fire had happened, my six-foot frame had weighed two hundred twenty pounds. I’d been what my brothers liked to call beefy, and I’d spent lots of time in our gym lifting weights. Bodybuilding had been my favorite hobby. My brawn had allowed me to carry Luca around like a sack of potatoes that horrendous night.

  Since then, though, I’d lost much of my bulk.

  Those horrific burns had meant I’d been incapable of working out like I once had. The stretching and pulling of my injured skin had been excruciating, impossible, so I’d dropped forty pounds of muscle. I’d only managed to get back on the treadmill a few weeks ago.

  At least that was something. But even after all these months of surgeries and treatments, the burns weren’t fully healed. At the beginning, I’d asked how long it’d take for the wounds to turn into scars, only to be told each case had to be considered on an individual basis. Third degree burns were different than other burns because the damage went so deep.

  They couldn’t give me a real prognosis because they honestly didn’t know.

  So yes, I was making progress, but I still had to change out my dressings every morning and every night.
I still had to dab antibiotic ointments on my most recent skin grafts every few hours to ward off infections. While part of the injured area had become uneven scar tissue, the skin grafts continued to look scarlet red and stay sore to the touch. So the rolling over issue remained.

  The problem was, I’d always slept on my back prior to being burned, and the habit had been so engrained it’d proven hard to break. Also, the fact that I made the move while fully unconscious of what the fuck I was doing meant it kept happening no matter how many reminders I gave myself before I nodded off.

  Which frankly, sucked ass.

  But all I could do was keep on keeping on. At least, that’s what the doctors told me. It could’ve been worse. Luca and I could easily have been killed that night, through smoke inhalation, being crushed to death, or by being burned alive. Had the firefighters not discovered us when they did, I was sure one of those would’ve applied.

  Sometimes it wasn’t rolling over on my back that woke me. Sometimes nightmares did the honors.

  I’d relive being trapped beneath the chunk of ceiling that had fallen on me, the drywall and wood ablaze, the tendrils of each flame sizzling flicker by flicker into my skin. There’s nothing quite like having the knowledge of not only what it feels like, but also what your own skin smells like as it’s being scorched into the equivalent of charcoal.

  It’s knowledge no one should ever have.

  It had even affected my taste buds. For weeks afterwards, the taste of oily smoke had tainted every piece of food I’d tried to put in my mouth. Another reason for the weight loss.

  My worst dreams had left me panicked, sweating, my back searing, and my nostrils full of that odor I wished more than anything I could forget. Even though I’d now been through five skin graft surgeries—the first one on my left shoulder didn’t take—and the disgusting patchwork of scars had become somewhat easier to digest, I still remembered how it’d looked in the beginning.