by Seth Eden
Stacy pulled on her white dress and fastened a crown of white daisies in her hair, then she slipped on a pair of thong sandals.
“Ready?” she asked.
I was overwhelmed with a compulsion to kiss her. It wasn’t the amorous feeling I had just a few minutes ago. It was something else. A foreboding, like if I didn’t do it soon, she’d disappear. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her flush against my body. She didn’t fight the embrace and linked her hands behind my head as I pulled her mouth to mine. I expected the taste of something sweet but got a metallic one instead.
I stepped back from her, expecting to see something else, but she was still looking back at me, her head tilted in surprise. “Is everything okay?”
I touched my lip. “Yeah. Am I bleeding?”
Stacy’s hand pinched my chin as she tilted my head this way and that, inspecting for any sort of mark. “No.”
“Oh.” I smacked my lips a couple of times against the taste, but it lingered. “I’ll be right back.”
I walked over to the small bathroom off to the right and reached around the wall to smack on the light. I stepped into the bathroom. I walked over to the sink, looked up into the mirror, and nearly screamed. It wasn’t my reflection staring back at me but the demon himself. Mr. Angelo Varasso.
I shakily lifted my hand to my cheek and watched as one of my dad’s fat hands crawled into the mirror’s reflection to touch his cheek at the same time. I fished my hand up my face to pull at the edge of my curls, and my dad copied the movement, yanking at the tips of his greasy, slicked-back hair. I turned my face to the left and watched as my dad did the same, then I turned my face to the right and watched as my dad did the same. I lifted my head, and my dad mirrored my movements. When I was back to staring directly at him, I frowned, but he didn’t mimic me then. His lips curved into a deep, malicious smile.
“Are you ready to be a Varasso?” he growled at me.
I didn’t get the answer out before a scream pierced my thoughts. I shot out of the bathroom and nearly choked. Stacy was lying on the floor with a large and growing pool of blood beneath her. Splatters of it stained her white dress and drenched the ends of her angelic, blond hair.
“No!” I dropped to my knees in the blood, staring into her now lifeless green eyes. “Stacy!”
“This is what it means.” My dad’s voice was a vortex around me, strangling me with its heft.
“No.” I lifted Stacy into my arms and rocked back and forth as I held her cold body against mine. “No. No.”
“This is what it means to be a Varasso.”
I shook my head and clenched my eyes. It couldn’t really be happening. “No!”
My own voice brought me to consciousness. My heart was pounding so hard in my chest that I thought I was having a heart attack. I looked down, half expecting Stacy to be dead in my arms, but I only saw the fabric of my pants. I breathed in and out slowly, trying to get my bearings. I looked up and realized I was in Luca’s office. Luca was sitting directly across from me, but his head was fallen to one side, and he was out cold with a stream of blood sliding down the side of his face. He was tied in place, bringing my attention to my own restricted movement. I shook against it, trying to get out, but it was no use. I was either too restrained or too weak to break free.
I looked to my left and saw Marco in a similar condition, though with even more bloodied scrapes over him. He was the scrapper in our family, so it wasn’t shocking to see evidence of the fight he’d put up. To my right, I saw Alessandro. I jumped when I locked into his firm gaze. He motioned over my shoulder, and I looked behind me as far as I could turn my head. A shudder ran down my spine as my eyes landed on Molly, Kelly, and Willow, all bound and with their mouths taped shut. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified that Stacy wasn’t amongst them.
“What’s going on?” I dared ask, looking back at Willow. It almost sounded weird to break the silence with my voice.
“Ah, the youngest two came to first, Dante,” Dario’s voice coiled around me. “I owe you twenty bucks.” He was no longer sitting in Luca’s chair, which was turned towards the window again, and I couldn’t identify where his voice was coming from, given the room's total shroud of darkness.
Dante Binachi, the younger of the two Binachi brothers, stepped into my view, looking down at me with an animalistic gaze. “What were you dreaming about, little Gabriel? You were screaming in your sleep. Were you imagining the day we ran through your dad?”
Alessandro fought against his restraints to try and break free, and Dario stepped out of the shadows in the back of Luca’s office. He slammed his gun over the back of Alessandro’s head, and I heard Willow whimper behind me. “Simmer down there, Sandro. We’re not gonna hurt your precious baby brother.” He glowered at me.
“Not yet, anyway.” The new voice sent a wave of fear down my spine and back up again. I looked to my left just in time to see Luca’s chair turn, revealing none other than the Binachi head, Donovan Binachi. I must have shown my shock on my face because Donovan let out a gravelly laugh. “Surprised to see me? You should know I don’t stay down, Varasso. Never have, never will.”
Dante walked over and clocked Marco across the face, and Kelly screeched. Marco blinked. As soon as he started to fight against his restraints, Luca stirred as well. Dante smashed the butt of his gun against Marco again until his attention was totally focused on him.
“All that evidence that a certain coward turned over mysteriously went up in a fire.” He used the barrel of his gun to tilt Marco’s face upwards. “Wouldn’t be the first time a fire ruined your life, would it, Marco?”
Luca started to shake and slide his way across the floor. The fight was astounding, given how badly beaten he was. The Binachis probably intended to give him a false sense of hope as he screeched his chair across the room without stopping him. I caught a glimpse of the rope holding his hands in place. It wasn’t immaculately tied, but it was tied in a way that didn’t give when pulled. The tension kept the rope in place. I was calculating how to try and finagle mine off when Dante finally turned, stuck a boot against Luca’s chair, and shoved it over, toppling him to the ground. The series of grunts behind me was no doubt from Molly.
Donovan laughed, his head turned in the women’s direction. “You’ve got a fighter, Luca. She nearly took my guy’s head off in that grocery store.” He looked back at Luca. “Maybe I’ll save you for last. Make you watch while I turn her into a Binachi.”
White rage flared up in Luca’s eyes. It was every bit my dad, but even as he flailed against his chair, he was powerless to escape. Dario walked over and set one of his boots on Luca’s face and pressed. “Heh, you call this a boss? Looks more like a bug to me.”
“Angelo made four of himself,” Donovan said, the chair creaking out from under him as he stood up. “How interesting.” He walked around Luca’s desk and crossed the room until he was in the center of the ring we were sitting in. “I wonder if they’re all double-crossers, as well?”
“Probably,” Dante hissed, still glaring down at Marco. “I know this one is, for sure.”
“This one,” Dario said and aimed his gun down at Alessandro, keeping his foot on Luca’s face, “pissed Anthony Carducci off pretty bad with his mouth.” He laughed. “Imagine our shock when we heard you tried to bully The Beast. We were all too happy to accept his offer to make our evidence go away as long as we buried you. We were already planning on that.”
“We’d still be up the river,” Donovan continued, smiling at Alessandro. “So I guess we should thank you.”
All of our gazes landed on Alessandro. We’d been given a very different account of that story. Alessandro said they just talked, and that things went well. When Carducci flipped, he was the most surprised, or so he let us believe. It was neither here nor there. If I could save Alessandro, I could murder him later.
“It’s sad, Gabriel.” Donovan turned his gaze to me. He spoke directly to me for a reason I didn’t unders
tand. “I never liked your father, but I respected him. I considered you boys family.”
Both Dante and Dario sneered at the word.
“I was shocked to find my hard-earned money went missing, even more so when I saw your brothers were following in his footsteps.” He took a step towards me. “But you’re not like them, Gabriel. I know it. You’re a good boy. I don’t wanna hurt you. I got no reason to.”
I didn’t know what he was playing at but kept my mouth shut.
“Tell you what.” Donovan walked behind my chair, and I felt him loosening the ropes until they fell free of my hands. Dario finally took his boot off Luca, walked over to the door, and opened it. Donovan motioned to it. “You get out of here. Scout’s honor. I’m not a traitor like your old man. You never speak a word of this, and we’ll leave you and your pretty blonde hippie to do whatever you want. Go get married. Go have kids. Live that life you’ve always wanted. Leave these piles of trash to us.”
There was a quick moment where I thought about the beginning of my dream before it turned into a nightmare. I wanted it so badly I could taste it, but the thought left as quickly as it had come. Nothing was worth rolling on my family. Nothing.
Donovan walked back around to look me in the eyes. “What do you say?”
I glared up at him, reared back, and spit right in his ugly face.
There was a chorus of gun clicks as both brothers and Donovan all turned their weapons on me. My brothers went nuts in their chairs, and the girls started to wail behind me. In a moment that was, at the same time, heart-wrenching and heartwarming, I realized something critical. My family couldn’t bear to see me die. Not my eldest brother who had hated and resented me his entire life, not my second-eldest brother, who thought me weak and ineffectual, not my immediate-eldest brother, on whom I’d held my own gun just earlier that day. Their wives screamed behind me, begging the Binachis around their restraints to let me go.
Stacy had told me she loved me more than the dangers my life brought her. I heard the waves from my dream carry back to me. I knew that’s what awaited me in heaven. I was totally at peace. I would die knowing I stood up for my family. My blood was as thick as my father wanted it to be. I would die a Varasso.
Donovan’s gun was closest to me, so I craned my body to place my head against the barrel, mimicking Alessandro’s move from earlier. “Well? What are you waiting for?”
Donovan’s face faded. He truly believed that I would turn on my family for freedom. His frown peaked at the left side of his mouth and twitched with disgust. “I really did mean to keep my word, Gabriel.”
When I heard a gunshot, I jumped. I expected the pain that would follow, or at least the cold escape of death, but neither found me. The Binachis were looking back towards the door, as were Marco and Alessandro. Dante’s eyes came back to me quickly as Donovan locked eyes with Dario and waved his head towards the door. I didn’t react fast enough in my shock, but I resolved myself to go as soon as another opportunity arose.
Dario crept out into the hallway, looked left and then right, and then slunk off to the right. Another ear-splitting gunshot preceded a dull thud of a body hitting the ground. We could hear Dario’s groans. Whoever shot him didn’t kill him.
“Who is it?” Donovan yelled, but my brothers and I all looked at one another in confusion. The girls were all behind us, Ricky and his girlfriend took the kids to an undisclosed location. We had no allies that knew we were here, and the Binachis had clearly taken care of any staff we had on-site.
“Dante.” Donovan turned his stare back to me as Dante slunk out of the office, gun first. He copied his brother’s actions, looking left then right before finally sliding down the hallway. There was no gunshot that time. “Dante!”
“Dario’s bad off. No one is out here,” Dante’s voice boomed through the silence.
“How the fuck is he bad off, then?” Donovan growled.
“I think the idiot shot himself,” Dante called back. “We gotta get him out of here.”
Donovan was contemplating his next move. If he took his eyes off me for even a second, I was set to pounce. He leered at me, his hands shaking with fury.
“If you move a centimeter, I’m popping daisies one by one, starting with them.” He flicked his gun over my shoulder.
He slowly started to back away until he was at the door. He backed out, keeping his gun trained on me while I tried to decipher the best time to move. I didn’t want to risk the girls, but they were right behind me and the easiest shot if he got jumpy.
The next few things happened in rapid succession, almost too fast to clock. Something barreled against Donovan. He discharged his gun as he fell to the side, and it skipped across Alessandro’s shoulder. He bellowed out, but it didn’t look like it hit him in a bad spot. A flash of color blew across the door, and then the door slammed shut with the Binachis on the outside and Stacy on the inside. She had a gun in her unbroken hand, which she quickly dropped so she could fiddle with the doors locks.
She was just a hair fast enough, as there were sets of hands pounding on the door a moment later. I was almost too shocked to move, but the wives jeering behind me pulled me out of my chair. I rushed to the gun that Stacy dropped first and set it back in her hand, then I dropped to Luca and started to untie him.
A total rain of bullets started to fly through the door. I panicked at first, but when I looked over, Stacy was already on the ground. She kicked a leg over, knocking Marco’s chair over, and then turned and did the same with Alessandro. Either she missed that he’d been shot or she figured shoulder pain was better than dying because the way she kicked him set him crashing down right where he’d been shot.
“Fuck!” he screamed.
“I’m so sorry,” Stacy whimpered.
I finally got Luca loose, and he clamored over to Marco and untied him while I carefully undid Alessandro. There was still an incessant banging on the door as Dante and Donovan kicked between their shots to try and get the door down. The wood was splintering, and we were running out of time. They’d open fire as soon as they got in.
When Marco was free, he jumped up and rushed over to the women, as did Alessandro. They worked to get them untied while Luca went to the armoire my dad kept and entered the security code. The doors opened, and an entire arsenal of guns folded out. I had no idea it was there. Luca quickly distributed them among the brothers and free wives, just as the door finally blasted open. None of us waited. All eight of us, standing in a perfect semi-circle, open fired on Donovan and Dante Binachi, throwing them back against the hallway wall as we emptied our clips into them. We only stopped when nothing but clicks of empty clips screamed back at us, but Luca quickly pulled another out.
He crossed to the door and peeked his head out. “Dario’s gone.”
“I’m sorry.” Stacy’s sing-song voice sounded so weird after only hearing the Binachi’s rocky timbers. “I only got him in his leg. Dante lied so I wouldn’t shoot him, too.”
Everyone looked at her, dumbfounded. I finally walked to her, wrapped my arm around her, and pulled her close to me. She was shaking under me, but not from the cold. I kissed her before finally turning her to face my family.
“Yeah,” I said. “Guys, this is Stacy.”
26
Stacy
I didn’t say anything while Gabriel and his brothers checked over the brothers’ wives and picked up some of the mess that was scattered around the office. The oldest brother, Luca, had made a few calls, and after about thirty minutes, a group of people showed up and dragged away the bodies of the men we’d killed.
The men we’d killed. I killed someone. I was a murderer.
My whole body was still shaking, and my head was pounding, but I think the thing that scared me the most was the total lack of remorse I felt. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel bad that someone had died at my hand, it was that I was more proud of myself for protecting Gabriel when he needed it the most. All I could think about was losing him. Walking into the huge m
anor and seeing his lifeless body in a pool of blood. When I weighed that on a scale against killing someone, the measurement wasn’t even close.
I thought of my parents, probably curled up on energy mats, winding down for the evening with incense burning around them. I thought of Mira, who was probably just now waking up to discover that I wasn’t in my bed where she’d left me. I thought of Sam, my clients, and all of my friends and family back in Woodstock. It would be the same if it were any of them. If I had a gun in my hands, and someone was about to take their life, and I could avoid their death instead, I’d do it in a heartbeat. There were those who couldn’t weigh one life against another, but the people I loved meant more to me.
I didn’t know if I was suddenly going to be under investigation for murder or if the Varassos were so skilled in cleaning up swiss-cheese bodies that they could walk around an office and stand chairs up as if nothing had happened. Either way, I trusted Gabriel, and I trusted the people who loved him. I had to protect him, and I did. I was proud of myself.
When the room was finally back to being a little more orderly, gallons of blood scattered around aside, Luca looked down at one particularly drenched spot and sighed like someone had thrown his morning paper askew. A beautiful woman with black hair and strong, wide eyes walked over to him and rubbed his back.
“Can we finally replace the carpet?” she asked.
Luca nodded. “You win. We can replace the carpet.”
It was such a normal, domestic conversation, and you wouldn’t think they were having it because the carpet was too bloody to keep around. I imagined my t-chart of things I’d have to get used to, and mentally etched blood on the next free line.
Gabriel was by my side. He looped an arm around my waist and clung me to him like he thought the floor was going to swallow me up. He didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at me, so I didn’t press. If he needed time, I would give it to him.