by Amarie Avant
Reese reminds him of Milo? My eyebrow rises, and Sal continues with his speech, “There was a day, Milo was all about family. My golden boy! He was once a beautiful soul, Reese. The most beautiful of them all. He only struck when provoked, when family, our blood was in harm’s way. I knew you were Milo’s daughter the second you threatened my life,” he turns to acknowledge the rest of us, “Reese here threatened my life over Tino.”
“Ohhhh,” some say, some laugh, some are in shock. And others hold up their drinks to toast.
“Yeah,” Sal nods. “That’s true love. If I don’t know what love is, then I don’t know shit!”
“GIOVANNI, YOU LET HER THREATEN YOU!” Adela says through seething teeth.
The once jubilant room has quieted in an instant. The Boss’s smile fades. His warm brown eyes decrease in temperature rapidly, and when they land on Adela, there obsidian. They’re full of the same hatred he adhered to as he asked if I believe he and Milo where one in the same. Psychotic. His pupils mirror the hell he anticipates unleashing on Adela.
“Who is she,” I whisper to Reese. Most of the family was introduced with their subsequent relationship title, Adela was simply Adela.
“Milo’s wife,” Reese murmurs as one of the foot soldiers steps behind the woman in black.
“Oh God, Evan,” Reese grabs my forearm, face a flurry of worry. “Sal said, family calls him Sal. The Family… his goons… the motherfuckers he associates with call him Giovanni. He doesn’t consider Adela as his family,” She whispers. And then she arises from her seat. “Sal, please don’t take offense, Adela was your son’s wife.”
I grab Reese’s hand and pull her back into her chair. I don’t give a shit about the woman. Arm around her shoulder, I lean in and say, “Babe, allow him to deal with his people any way he sees fit. You are my priority, Reese’s Pieces, stay out of it.”
Sal’s index finger taps the air once more as he thinks. “You have my word, Reese. Adela, you are a guest in my house, an extended guest at that. Reese is blood, not ‘she’!” his voice tappers off, he looks at Reese as if her request is his restraint. “Adela, if you ever question me again, the vow I’m pledging to Reese ends, capiche? Now, remove yourself from my table and my home.”
Matteo stands, “Sal, por favore, mia mamma non ha dove andare, —please, my mom has nowhere to go,” he beseeches in Italian.
“Matteo, sit down. Dinner before business.”
There’s a loud puff of air as he sits beside me yet again.
Chapter 45
Reese
We’re right in the thick of things. Before Adela was ostracized and removed from the room, I had recoiled from my grandfather’s love. Sal compared me to my father… I do not know why. He’d touched my hand, his eyes were alight with the adoration one has for their offspring, and yet I nestled myself closer to Evan. Though the atmosphere was exciting and Evan had just found out we were expecting, I was still leery of Sal. I’m here for one reason only.
Now people are passing along serving bowls and filling their own plates to the rim. As I eat, my eyes close softly and I enjoy the taste of fresh pasta and alfredo sauce. I get caught up in the rapture of the familial ambience yet again. I whisper to Evan, “We’ve got some cooking to do when we get home, babe.”
“You sure that isn’t my son talking,” he says rubbing my belly. He’s no longer as tensed as he was when imploring me to let Salvatore handle Adela.
I smile. “Son? Sheesh, if he’s as hardheaded as you, how will I deal?”
I’ve never been openly affectionate since my father. I went from hugs and kisses during kindergarten graduations and elementary school spelling bees, to a brisk kiss to either cheek—on my mother’s part— during her many wedding ceremonial processions, when I was invited to said weddings.
Now, here I am. Learning about the Giuglianos. Laughing, and talking as Evan rubs my belly or nips at my neck and ear while we whisper. All the while, in the back of my mind, lies have mingled and mixed with truth, and I’m here to separate the reality from the fiction of us. Not me and Evan. But Salvatore and I.
Why did he appear in my life? Why force himself upon me when I did not have a need for a grandfather…
Sal pats my hand, “Reese, watching the two of you has made me the happiest that I’ve been in years. I miss my wife dearly. You would have loved your nonna, she would have been inamorato with you. Milo left her too soon.”
“If you’d still like to visit…” I begin, throat becoming thick, realizing Salvatore promised to be out of my life after tonight once he told me the reason why he’s been so invasive in my life. I clear my throat, beaming at him. Perhaps I have never been surrounded by people who cared deeply for each other, but I suggest, “Feel free to come by every once in a while, I’ll bake cannoli for you again.”
I stare at a man who has taken lives and not only that, set wars in procession, and my heart feels light, and airy and heavily consumed with love all at the same time. I never had grandparents prior to the shock of learning about Sal.
“I don’t mind.” He pauses for a moment, and then adds, “If you’re inclined, I might also like to meet my grandchild too.”
As soon as I nod in agreement, my eyes widen and I determine that maybe I shouldn’t have been so gullible... My mother, Lolita, is led into the dining room. Her plush lips are tensed, cat-like gaze in slits, as a man grips her slender bicep.
“Mom,” my voice is but a whisper. Gathering my wits about me, I shout, “Mom!” I push from the heavy chair so hard that the sound of it screeching over marble scrapes at my eardrums.
“What is my mom doing here?” I glare at my grandfather, gripping my fork on the table so tightly that my knuckles ache.
“To tell the secrets she’s kept.” His lips barely move. There’s a level of polarity that I’ve noticed in my mother from time to time as a child, the same rift is now my grandfather. But I do not believe he suffers from any psychosis aside from a mission to be king. My hand hurts as I let the fork go.
Sal glares through my mother and a cool chill trickles down my spine.
His gaze is deadly. He means my mother harm, and that is something I will not allow…
Chapter 46
Evan
My words echo into Reese’s ear. As I glance into her eyes, I perceive that she hasn’t caught a single word I’ve said. A single request to just hear her grandfather out has woven through her ears yet again. No, she is standing, as is Sal. But Reese is holding a fucking steak knife to his neck.
A sea of guns CLICK from their safety position.
Lolita shouts, “STOP!” as does Salvatore.
The men wait to be retold their order, they don’t seem to comprehend since their Boss is being threatened. Though under other circumstances, I presume that their allegiance would have indicated for Reese to be shot the second she showed aggression to the Boss.
A trickle of blood dots the fat, fleshy folds on his neck.
“Leave my mother alone, Sal,” Reese says. I calculate how to extract the knife from her hand, but any sudden movement and Giugliano’s carotid artery will rain with blood.
He turns his face to her, his neck spearing into the tip of the knife a tad more. Salvatore stares Reese eye to eye, stating, “Lolita has things she needs to say to you. And if she doesn’t say them, I cannot guarantee my love for you will save her life!”
Reese’s hand is shaking, “If you murder my mom, I’ll… she… she is all I have, Sal, please!”
“Then implore your mother to be utterly motherfucking transparent, Reese. That’s the only promise I can offer you at this time.”
Reese bites her bottom lip.
“Get that motherfucking gun outta her face!” I shout at the closest guy next to us.
Sal finally looks around him once more. He again orders, “Stand down! Reese is not to be hurt regardless of what transpires.”
The knife is lowered from his neck, and Reese hands it to me. I take my first breath in ages, bringin
g my arm around Reese’s tiny waist, claiming what belongs to me. Not an hour ago, while before her and my child, I made a claim to keep the two safe. I don’t give a fuck about her mother.
“Mom,” Reese says.
Lolita is seated across from us at the center of the table. “Is this necessary?”
“Talk, Mom,” Reese says, eyebrows furrowed. She pushes her way into my arms, I grimace as I pull her tightly to me, and we sit. The rest of Reese’s family waits for Salvatore, once he sits, they slowly make their way into their own chairs.
Reese’s mother rolls her eyes. “Must I speak with all of these people in here?”
“Talk now!” Reese slams down a hand against the table.
Lolita’s mouth is set to reprimand her daughter, but a goon places a hand on her shoulder.
She turns to glare at him, and then turns back around. Arms folded, Lolita begins, “I met your father in college, Reese. Milo was going to be a doctor at New York University. He chose to attend in the States, that’s what he told me. He was handsome, but too short my tastes. Milo had completed his GE courses with a 4.0, and had just started on his concentration when I found out he was the son of the Boss of Bosses.” Lolita’s eyes shift toward Salvatore. “I suggested—”
“You manipulated,” Salvatore interjects.
“I suggested to Milo to change his major to something more appropriate,” Lolita replies. For someone knee deep in the heat, she has a frown on her face. “I stopped seeing other men when Milo grew the fuck up and decided to become a cop. Milo worked his way up the system. He had an objective of becoming a Fed. He wanted to prove himself to his father, Giovanni never gave him a job.”
“A job!” Salvatore rubs a hand over his mouth, he’s at the edge of insanity. And I realize that the man is starring as every parent’s nightmare, the monster who turns their child for the worst. Milo had once been good, and that’s why Salvatore was so angry when inquiring as to how I perceived the two. The Giugliano crime boss doesn’t give a fuck how he is seen since other people’s perceptions will not steer his actions. Yet in that instant, he made a query. And I claimed that they were one in the same.
I hate Lolita. Never trusted her, and my stomach churns at the thought of Reese endeavoring to protect Lolita.
Lolita gives a seedy sigh, disinterested in her daughter’s feelings. “While on the beat, Milo started getting kickbacks from petty criminals. Then over the next six years, he stole kilos upon kilos of cocaine from the evidence locker. Sold some shit, snorted some shit. And he handed over intel to his thugs, and the Mexican Cartel. Oh, once he made friends with those Juarez motherfuckers, that was the end of him. Doped up every day, but let him tell it, he was a God. I didn’t persuade Milo to become a dirty cop, I told him to get back in his father’s good graces!”
Her eyes sparkled as if the thought of Milo becoming the next Don had been her solitary goal.
Instead of speaking, Reese turns toward me, she nudges her head into my neck and she cries.
Salvatore arises from his seat. “Take them all back to Los Angeles.”
I had handed the key to Vinny’s sports car to one of Matteo’s other brothers since he left during Lolita’s story to help his mother gather her things. The flight home was silent. Now we are all on the landing strip, stepping out of Salvatore’s private jet.
It’s now early morning. The sun is worming its way past skyscraper buildings as Reese and I descend first, since her mother sat toward the back of the tiny plane, and my girl couldn’t even look the bitch’s way.
“I’ve been instructed to take the two of you home,” says a man in a driver’s uniform, a cap on top of his head.
“And my m… Lolita, who will take her?” Reese asks.
The driver cocks his head toward another Cadillac.
For the first time, Reese peers over her shoulders. Lolita is a few paces behind us. She accepts her daughter’s gesture as an opening and steps toward us. “Reese, Reese’s Pieces…”
Reese gets into the car and I close the door.
Lolita stops before me. Arms folded beneath her breasts, she pushes them up somewhat. “She’s my daughter, ya know.”
“I’m highly aware.” My jaw sets rigidly.
“Good, and don’t you forget it. Reese wants a family, always has, always will. I’m blood. The babe growing in her belly is blood too. You are not. And just that alone makes you all the more replaceable, Tino.” She spits out my nickname.
I nod slowly. “Replaceable? Yes, that’s probably true when it comes to the image of love. But unfortunately for you, what Reese and I have is real, get what I’m saying? What you’ve had with her father, my father, and a slew of other men, that is not true love.”
“Oh shut the fuck up, kiddo.”
For Reese’s sake, I continue to advise, “I’m a cop, Lolita, I’ve seen some crazy shit. Lust takes a person down to their knees.”
“I don’t mind being taken down to my knees,” she says licking her lips and backing away.
My jaw sets. Fucking Tony, wise up old man.
Chapter 47
Reese
Lolita didn’t have any regard for me, she just regurgitated the life she forced my father into. While she spoke, I clung to Evan, and I clung to each morsel of a father who’d been taken from me. It all concluded with Sal dismissing the three of us. The powerful man was dejected, his pain palpable.
Why is the bad in each other so easily conjured to memory? Every once in a while, I reminisce on the good in Milo, it bleeds through the nightmares and warms my soul. On the long plane ride to L.A., I ruminated on the past. Though as I aged, the golden boy Salvatore spoke of went extinct. I recall dad, my mom and I traveling up the coast of California in search for the best ice cream. Santa Barbara had the best vanilla ice cream. My father’s favorite was pistachio, and I recall San Mateo had become his favorite place for it. All along our trip, Lolita grumbled about the misty air and how it ruined her hair. My mother, the parasite, never attended my spelling bees without dad. When he was out-of-town, I had nobody in the crowd hooting and hollering and cheering for me. And as far as training goes? Milo sat with me, giving me techniques to remember how to spell the words.
Once again, my mother has whisked away another love from my life, another chance at contentment. The happiness I could have known about the Giuglianos, about my father before her, about my nonna, evaporated the moment Salvatore ordered for us to travel home.
I have this sinking feeling that him determining that I was more like his version of Milo became my mom’s saving grace. The part of him that made me cower and cling to Evan was knowing he had the capability of murdering in a most peculiar way. The long, painful death he’d mapped out for Lolita reflected in his eyes as she spoke.
I just keep going back to the moments before Lolita arrived, and how humbled the Boss was when asking to meet his grandchild? Has Lolita truly taken that away from me, being that Sal released us? He’d transformed from a man eagerly jumping into my life, to a man who opted to set us all aside after all was said and done.
So maybe Lolita has cut ties between him and I, but the man towering before me, he is all mine.
Evan and I stand in the bathroom of his apartment. My ear snuggles against the taut plane of Evan’s chest. The echo of his heartbeat has bass and has a much needed calming effect. I don’t know the future as it pertains to my grandfather. Maybe I’ll never make a cannoli again. But I am confident in the present and the future with the strong man holding me.
I’m naked, and he’s fully clothed. I continue to concentrate on how his heart is beating boisterously loud into my ear. It’s as if his heart is declaring his love for me too.
“I love you, Evan,” I utter the words out loud for the first time. Wow. I never told Grayson I loved him, maybe I was waiting to save my love for someone my heart knew truly deserved it.
He bends down, smile on his chiseled face, and kisses my lips.
“Hey, just because I’ve got some maki
ng up to do, doesn’t mean you can’t say it back.” I jab him softly in the stomach.
“Oh fuck,” Evan groans.
My eyes widen. “Babe, what’s wrong?” I ask as mist from the bathtub fogs before us. He pulls his button out from his pants, and frowns all the while doing so. I help him unbutton his shirt. As I pull the linen shirt over one shoulder, Evan grimaces. He doesn’t make a peep, but I gasp. I reach down and touch the zigzagged scar over his abs.
“Oh, baby,” I say, tears prickling my eye ducts. “The other morning, I saw your pills… But I thought I was pregnant, and I left without checking on you.”
“Don’t cry, Reese. You are pregnant with my son.”
My fingers feather over, barely touching the tarnished skin. “What happened?”
“It wasn’t the other day that got me into this predicament. So it’s not what happened, it’s who. Salvatore and McGregor happened.”
“What?” I lick my lips, gazing at a thousand stitches along his golden skin.
“Your grandfather thought it would be wise to test my loyalty to you before he allowed me to see you.” Evan shrugs, “He somehow told your father’s old partner that you blamed him for Milo’s death. With McGregor’s past and how he’d been treated by the LAPD, the Union, and I’m prettysure people off the fucking streets, he went postal. Sal played him. I got a text from your phone.”
“My phone? I only called you the one time, you angrily argued about me coming home.” I place a hand to my forehead and groan, realizing Matteo had to be the culprit.
“Yeah, well when I went inside your place looking for you, McGregor took off on me.”
Moist air funnels through my lungs. “Oh boy, you’ve had a helluva time searching for me, haven’t you?”
“I killed McGregor, besides that, not too much of an issue.”
“You, you killed McGregor for me?” My lips are sucked into my mouth; I bite on the soft flesh and think. “For me?”