by Bethany-Kris
“Don’t ever fucking call me that again, John,” Lucia hissed.
His spine stiffened. “What—kiddo? I’ve always called you that.”
“Not anymore.”
Her words stabbed at his guilt, and made it worse. Maybe he deserved it, after what he did.
“How’s California?” he tried asking. “You’ve been there for a couple of months now.”
Still, she ignored him. Her hazel eyes, ones so like his own, were hard and cold.
Lucia was the spitfire of their family. Young blood, and still learning the ropes of this thing they called life. She should have been out there having fun, but in a way, John had taken all that away from her when he dragged her home.
“You could at least talk to me, Lucy.”
He used the nickname she hated just to get a rise out of her. She disliked Lucy even more than kiddo. Her response shocked him further.
“California is hot,” she said.
“Yeah, I bet,” he murmured.
“I start classes during the second semester. Next month after I go back.”
“You’re all settled in, though?”
“Guess so.”
Everything about the conversation felt wrong and bad. Had this been one of his other sisters—Liliana or Cella—John wouldn’t have thought anything of the cold demeanor and flat responses. Instead, it was Lucia.
His baby sister.
The kid he looked after since she was born, and he was twelve.
“You were supposed to be my best friend, John,” Lucia whispered.
Angry eyes turned on him again, but now, they were filled with tears. She let one escape, and it made a track line down her cheek. With a quick hand, she wiped the tear away, and let out a harsh breath.
“You shouldn’t have run off like that,” he replied.
Lucia’s cheek twitched—a sure sign she was clenching her jaw for all she was worth. Hiding that anger behind a stone facade and calm words.
Just like their father.
She wore her namesake well.
“I was hoping you might let me apologize, and we could spend some time together while you’re visiting,” John said. “But even at Christmas, you ignored me.”
“Perhaps you should take a fucking hint, then.”
“Lucia.”
He didn’t get anything from that—not a damn thing. She didn’t even flinch at his rough tone.
John tried a different direction once more. “What made you get mixed up with a guy like Renzo, anyway? Didn’t I tell you not to mess with boys like that?”
Her laughter stung when it escaped her smirking lips. She turned on the couch to face him completely.
John should have took that as a warning, maybe.
“Like him?” she asked. “John, you and every other man in our family are no better than him. Except what? We’ve got money, and you guys wear nice suits and drive expensive cars. So, you’ve got a last name that gives you respect, and a family legacy that affords you privilege.”
Lucia shook her head, never backing down for a minute as she continued with, “And guys like him? They come from the streets, and hustle every day of their lives just to survive. Did you know he was paying for his sister’s private schooling? Nobody else paid for it. He was trying to let her be something when they came from nothing. Where do you think that left her? Or his little brother—his parents fucked off a couple years ago. Where does that leave the boy? Don’t worry, I’m sure his sister—who can’t go to school anymore—took him, or better yet, maybe a nice foster family picked him up.”
John blinked, unsure and wary.
The contempt in Lucia’s words were coated with bitterness.
He didn’t know what to say.
“Fuck you with your guys like him shit,” she snapped. “So, you’ve got money and a suit, but that’s all you’ve fucking got, too.”
Who was this girl staring at him like she hated his guts, and everything he stood for?
This wasn’t the Lucia who fawned over expensive cars, and liked diamonds on her birthday. This wasn’t his sister who was the quiet, perfect Marcello principessa.
No, this girl was entirely different.
“You come from the same privilege I do,” John said quietly.
“Except I can own it now. Can you?”
John didn’t know how to answer that. “I’m sorry, Lucy. Really, I am. I didn’t think that it was all going to lead to him being put away for—”
“Shut up,” Lucia spat. “I bet Daddy had that planned, and you knew about it, too.”
“Dad didn’t plan anything. I just came after you to bring you home. The rest was circumstance, and shit.”
Lucia turned away from him, refusing to even grace him with her attention again. It burned, but John took it. Seemed he had managed to ruin the last good relationship he had with someone in his immediate family.
This time it wasn’t even because of his bipolar.
Funny.
“Why don’t we talk about you, John?” Lucia asked dryly.
Nope.
John didn’t talk about him.
His defenses always flew up at the idea.
People probed, and it felt like needles swimming in his bloodstream.
“No, I’m good,” he said folding his arms over his chest.
Without even looking at him, Lucia said, “Then we have nothing else to say here. Daddy and the rest of them are upstairs.”
The rest of them.
He didn’t miss the contempt in that, either.
John left Lucia to her thoughts and anger, though.
What else could he do?
“So that’s it for us, then?” John asked. “You’re going to go back to California in a couple of weeks, and you won’t even bother with me at all while you’re here? Nothing at all?”
“Don’t take it personally, John. It’s all of them, not just you.”
Well, then …
• • •
John walked in the home office of his father to find there were more men sitting around the room than he expected. John’s father, and Giovanni and Dante, his uncles. Andino, too, sat on the edge of the desk. A place Andino shouldn’t be sitting considering Dante—the boss—was behind it.
It was sometimes strange and difficult to grow up in the world of Cosa Nostra. Made men with an entire family dynamic that was governed and controlled by the rules of the mafia sometimes created complexities that no one could understand.
John’s father had never been able to be just his father, after all, not when he had also been an underboss. The same went with his uncles—Gio and Dante. They, too, had always held positions of power.
Family was family.
Cosa Nostra colored them up.
And now …
John gave Andino a nod, and a grin. “Don’t you look comfortable, just like a spoiled little underboss should.”
Chuckles passed around the room.
Had it been anyone else, John never would have disrespected the new underboss of the family with that kind of a joke. However, this was Andino. It wouldn’t be normal for the two of them not to trade some kind of barbs with one another.
It was expected, really.
Andino was still kind of new to the position. A whole change that had come about over the last couple of months. Nobody was kidding around when they decided to move him up.
John still felt it was the right choice.
“Careful, I’m allowed to make mistakes since I’m so new and all,” Andino threw back, grinning himself. “I would hate for you to be one of those mistakes, John.”
“You could try.”
The chuckles turned in to laughter, then.
For a moment, it was nice.
It never lasted long.
Not in Cosa Nostra.
Lucian looked to his son. “Did you talk to your sister?”
John scoffed. “Do you mean, did I let her rage at me? Because if so, the answer is yes.”
Silence saturated the room, thic
k and heavy. It left a bitter taste behind in John’s mouth, but it was what it was. It seemed like he wasn’t the only one on the bad end of Lucia’s moods since she had come home for a break from California.
“It’s almost better when she ignores you, isn’t it?” Lucian smiled sadly. “Never thought I would see the day.”
“We all make choices we sometimes regret,” Dante said from behind the desk. “And so, we have to live with those.”
The boss of their family would probably understand that lesson better than anyone, considering the hell he had gone through with his own daughter recently. No family was perfect, John had come to learn. Not behind closed doors.
Those lessons were the hardest.
They hurt the very most.
“I don’t regret it,” Lucian said, “but I wish she wasn’t so angry.”
“More like … full of contempt, I think,” John said quietly.
Nods passed between the men, and then it was right back to business as usual. Family only got so much time in before the mafia had to come out and play again.
So was their life.
Mostly, John didn’t mind.
As long as they all had Lucia to worry about, they would not be getting on his ass for a while. It was a shitty thing for Lucia, sure, but silver linings were still quite silver.
“Lucian, are you staying or going for this?” Dante asked. “You’re not required to being that you’ve unofficially stepped down, and Andino is here. The option is open, though.”
Even in another man’s house, sitting at that man’s desk, the boss still owned the room. He directed the men, and where their conversation had to go.
Lucian passed John a look, and then went back to his brother. “I think I’ll step out, actually.”
Dante waved a hand as if to say, go.
John was surprised at that turn of events. Decades as a made man—and as the family’s underboss beneath his brother—and Lucian just seemed … done with it all. Ready to move on.
“Find me after you’re done here, son,” Lucian said, clapping Johnathan on the shoulder as he passed him by. “Got it?”
“Yeah, sure.”
For what, though, he didn’t know.
Once the office door was closed, John gave his attention to his two uncles, and Andino. For the most part, Giovanni sat in the corner and worked on lighting his cigar. As the consigliere to the boss, it wasn’t as though Gio really had to handle the men all that much. He was middle man for Dante in a grander sense.
John liked his uncle, though. Gio was the fun one, so to speak.
“How’s the new crew going?” Dante asked.
“It’s good,” John replied.
“Just good?”
“Andino’s crew might as well be a bunch of fucking saints, compared to some of them.”
Andino chuckled darkly. “That’s because I put the fear of God in to them.”
Gio looked over the tip of his burning red cigar. “Not his crew, anymore. It’s yours now, John.”
John passed a look between his uncle, and then to his boss. “I was told this was temporary.”
Dante smirked a little. “I wanted to make sure you could handle it again, John. It’s been months since you were released from prison—you’ve done everything I asked you to do.”
He had.
No messes.
No nonsense.
Business kept clean.
Attention low.
Dante’s demands had been clear. John had even taken extra care with his disorder, and managing it because he didn’t want to disgrace his family when they welcomed him home after everything he had done.
“It’s not my crew, though,” John said, gesturing at Andino. “It’s his.”
“The whole underboss gig keeps me busy,” Andino replied.
Yeah, he bet.
“Or spoiled,” John muttered.
Andino smirked, and flipped John the middle finger.
Dante continued talking like the interaction hadn’t even happened. “I told you that the babysitting was only temporary, too. It’s time to get back to being a proper Capo, Johnathan. It’s what you’re best at, nipote.”
“It is,” he agreed, chuckling.
Dante jerked a thumb in Andino’s direction. “So, he’s got a few dealings between crews of other families. Some schemes that get run on other territories, and things like that.”
“A warehouse is shared on schemes that run between families to make it easier and keep the peace,” Andino added. “You’ll need to handle meeting up with the Capo of that crew. It’s like a once a month thing or something.”
“Who?”
“Darren Calabrese,” Andino said.
John stiffened, but hid it.
Andino passed him a subtle look. “You okay with that?”
The question was loaded.
John shrugged. “Sure, don’t see why not.”
“Our history with the Calabrese family makes certain things tricky,” Dante added.
“History—like their grandfather killing my great-grandfather, you mean?” John asked.
Giovanni coughed.
Dante cleared his throat. “Yeah, exactly that history.”
“To be fair, Carl Calabrese is dead now,” Andino said.
“That kind of shit doesn’t wash out, Andi,” John murmured. “They killed my family—even if Lucian was already adopted into the Marcello family—to take over, and nothing else. They wanted the seat, so they did what they had to do. My biological great-grandfather doesn’t even have a proper grave. We don’t know what they did with him.
“Bad blood like that doesn’t wash out,” John finished sharply.
“No, but we do put the stains aside for the sake of business,” Dante said. “But we never fucking forget they’re a bunch of snakes, John. There’s a difference.”
John didn’t entirely like that, but it was what it was.
Siena Calabrese was a whole other issue.
She certainly wasn’t like her brothers, and that made all the difference to him. However, he hadn’t seen her in months. He meant to check in on her once he returned from finding his sister, but one thing after another thing kept coming up.
A new crew.
More business.
Family.
A cousin nearly getting killed in Cancun.
John wasn’t even overstating it. He bet none of that shit would make a difference to Siena because like a prick, he had bailed on her.
Women took offense to that.
“Well?” Dante asked.
John looked to his boss. “I can handle the fucking Calabrese.”
Andino snorted from his perch on the desk. “You can start by not calling them the fucking Calabrese, John.”
Yeah, he would try.
No promises.
Johnathan found his father sitting in the small library downstairs. Lucian sipped from a neat whiskey while he flipped through a newspaper. He looked laidback, and entirely relaxed. Like the man who never stopped moving had finally taken a break.
It was an unusual sight.
“You wanted me to come find you?” John asked.
Lucian looked over the edge of the newspaper. “Seems the stock market is up two points.”
John’s brow furrowed. “All right.”
“And some action movie is breaking box office records.”
“Okay.”
“Stop looking at me like my head is growing bigger, John.”
He wet his lips. “We don’t usually do this kind of small talk, Dad. That’s all.”
“Never really got the chance, did we? Cosa Nostra was always getting in the way, and putting up barriers that kept us apart. I couldn’t only worry about my son—and the problems he constantly faced—when Cosa Nostra made me stay at arm’s length.”
John blinked.
Lucian waved at the chair beside his. “Come sit, and talk.”
“I—”
“John, please come sit with me.”
> “All right,” he said, his voice feeling like an echo.
He joined his father, and Lucian passed over a section of the newspaper.
“We’re going to start doing this. You and me, I mean.”
John stared at the paper. “So, doing nothing?”
“Not nothing. Being normal, John. Have I ever told you how proud I am of you, my boy?”
He had to think about it.
“Sure you have, Dad.”
“Things I thought you wouldn’t be able to do or handle because of the bipolar, you’ve done all of it and more. You still are. Expect me to tell you how proud I am more often now, John.”
“Did you ever think that I liked the way we were?”
“Did you?” his father asked. “Like it, I mean.”
No.
“I’ve done a lot of shit, Dad,” John settled on saying, “to everybody—you included. Said a lot of things, you know. I burn bridges, but I don’t usually fix them.”
“And here we still sit, John.”
• • •
“Darren,” John greeted.
The Calabrese Capo shoved his frame off the barstool, and stuck out a hand for John to take. He did and shook Darren’s hand, but made sure to keep a tighter grip than he normally would.
John had to do these meets and work with the Calabrese brother—or both, who knew, since the two stuck together a lot—but that didn’t mean he was going to bow down to either of the fuckers. He didn’t trust them with an inch.
“John, it’s good to see you,” Darren said with a smile.
John wished it felt welcoming.
It didn’t.
“Care for a drink?” Darren asked, waving at the bar.
John used one of his old excuses to pass that offer up. “I don’t drink during work time.”
“You Marcellos are always so stiff with your rules.”
“It’s what makes us the best.”
Darren’s gaze flashed with something unknown, and John took that as a point to his favor. “Yes, well, sit. We can discuss how Andino and I have managed to have parts of our crews working together, and whatever else.”
“He filled me in on some of the details.”
“But not all, huh?”
John shrugged, and took a seat on an open barstool. “Better to jump right into it, I think.”
“Sure.”
John waved for the bartender, and asked for a water. Once he had the glass in front of him, he used it as a distraction to keep his attention focused rather than looking at Darren Calabrese. The longer he was near one of the Calabrese men, the more his old bitterness and rage grew.