The Guzzi Legacy: Vol 2

by Bethany-Kris

  Except right then, all Cella saw in the reflection was her sadness. How despite the fact that her eyes felt so dry, as though she’d cried far too many tears and couldn’t produce more, wetness still coated her cheeks. She found pain there.

  Only pain.

  “Cella?” her ma asked again.

  She shook her head and tightened her hold on eight-month-old Tiffany when the baby squirmed a bit under her thin cotton blanket. Surely, the girl didn’t need a blanket in this August heat, but with the occasional rain and slight breeze, she didn’t want to take a chance. So, she wrapped her up.

  Because that was the thing.

  It didn’t matter her husband was dead.

  It didn’t matter that she didn’t want to get out of bed.

  That her heart broke.

  She was empty.

  Life had stopped.

  None of that could matter to Cella when she was still a mother. Her child depended on her constantly. Sure, Tiffany didn’t understand why when she called out for Dada in the mornings, William wasn’t there to pull her from her crib for their daily routine, but she made do with her mother. No doubt, she thought her father would be back—he would never be back—but she still had her ma.

  And that left Cella to do everything when all she wanted was to do nothing. Except life didn’t work that way. And this wasn’t Tiffany’s fault.

  So, she put on her fake smile for her child day in and day out. She tried not to cry in front of her as much as she could, because then the baby would wipe away her mother’s tears, and nothing felt worse than that.

  She kept on going. Moving forward. The world continued turning. It was just hers that felt dead now.

  “Pretty girl,” Cella’s older sister, Liliana, said as she reached out to fluff the bottom of her pretty summer dress that had peeked out from beneath the blanket. “Just a few more minutes, Tiff, okay?”

  She refused to put her daughter in black. Little Tiffany. Named for her father’s sister who had passed as a young girl from childhood cancer. With her head of golden curls that she took from her father, and big blue eyes she took from her mother—compliments of Cella’s own mother, Jordyn—Tiffany wore the brightest yellow dress Cella could find in her closet that would make anyone smile who looked at her. She even added a headband with a big yellow flower to the girl’s head.

  Because God ...

  At least, she thought, if today couldn’t be a day that she smiled ... then she wanted others to find a reason to do it. Her husband would have appreciated that. Respected it. Loved it, honestly. William, with his heart of gold and his easy disposition, always tried to make someone laugh first and foremost. He made friends easier than most, and it was hard not to want to be in his presence.

  Everybody thinks lawyers are boring, he told her once, so I like to surprise people.

  It was exactly why she fell in love with him.

  Why she started this life with him.

  And then someone took it away.

  A handful of dirt was tossed into the hole in the ground, dragging Cella from her thoughts with a vicious intent. She was just close enough to the edge to be able to see her husband’s casket resting down below, yet another item that gleamed black that day.

  Still so fucking black.

  Like her heart, now.

  She found it easier to stare at anything else except things with that color. It was why she missed the priest’s final words as her husband was laid to rest in his grave, and the reason for her distraction as people started flooding out of the graveyard. She heard their condolences, sure, saw their familiar faces as they stopped to give their sympathies before leaving, but it was all just background noise to her grief.

  The pain lingered.

  Even when she was alone.

  More so when she wasn’t.

  Still, she tried to thank people. She attempted to put on her brave face with each of their I’m so sorrys or the please call me if you need anything. The platitudes didn’t mean anything to her, but they made them feel better, she supposed.

  And besides, this was their way.

  The Marcello way.

  Even when her soul felt like it was being ripped out of her chest, even if her husband’s young life had ended far too soon all because of the lifestyle all these people here today chose to live when William hadn’t even been a made man, she was a Marcello daughter at the end of the day.

  A mafioso principessa. And so, she would smile like one. Say thank you like one. Die quietly inside like one.

  Because there wasn’t a soul in this graveyard who cared to hear how Cella blamed them for this—for her heartache, and her daughter’s loss.

  She never wanted to marry a made man. So, she didn’t. Her husband died anyway.

  It taught her a lesson she wouldn’t forget: one couldn’t be not in with this life. There was no from a safe distance when it came to her family. She was who she was. And she sacrificed for it, too.

  “Mrs. Gagnon? It’s Cella, right?”

  Cella turned her attention away from the spot she’d been focusing on over the top of her daughter’s head to find yet another person had come to say goodbye and give his condolences. His face seemed familiar with all it’s strong, classically handsome lines, and his dark brown eyes only reflected empathy when he stared at her.

  Another day, and she might have recognized him.

  Today, she only said, “And who are you?”

  “Marcus Guzzi—I came in place of my father to pay respects.”

  Ah.

  Another crime family. A Canadian one, this time. Funny how they all gathered at times like this.

  “Well, thank you,” she whispered. “And it’s Marcello. Cella Marcello.”

  She’d decided that if only because going back to her maiden name felt less painful than having to explain to each new person she met that her last name belonged to her dead husband.

  Marcus nodded once. “My apologies. And my sympathies on your loss, as well.”

  “Of course.”

  Someone called the man’s name, and he was quick to give her an apologetic smile before stepping away. She might have watched him go, but her attention was back on the hole in the ground and her mind strayed to the man resting in his casket.

  Here she was ... twenty-five. A mother to one. Widowed and broken. Would it ever get better?

  Not for a long fucking time.

  1.

  Four and a half years later ...

  “How old are you?”

  That question had Marcus Guzzi raising his brow. He didn’t even bother to answer the man as he sat across the table from him. The room quieted all the way around the board; the men surrounding them turned their attention on the two people at the table like this meeting had just become slightly more interesting.

  “Well?” the large man demanded.

  The stark contrast between the vice president of the Quebec chapter of the Riders—a one-percenter motorcycle club that had a heavy hand in dealing with illegal pills and prostitution between Quebec and Ontario—and Marcus in his three-piece suit was never more obvious than in those moments. Here they were, dining in a five-star restaurant Marcus had closed down to the public for this goddamn meeting, and the VP came with his men in tow, on bikes, wearing their denim and leather.

  The disrespect started there.

  And it had yet to end.

  “Excusez-moi?” Marcus asked, choosing French to reply to the man because he knew the biker—Glen, he went by—was French-born first. His last name, Cote, a testament to his heritage. “What does my age have to do with this conversation we’re trying to have here? Because I am pretty sure the answer is nothing.”

  Glen grinned, but it came off as more like a sneer. His French accent heavily colored his words when he replied in English, “I’m wondering if you should even be here sitting at this table, or if I should have waited for something with a few more years and a bit of ... understanding about this business of ours, oui?”

 
Marcus had every urge to grind his teeth right down to the fucking roots because that right there was a low blow, and he didn’t doubt the other man knew it. In the world of mafioso, where Marcus had been born and bred from the moment he took his first breath, if a man sat at the table ... it was because he earned his place there. Questioning it only meant more disrespect, and shit, hadn’t he taken enough of that from this asshole today?

  He thought so.

  “We’re not here to discuss my age,” Marcus said, leaning back a bit in his chair to get back to his previously unbothered, calm disposition before the asshole across the table tried to change the subject. “We’re here to discuss the fact that your club has decided to take issue with the Guzzi organization taking over the maple syrup farm—”

  “In our territory.”

  Marcus arched a brow. “Let me ask you a question, yeah? Indulge me, you know, in all my ignorance because of my age and whatnot. Would you?”

  Any man Marcus had brought into this meeting would have known right away that statement was nothing more than bait. Only a stupid man would take it because once it was thrown out there, it meant Marcus had come to really play. As the underboss of his father’s Cosa Nostra, he didn’t have time to play very much. Everything was serious. Walk the fucking line, type of deal. Three-piece suits every single day, up before the sun rose and walking the streets to do the kind of business, he’d been doing for most of his life.

  He was made.

  Mafia.

  Guzzi.

  So, when he took a minute to play, if a fucker was stupid enough to take the bait, he was going to reel them right in. Until he could snap their goddamn necks. The idiot across the table from him included. As he thought, the man took the bait.

  Because of course.

  “Sure, why not,” Glen muttered. “As if we all have time today, ask me a question, Marcus.”

  His jaw ticked.

  It’d been Marcus from the moment he walked in the door. Not sir or Guzzi or even mister. As though they were on a first name basis, despite the fact that Marcus repeatedly and clearly corrected the asshole every time he used his first name. Something else to add to the pile of disrespect. He wished he was shocked.

  But nope.

  “Do you assume when I put this suit on and get in my black Mercedes you saw me arrive in that I suddenly become a man who doesn’t know how to nail your head to the wall with a well-placed bullet?”

  Glen stiffened, his tattooed arms bulging when they flexed at his chest. “Is that a threat, Guzzi?”

  Ah, so now it was Guzzi, huh?

  “My age—it’s three months shy of thirty, by the way—makes zero fucking difference to the fact that if your club doesn’t stay away from the Guzzi’s newest maple syrup farm we’re going to end you. I’ve been kind enough—or gracious enough, depending on how you want to look at it—to give you opportunity after opportunity to make the right choice here. That farm being in the club’s territory doesn’t change the fact it is in our hands. Like every other farm now in Ontario and Quebec, and if you think you’re going to slide in on the profits just because your clubhouse is six miles away, I have news for you.”

  Silence echoed in the restaurant.

  Good.

  That’s what he wanted.

  He felt all those eyes on him, waiting for what was going to come next.

  “See, I feel the need to remind you now that compared to your fifty or so members within your club, the Guzzi organization is far larger, and our reach extends across this country and beyond. And don’t get me wrong, Glen, I understand that this effort of yours to put your foot in the door with our mafia is your way of proving yourself to your president, it still comes at the expense of my boss’s bottom line, and we just can’t have that. Find someone else to make your patch there worth keeping because it won’t be us.”

  Marcus leaned forward a bit, clasping his hands together on the table as he smiled, met the man’s stare, so Glen knew he wasn’t the least bit fucking scared of him, his club, or whatever threat the man might try to answer this with as he asked, “Do you understand me, or would you like to go back to taking cheap shots about my age? Either way, I’m good.”

  Glen’s cheek twitched like he was chewing over a response before finally settling on saying, “You’re essentially running a maple syrup cartel in Canada—you get that, don’t you?”

  “And?”

  Because Marcus didn’t see the problem.

  Not only did the Guzzis have a legal venture in harvesting, manufacturing, and selling maple syrup, but it also served as a perfect front for all their illegal business. It was a great way to hide their dirty money and launder it until it was clean. And if this asshole thought just because his little clubhouse and gang were a few miles away that it meant they were owed a piece of that, well ...

  No.

  Simply put, no.

  “Listen,” Glen tried to say, “we only think it’s fair that—”

  “What’s fair is I let you leave here alive today, and that is all you will get from us.” Standing from the table, Marcus ignored the stares of the men from across the other side of the table. Bikers in their cuts, clearly agitated and ready to roll. Thing was, he wouldn’t be giving them anything to roll with from here on out. “This meeting is over, and it is the only one you will get unless you force my hand. I assure you that isn’t what you want to do. Voyages sécuritaires, mon ami.”

  Glen glowered up at Marcus, his bald head reddening from the clear dismissal of a man about half his age. “We’re not friends. How about you remember that?”

  Marcus nodded. “So be it.”

  Without another word, Marcus turned away from the table, not at all concerned about turning his back to the man. He brought a small army of made men with him, as well, for this meeting. He wasn’t stupid, and before someone could even try to pull a gun on him, they would be dead by his guards.

  He walked out of that restaurant knowing this wasn’t the end. For now, though, it was one thing off his list. A list that never stopped growing.

  So was the life of a Guzzi principe.

  Especially Marcus Guzzi.

  Duty always called.

  It never ended.

  And he didn’t want life any other way.

  • • •

  “Did you see this merda?”

  Marcus was already bitching before he’d even entered his younger brother, Christopher’s, restaurant office in downtown Toronto. He wasn’t all that shocked to find Bene, his other brother, sitting with Chris at the man’s desk. Of course, on the other side of the desk. No one but the man who owned the space got to sit behind it.

  That was all about the respect.

  “See what?” Chris asked, never looking away from his computer screen.

  “This.”

  Marcus tossed the Toronto-focused magazine to his brother’s desk with a grunt that spoke of his utter disgust. The damn rag liked to write all the shit about things they knew nothing about. Usually regarding people they considered to be high society in Toronto, and all of that nonsense. And of course, because the Guzzi family happened to be very rich with a name that carried an interesting, if not murky, legacy ... well, the five brothers, their wives, and even their parents were often topics of discussion in the articles whenever the rag thought they could get away with it.

  This month, Marcus got to be included.

  “I’m getting Dad’s lawyer on their asses—they need to get my fucking name out of their mouths.”

  Bene sighed, reaching for the magazine before Christopher even bothered to look away from his computer screen. Soon enough, their younger brother had flipped to the article in question about Marcus which was really just noting that he had attended a charity gala where he danced with a young woman who happened to be the daughter of a prominent Canadian politician.

  Except they couldn’t just stop at that.

  No, never.

  “Oh my God,” Bene muttered, trying and failing to keep
his laughter under his breath. “They suggested she’s your fiancée and everything. Where do they come up with this trash? Marcus Guzzi was clearly enamored with—”

  “That’s quite enough, reading it once was fine for me. I don’t need someone else to read it to me, too.”

  “Yeah, I bet.”

  Bene tossed the magazine to the desk where Chris finally decided to pick it up as well.

  “It can’t be that bad,” Chris said.

  Right.

  Yeah.

  “You only say that because now when the society rags write about you, they talk about your wife. Same with Bene, or Beni. It’s only Corrado they give a bit of shit about and that’s because after a few years, they still don’t understand how he can fuck two people at the same time.”

  “Easy,” Chris murmured.

  “I’m just saying. It’s true. I’m the only single brother left, and they put me in that trash every goddamn weekend. I can’t even go out and show my face at a club without them writing about how I am either lonely because I’m alone or marrying some stranger whose name I don’t even know.”

  Chris quieted as he read the article, but his eyes slowly widened as he took in the rest of the piece. “Oh, wow. Sources confirmed ... We all know that’s fucking bullshit there.”

  Marcus ground his teeth harder than was healthy and gave Chris a look from where the man sat in his chair. “See?”

  Wasn’t it bad enough that he was three months shy of his thirtieth birthday, and all the made men around him constantly watched him? As though they were waiting for the moment when Marcus would announce a marriage because that was the obvious, required next step in this life of his. For his whole life, he’d been told he would be the next Guzzi boss. He’d be the one to take over after his father was finally finished, which only meant one thing for Marcus.

  He needed to be married.

  To an appropriate woman.