I was not pure blood. I was the result of a foolish man’s search for something to fill a void he’d created and had every power to fix. I never knew what hole he dug my mom out of. I only knew that she was no longer of this world. The story I was told was that she died in childbirth and my father took me in, but I knew better. My father couldn’t afford the mooching baby mama and bastard child motif. He took me from my mother, and then he took her life, all to keep the mistake of his wandering hands close to his chest.
I didn’t hate my father for his actions. In fact, I adored him. If my brothers and I were to tell someone about our father, that person would probably be led to believe we were talking about two different men. Actually, they’d probably be led to believe we were talking about four, but the first three could be brothers or cousins, and my dad would be on a whole other planet entirely.
My dad loved me, and unlike my brothers, he went out of his way to tell me so. If there was anything I resented my dad for, it was that fact. My brothers would say it made me soft, but I preferred to think of it as having made me human. I could see the way my brothers looked at me at my father’s funeral, knowing that he was the one thing that tethered me to this reality. My father spent my whole life convincing me it was in my blood.
I didn’t have any of Luca’s temperamental bite, any of Marco’s fearless strength, or any of Alessandro’s cunning intelligence. I couldn’t even stand up for myself the way Luca’s wife, Molly, would, or demand respect the way Marco’s wife, Kelly, would, or remain steadfast in the face of pressure like Alessandro’s wife, Willow, would. I didn’t have any of the qualities one would see fit to serve in this organization, and once my father was gone, my brothers didn’t hesitate to make that plain. I wasn’t complaining by any means. Luca and Marco had lightened up when it came to me, though they both carried their late mother’s resentment. Alessandro had always been good to me. He didn’t hate my father the way the older two did. He did his best to look out for me, especially after our dad was killed.
My brothers had all met their matches, as far as the opposite sex was concerned. It was good for their personalities, but thanks to Marco’s and Alessandro’s wives wanting nothing to do with the business, the Varasso family was down to two, well three if you counted Molly—and I did. Molly was Luca’s wife, and if someone were to line up all four brothers and Molly and put them through a mobster organization basic skills test, Molly would have me beat for sure and probably Marco, too. I might have given her the edge over Alessandro about a year ago, but times had changed quite a bit, and Alessandro seemed to be taking it worse than any of us. He was a different man than my brother of a year ago, and ultimately, it was probably my fault.
With two brothers gone and weeds starting to grow out of the cracks in our family, I supposed I should have expected the extra weight to be causing some permanent damages.
“Mr. Gabriel?” I looked up from Marco’s—or my—desk, and one of our house staff had her head poked in the door. “Mr. Luca asked me to send you to his office.”
The request on its own gave me a headache. “Okay. Thank you.”
She offered a shallow bow of her head and left. I curved my body over the back of my chair, my spine a regular chorus of cracks and snaps. I stood up, grabbed my phone, and started off for Luca’s office. He had lightened up with me a little, but Alessandro was always something of a buffer between us. Molly had done her best to fill in as a go-between, but there was some work Luca insisted only pass between brothers. As such, Molly wasn’t always around. Alessandro tried to prepare me for being on my own with Luca, but we were just two vastly different people. Luca was the kind of guy who would shove kids into lockers in high school, and I was the kid getting shoved in. Things were always tense between us. He was trying desperately not to be scary, and I was trying desperately not to be afraid. It was like wading through thick, muddy waters.
I knocked on the large, polished oak doors to his office and waited. When I didn’t hear a response, I threw caution to the wind and started to open the door. Marco and Alessandro typically just helped themselves, but I never felt like I had that right. Even Luca had tried to tell me once that I should just walk in, but his moods with regard to me changed like the wind. I didn’t want to walk in one day and get a bullet to the face because I didn’t know how to be respectful. Fortunately, as the door creaked aside, Luca waved a welcome to me, though he had his phone up to his ear. I closed the door behind me and walked over to sit on the edge of one of the leather chairs opposite his desk.
“I know. It’s not your fault. It’s just a transition. Sandro will get used to it, I promise.”
The crow’s feet at the edges of Luca’s eyes were elongated and deep. For such a young man, he looked ten years his senior. Our business had a way of doing that. If there were fountains of youth, there were also fountains of aging, and our organization was more like an ocean.
“Marco’s there, and now that he has no need for witness protection, he can help more. Ricky has his number, so don’t be afraid to lean on him, okay?” Luca rolled his eyes, and I gathered he was talking to Willow, Alessandro’s wife and the mother of their daughter, Alexis. “Yeah, yeah. I know, no money, although I wish you’d accept it. It would help. All right! All right, I won’t send anything. Just keep me posted, okay? All right, talk to you soon. Bye.”
Luca dropped his phone to his desk, and his hands immediately combed into his black hair, now long enough to curl around the edges of his face. “God, I would love just one day without this bullshit.”
“Can you imagine?” I replied. “Just being able to pack up Molly and the kids and fuck off to Disney World for a couple weeks or something.”
Luca’s hands flowed out of his hair and stabbed into his temples. “Fuck that. We’d go to some island far, far away. Beautiful, endless sea. Clear blue skies.” He groaned. “Molly looks so good in a swimsuit, too.”
It was endearing to see how much my brother was still in love with his wife, even after all the wedges that had been forced between them. They were like two herculean magnets. Nothing kept them from each other.
“That sounds nice.” Luca looked over at me and raised an eyebrow, and I panicked. “The island! The island part! Not Molly in a swimsuit. I don’t care about that. Uh, not that I think she would look bad. I’m sure she does look very nice. She’s beautiful.” I started to sweat. “But like a sister. Beautiful in a sister way.” I took a deep breath. “Because I think of Molly as a sister, not as a—”
“Gabe,” Luca cut me off. “Shut up.”
I nodded. “Yeah.” All I had to do was be around Luca to be nervous. “Sorry.”
Luca blew air out of his nose like a dragon trying to decide if it was going to just light everything on fire. “You’ve gotta deal with this nervous energy, man. I’ve got shit with Sandr
o. We’re still on high alert from the Binachis, and I can’t deal with this jittery bullshit.”
I tried to calm myself, but I could tell it wasn’t working. “Sorry. I’ll work on it.”
“Stop apologizing. It’s annoying. You didn’t do anything wrong. Just get it together.”
“Of course. Sorry.” Luca scoffed, and I jumped. “I mean, not that…sorry.”
God, shut the fuck up, Gabriel.
“So,” I said, desperate to change the subject. “How’s Willow?”
“Rough,” Luca replied, obliging my wishes. “Alessandro’s off his rocker a bit out there.”
My memories collapsed in on me like a suffocating gas. Alessandro on his knees in front of Willow’s family home, unmoving. Willow walking around him with a tear-stained face, saying she didn’t want to see him ever again. He didn’t move for so long, and I just stood there. I could see the demons my dad had left behind, seeping up out of the ground and clinging onto him. If I’d interfered sooner, would he have snapped the way he did? I looked over at the corner of Luca’s desk, where I nearly shattered my skull when Alessandro attacked me. I glanced at the dried crimson bloodstains from Luca’s nose when Alessandro gave him a hard fist to the face. I could have stopped it if I wasn’t so afraid.
“Gabe.”