“What should I do about Mags?” I asked.
Bea looked back at me. “I can’t tell you that,” she said.
“Come on,” I said. “I need your advice.”
She sucked in a breath and slowly let it out. “I’d consider it,” she said.
I rubbed at my face with both hands. “I don’t have time for your noncommittal answers,” I said. “I need guidance.”
Bea slowly stood up and smiled down at me. “Your father married for political reasons. Did you know that?”
I nodded slowly. Everyone knew that story. My mother was the daughter of an old and decrepit mafia family. The Leones were slowly dying, and the Valentino family was rising to take their place. When my father married my mother, that created a union of the two families, and the Valentinos absorbed the Leones, creating the powerful juggernaut it was today.
I didn’t know if my parents ever loved each other. My father rarely talked about my mother and I never pressed him for details about their relationship. Every child grows up thinking their parents were in love—
Except for me. I grew up wondering if my father was capable of love at all.
Not that it mattered, really, if my parents cared about each other.
It was naive to think they could’ve had a real relationship. The thought was endlessly depressing though—my mother gave herself to my father in order to tie their two families together, and then she gets killed. She might’ve never known love, and if she did, she had to hide it away and devote herself to a man that she never quite cared about.
I was terrified of that happening to me. I didn’t want to get stuck in a loveless marriage, and I certainly didn’t want to force Mags to go through that.
But I also knew that I needed Roy in order to ensure that the family stayed together through this transition, and if marrying Mags was the way to do it, then I had to at least consider the possibility.
“Do you think my mother was happy?” I asked.
Bea gestured like she didn’t know and smiled sadly. “Your mother was very quiet,” she said. “I didn’t know her well, but she was always kind to me.”
“I’m afraid Mags will end up like her.” I looked down at the desk, at my scarred and callused hands.
“You mean dead?”
I flinched, as if punched in the throat, and nodded. “Dead or worse.”
“You have a lot of control over that, dear,” Bea said and ambled toward the door. “Your father was a good Don. He thought about the family over everything else, including your mother. That made him a powerful man, but it didn’t make him a wonderful husband, and I think your mother suffered for it. I can’t say if that’s what got her killed, though I suspect that if your father paid more attention to her, she never would’ve been put in a dangerous position to begin with. But I’m only saying, you have some control over what happens in your marriage.” She lingered at the door and looked back at me sadly.
“So now you think I should do it?” I asked, smiling, head tilted.
She grinned. “I think you’re going to do whatever you want no matter what I say, so I might as well try to guide you toward the right path.” She waved once and left me alone.
I leaned back in my chair. Cigar smoke still swirled near the ceiling in slow twirling patterns, curling in on itself. I stared at that smoke and wondered if it was like my mind—a spiraling pattern of self-regression, falling down deep, doomed to repeat the past and all the sins of my father.
I wanted to be better than him. I could be better, if I tried.
Only I needed to survive this transition first.
* * *
I found Mags walking the estate grounds. She took long strides, her hands fidgeting with her hair as she stared up at the trees like she’d never seen a forest before. My father built the house on a forest that cost him a small fortune, but I’m glad he did it. Paths wound their way through the untouched land, and wildlife grew in abundance.
Mags looked up as I approached. Her face screwed up in surprise, then fell into her default scowl, not that I could blame her. She was probably having a very nice walk up until I appeared.
“How do you like the grounds so far?” I asked.
“I haven’t gone far,” she said. “How big is this place?”
“Big,” I said. “Seven acres. Although I don’t really know how big an acre is.”
“Me neither,” she said. “I’m from the city. I know how big a block is.”
“It’s like the size of all South Philly,” I said.
She laughed. “Okay, understood, so it’s huge.”
“Pretty much.” I shielded my eyes and pointed into the forest. “There’s a stream down that way. When I was a kid, I used to go fishing in there.”