Ruthless Empire: A Dark Mafia Collection

“Dad loved us, but he…he wasn’t an affectionate man.”

I’d seen it for myself, my dad’s human side. It wasn’t there often, and even when it was there, it was muddied by a fog of distant looks and emotionless phrasing. No, my dad didn’t teach us how to ride our bikes, and he didn’t take pictures of us on our prom nights. No, my dad didn’t have the talk with us or congratulate us after a successful first date. He didn’t crack a beer with us on our twenty-first birthdays, or ground us for doing things he disapproved of. He wasn’t a father in the typical sense of the word. Our dad showed his love by screaming at us whenever we were mean to one another and by rolling up hundred-dollar bills and sticking them in barrels of our guns while we were asleep. He analyzed us and pushed us to be better. He wanted us to sit in his seat one day, and he wanted us to surpass him. He wanted people to say, “Angelo Varasso was dangerous, but his boys are a force to be reckoned with.”

Gabriel was walking proof of my dad’s love. He’d cheated on my mom and fathered an illegitimate child, and even though that crushed all of us, most of all, my dad, he still went and got that child and brought him back to our estate. He sat Luca, Marco, and me down and said that blood was blood, it didn’t matter how much of it there was. He was our brother, and he expected us to treat him as such. He was bringing him into the business, too, and Gabriel would learn how to be strong, like us. Even though keeping Gabriel around meant that my mom could never get over the truth that her husband had stepped out on her, dad kept him anyway. He stood up for Gabriel, which was probably why I did the same thing now. My dad loved us, even if it didn’t always seem like it.

Maybe that was why he was the hardened animal that he was. There was no room for wishy-washiness in our life. It was as Luca said. We either needed to do it all the way or not at all, and we didn’t know how to not do it at all. I thought about every major mobster I’d ever heard of. Eventually the lines died out. It wasn’t that the bloodlines stopped, but eventually, the family tree exhausted itself. The ruthless, reckless, cold-blooded nature of the leaders didn’t carry on to their children, and once they were gone, the business dried up. That’s what Luca and I were looking at. We were tired. We had people we cared about more than we cared about the stupid, mobster law that existed around us. Why did it have to be this? Why couldn’t we walk away?

Because of men like Horatio and the Binachis. Marco was why we couldn’t walk away. He’d tried. He’d even tried to do it with all the walls up and his guard as high as it could go. Still, he was probably sitting, staring out his window right now, wondering when the shoe was going to drop. Every time a fork hit the floor in his apartment, he and Kelly were probably jumping sky high. People didn’t just walk away from this life. My dad said that phrase more than he’d said anything in his entire life.

Once you are in, you don’t get out.

I understood now. It wasn’t because you didn’t want to. It wasn’t even because other people didn’t want you to. It was because it was like a one-way cage. Once you went in for the cheese, the only way out was when a superior hand came down to take you out, and it probably wasn’t going to be breathing and walking. Luca could want out. I could want out. Gabriel could want out. It didn’t matter. We were already in the cage, waiting on that superior hand. We didn’t know when it was coming, and we had to hope our families weren’t standing in the way when it showed up.

My dad steeled himself because it was the only option he had. Because the more he loved his kids and the more he loved his wife, the weaker he was. Anytime he ran to pick them up off the ground when they were crying, they grew to believe that maybe there was happiness in the world, and for the Varassos, there wasn’t. There were fleeting moments, veils over the pain that were thick enough to hide the truth but thin enough to break soon after. Willow, Kelly, Amanda, Molly, Anna, and Antonio, they were just veils. My brothers and I had been born with a curse that ran deeper and thicker than the blood that coursed through our veins. We were Angelo Varasso’s sons, and that meant one thing and one thing only—we weren’t getting out.

“I’ll do it,” I said after a long, drawn-out silence. “I’d rather do it than have someone else do it, so I can minimize the damage.”

“Yeah,” Luca agreed. “It’s for Marco, remember? They could get the drop on him any day. We’re behind the ball sorting this out already. Go immediately.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I will.”

I was already thinking of the best way to tell Willow I was going to need to be gone for a few days without telling her what I was going to do. If she knew, that would be it for sure, no questions asked.

There was a knock on Luca’s door, and then the doors slowly opened. Molly peeked her head in. “Is Willow in here?”

I furrowed my brow. “No? Why would Willow be in here?”

“I sent her up to your room to get you. How long have you been in here?” she asked.

“About forty minutes,” Luca replied, then his eyes widened. “Oh, shit.”

“No.” I gagged and felt like I was going to puke. “No, no, no.” I clamored into my pocket to get out my phone and dialed Willow’s number. It went straight to voicemail. I pressed dial again, but it went straight to voicemail again. I lurched, feeling again like bile was going to come up. “How long ago did she get here? What was she doing here?”

Molly’s hands were cupped over her mouth. They slid down her chin and tucked under it. “Luca and I felt bad about what happened before, so we wanted to surprise you with a bonfire with Willow here. I went to get her from her place. We got back a while ago.” Molly shook her head. “What did you say?”

I upheaved, and everything that I’d eaten and drank came spewing out of my mouth.

“Molly, go get water,” Luca said.

I could only see the carpet and what I’d just expelled from my body. A hand found my back and rubbed. My stomach twisted again, sending more bile cascading out of me. There it went. The only thing in my life that made me happy. The only thing in my life that made me feel somewhat human. It was gone. Melting away in a blazing fire, even with me raking into the flames with my bare hands, willing to burn to salvage what I could. Everything my fingers curled around, turned to ash in my hands, and sprinkled back into the flames. I was hot. I was so hot. Sweat trickled down my forehead.

My throat tightened and tightened until it didn’t feel like I could use it as a mechanism for breathing anymore, but when I went to breathe in my nose, the stale, sour smell of my vomit fled up my nostrils, flipping my insides again. I hurled once more, feeling my ribs starting to protest at the repeated motion.

“I’ve gotta go to her,” I murmured.

“You’re not going anywhere—thank you—here.” Luca put a bottle of water under my nose, but I pushed it away with my hand, sending the bottle flying across the room, spraying water everywhere.

I weakly got to my feet and started toward the door. Molly held out a hand to try and stop me, but I dodged around her. Each moveme

nt gave my body an added burst of pain, and even though I was dizzy and my stomach burned, all I could think of was getting to Willow. I was almost to the door when Gabriel walked in. I was already falling forward from my feet when he saw me, and he barely managed to charge in front of me before I hit the ground.

“Whoa! Alessandro, what’s wrong?” he groaned. “Ugh, you stink.”

“Willow,” I grumbled. “I…have to get to…Willow.”

“I’ll bring you,” Gabriel said.

I nodded and tapped his shoulder. “Thank you.”