He dropped his head and relented because he couldn’t fight his mother. “Okay, Ma. One date. But that’s it.”
She lowered the spoon, though the fierce look only relaxed. “If you wear that nasty jacket, she’ll drop you on the spot and you won’t have to worry about marrying her.”
“Good plan, Ma.” He kissed her cheek as she rolled her eyes. “Dinner was great. I’ll see you later.” He headed for the door but didn’t get far before she hurled her last words.
“Call your mother sometime.
Family. You can’t live with them, and you can’t murder them without getting at least twenty years. He grinned as he turned the key to his bike, igniting the engine. As it roared to warm up, Saks wondered how to get out of this mess. It was clear through his mother that not only she, but his father and Uncle Vits also considered the Spawn a corrupting influence in his life. Nothing was further from the truth. Though the club had its troubles, it was one place he could be himself.
Perhaps that was the corrupting influence. His mother called him a good boy, but the truth was he saw a life dodging the law a low percentage shot. Law enforcement had too many surveillance tools and was too good at infiltrating crime family ranks to make it a winning lifestyle choice. The FBI had decimated the ranks of many families such as his, sending whoever survived into the shadows, hiding within their legitimate businesses. With that and the rise of the Hispanic gangs in Connecticut, it was difficult to move with the flexibility and profitability they once had.
Saks didn’t have the sadism needed to crack knuckles or knees for a numbers racket. Nor did he relish the prospect of pimping girls into prostitution or have the desire to sell drugs. Each of those things had a human cost even if, as his uncle said, people did those things to themselves. He didn’t have to aid and abet other people’s self-destruction. The money made in such enterprises was akin to crack. Gained by guile instead of hard work and sweat, that cash often found its way to girls, gambling, or booze.
His father had a penchant for girls, of which he was sure his mother knew, but pointedly ignored. When Saks found out his father cheated on his mother, he lost respect for him. He could barely stand it when his father acted the proud patriarch at family functions. Other times he wondered if he had any other siblings out there, unacknowledged and ignored. Perhaps that was the biggest legacy his family passed on, an uncertainty of what consequences they’d suffer from a family member’s past actions.
The Rojos kidnapped and beat him. The ostensible reason was his connection to Luke, but he didn’t forget the insults that Hispanics hurled at him while they beat him. Those insults had nothing to do with Luke, and everything to do with his connection to the Rocco crime family.
And now his uncle wanted him to marry into the Serafina family? He was fucking nuts. Being connected to one crime family was awful enough. He didn’t need ties to another one.
The road slid under him as he drove in the gathering gloom of dusk. What was he going to do now? Go home? No. What waited for him there was another stunning evening with Netflix and a six-pack. Luke kept the Hades’ Spawn clubhouse closed on Sundays to give him, Emily, and Robbie family time. There was just only one place to go, so he wasn’t alone.
Saks sighed. First, he stopped at his apartment and changed his clothes. Then he pulled into the parking lot of the Red Bull.
CHAPTER FOUR
CHRISSY’S mother looked her up and down critically, which forced Chrissy to glance down at her clothing. She wasn’t stupid enough to show up at her grandpa’s birthday party in jeans and a button-down shirt. She wore an expensive gray Armani sheath in a broken chevron pattern that she bought on sale at the end of the season.
Her mother’s lips drew tight in disapproval. “Don’t you own something more festive than a work dress?”
It was true. Chrissy paired this dress with a dark blazer for work, but she also bought it intending to wear it on her all-too-infrequent dates after work. “Mom, I’m not a pink ruffles and bows girl. You know that.”
Her mother nervously fussed with her hair. This extra care, and her mother’s tension, signaled to Chrissy that something important was about to happen.
“Mom?” Vague questions swirled in her mind, but she couldn’t form one to ask her mother. But the elder Serafina woman turned and walked ahead of her. Chrissy stared at the back of her mother’s head as the Serafinashe led her to the library at the other side of the great room.
It was her own house, but her mother knocked on the door. “Papa,” she said, for she always called her father-in-law ‘Papa’ at his request, “Chrissy has arrived. She wants to wish you a happy birthday.”
Her mother opened the door wide, letting out a miasma of cigar smoke. The other men in the room, uncles and cousins who formed Pandolfo Serafina’s inner circle, rose from their leather chairs. The only one who remained seated was her father, Vincenzo Serafina, who family and friends called Vince.
“Is the food on the table, Rose?” one uncle asked.
“Yes, it’s waiting for you.”
“Lead on,” he said, with a wave of his whiskey glass in his hand.
It was unusual for the men to give up their places sitting with the Dom, and this raised the hackles on Chrissy’s neck. For sure something was up, something she wouldn’t like.
The other men agreed, except for her father; he sat in his usual place, the chair to the right of the massive mahogany carved desk behind which her grandfather sat.
“Come in, Chrissy. You look beautiful today,” her grandfather said.
“Thank you, and happy birthday, Grandpa.”
“Sit down. I’ve not talked with you in a while.”
Chrissy sat and glanced at her father, who gave her a tight smile. Great. What did she do now? She knew she was in trouble; she just didn’t know what or why.
“So, how’s your job in the city? You like it?”