by Lux Miller
Behind Bianca, Mike pokes his head out of the bedroom where they’ve been sorting through Matteo’s personal effects that were left at the house. It’s a job nobody particularly wanted to do, but one that Bianca volunteered to do. Finding himself unneeded in the living room, Mike joined her over an hour ago. It’s been nothing but silence interspersed with the occasional sound of scraping and a drill, presumably removing screws from the wall where pictures once hung.
I peek around Bianca and Dante as they converse and catch Mike’s gaze. I stand up off the floor and wipe off my knees, then slip down the hallway. Mike motions for me to come on in, and he walks over to the edge of the bed and sits down. His enormous frame takes up half of the end of the bed.
He’s tall and broad and built like a linebacker. Mike’s not a man that I’d ever want to piss off. I’ve really only ever seen him in a decent mood, but I imagine it must be a terrifying sight to see a man this intimidating in a bad one. I bet he’d have even the toughest men shaking in their boots if he showed up with a thunderous expression on his face.
Right now, he looks defeated. He sighs heavily as I step into the room and rubs his hands over his face. His expression is guarded, but I can tell that something is eating him up inside. I tilt my head to the side as he pulls a framed picture into his lap from where it’s sitting on the bed beside him.
He turns it around so I can see it and sighs, “Time can be such a sneaky enemy. It’s like you’re a young man gaining footing in the world and you blink and everything’s changed. This doesn’t feel like it was thirty years ago, but it was.”
I walk over to him cautiously and hold my hand out for the picture. He gently sets the framed black and white photo into my hands, and I narrow my eyes as I gaze at it. There are three men in the photo, all dressed to the nines and looking intimidating.
It’s easy to tell that the one in the middle is Matteo. Despite my barely knowing the man and having only met him a few times, looking at this picture is like looking at Luca. He’s the spitting image of his father, though he’s likely a bit bigger than Matteo was here. The men who flank Matteo on either side look so much alike, you’d never convince me they were anything other than brothers.
I glance up at Mike and arch an eyebrow as I ask, “Is this you?”
Mike nods. “It is. And my brother Marco. I think you met him briefly on the day… well, you know. This was taken in the chaos of the aftermath of a mob job gone horribly wrong. Marco’s a few years older than me and he was working as a bouncer at one of the local clubs. It’s surprising how many of us have history in the city’s bars. It’s largely why I avoid them now. The gateway to hell, I always said.
“I was tending bar while Marco served as the head of security. It wasn’t ideal, but it was enough to keep us in a one bedroom apartment. I know all too well what it’s like to be one paycheck from the streets.”
He looks at me pointedly and continues, “Though I can’t imagine what it must be like to stand on the cliff of homelessness and be pushed. Marco and me, we lost our parents young. They ended up on the wrong end of a mafia shakedown, and we found ourselves orphaned. We weren’t kids anymore, but it didn’t make it any easier to wake up one day and have everything you’ve ever known ripped away from you.”
“We were pinching pennies, but we still didn’t have two nickels to rub together. We paid the bills, but there wasn’t anything else to be had. I was about your age when that changed. The debonair son of the New Orleans Mafia strode into our bar with an offer we couldn’t refuse.
“He’d watched Marco in action with unruly patrons, and though he’d never seen me do much more that sling a liquor bottle around, he knew we came as package deal. And as an incentive, he dropped the gift-wrapped opportunity for revenge in our laps. He knew who’d been responsible for our parents’ deaths, and all we had to do to join the greatest brotherhood known to man was take them out.
“Seemed easy enough. He gave each of us an untraceable pistol. Serial numbers had been etched clean. Told us that the world would be at our feet once we’d completed the hit. His only stipulation for the job was that there couldn’t be any witnesses.
“So we took the job. When you have nothing to lose, you’re willing to hedge it all on opportunity. So we snuck into the business that Matteo had directed us to… and we shot the men responsible for our parents’ deaths. They begged us for mercy, even as we pressed our pistols to their foreheads. Once we’d emptied our clips, my worst nightmare came true.”
Mike sighs softly as I hand the picture back to him. He shakes his head, obviously trying to clear a memory that won’t go away. “You don’t need to know the gory details of the biggest mistake of my life, but yes… this is Marco and I in the picture with Matteo. This was taken right around the time Luca was born.
“Marco was born for this lifestyle. He flourished under Matteo’s reign and became a murderous henchman that was feared in the underground for his ruthless ambiguity. Matteo sent him on the dirty jobs, because my brother sold his soul to the devil to be at Matteo’s side. And Matteo rewarded him with gifts of money, cars, women… and a promotion he couldn’t refuse.
“When Luca was four and Bianca was pregnant with Dante, somebody attempted a hit on them. The Barresi bloodshed was thwarted, but only barely. Matteo immediately assigned Marco to his personal guard and me to protect Bianca and the children. Marco gloated and announced that he’d truly become what he set out to be - at the right hand of New Orleans’ most-feared man.”
I shudder slightly and sit down beside Mike, picking up another picture. It’s clearly of Bianca, because she hasn’t changed a bit. She was young and beautiful then, and she’s regal and beautiful now. It appears as if she had the fountain of youth in her backyard. Sitting on Bianca’s lap is a scrappy looking little boy with wild, unruly dark curls. Nestled in her arms is a bundle of angry fists and thick, dark hair.
Mike smiles as he runs his finger lovingly across the picture. “They became my life. It was my job to protect them at all costs, up to and including my life. And so, I’ve served the family for over thirty years. In the shadows, but never out of sight. When Luca moved out of the family home at the age of seventeen, he requested I stay on with him, so I followed him.
“Marco scoffed at the idea of me toiling away my life as a glorified babysitter, but I was an Italian-American boy with a limited education and no prospects for bettering myself beyond my capabilities. I’m no idiot, but I’m a simple man from a simple family.
“And I’ll admit, I’ve come to care for the children as I would my own. I never met anyone who could tear me away from my duty, and so I never had children of my own. Luca, Dante, and much later Noemi, became my surrogate children, and I protected them with my life. A life I would have and still would lay down for theirs, no questions asked.”
A soft voice from the doorway captures both mine and Mike’s attention. “Mike, you know that we’ve always considered you family. That doesn’t change just because Matteo is gone. You don’t give yourself enough credit. You were instrumental in Luca and Dante becoming the men they are today. Without you, they’d have become two more lost boys in a sea of young men that this family has broken and destroyed.”
Mike looks up at Bianca standing in the doorway and bows his head in a sign of reverence, “I beg your pardon ma’am, but I’ve done them no favors. I’ve failed you in my quest to protect them from their legacy.”
Bianca sighs and pads softly over to Mike, kneeling down in front of him. She rests one hand on his and shakes her head. “That’s where you’re wrong. If my husband had had his way, they’d have become soldiers with no soul. They may not be angels, but they’re not the demons they could have been without your influence.
“Destiny is unforgiving. You’ve done so much more for them, but even if all you did was help them maintain a shred of their humanity, then that’s a life you can hang your hat on. I owe you my eternal gratitude.”
I clear my throat slightly, feeling
slightly uncomfortable with the scene before me. I nod my head at Mike and Bianca and rush out, “I’m gonna… go help Noemi…”
I tear out of the room before either of them can protest and wander into what I presume to be Noemi’s bedroom. It’s covered with magazine cutouts and posters of various bands and movie stars. It screams teenager in the worst way, but that’s not unexpected. What IS unexpected is the stack of books in the corner of the room.
The thick hardback books must number in the dozens, all neatly stacked in rows that consume the entire corner. Noemi’s head bounces up from the books as I enter the room. She smiles sheepishly as she lifts a pile and drops them down into the box with a thud. She motions to the others and sighs, “Aside from my clothes, I think these are what I’d call essentials.”
I walk over tentatively and sit down beside her, pulling a stack over toward myself. I turn the books so that the spines are facing me and run my index finger slowly down the tower, reading off the names of the authors as I go, “Tennyson, Eyre, Tolkien, Shakespeare…?”
I glance up at her, a look of surprise surely written all over my face. “Are these for school?”
Noemi blushes slightly as she grabs the pile of books in front of me and drops them into the box alongside the rest. She shakes her head, “Not exactly. They’re just some, uh, light reading…”
I cough and blink at her in surprise. “You consider Jane Eyre light reading?”
She shrugs and reaches for another mound of weathered titles. This girl must have a hundred books in varying thicknesses here. The one common thread is that all are hardbound and neatly organized. I don’t know what system she’s used to sort them, but it’s clear that something has been done to keep the collection from being a chaotic mess.
She sighs and laughs a little. “I’m not a weirdo, I swear. My father pulled me out of traditional school when I was fifteen and insisted I was educated by private tutors. As such, I didn’t have many friends. And between Luca being busy and Dante being distant, in jail, or in rehab… it was a little lonely. These…” She sweeps her arm over the remaining books that she’s yet to put into the box, “...gave me an escape.”
I stand up and walk over to the closet, trying to busy myself with pulling clothing off hangers. As I pull and fold, I realize that despite being the daughter of a Mafia King, she has very little designer clothing. Most of it is typical teenage fare, and I’m not sure if that’s because of her choice or because she’s held a grudge against Luca. I’ve no doubt in my mind that he’d have provided her anything she’d asked for, if she was allowed to ask. I nod as she continues to tell me about the books and why she has so many.
“They let me dream and imagine that I was anywhere but here. Far off places with strong female leaders who didn’t need men around twenty-four-seven to protect them. I wasn’t even allowed outside at one point. And all because of some threat that never even materialized.”
She sighs as she runs her hand lovingly over the leather cover of a thicker book. She stands up and walks over to me, then hands it to me. “I know you think I’m a spoiled brat that’s ungrateful for having the world at her fingertips. I wish it was that simple. I should be appreciative of being granted the life of a princess, but truth be told, I hate it all.
“I don’t hate my brothers, for the record. I hate the family for taking them away from me. For making them slaves to the name. This family took everything from me. My freedom… my brothers… my father. He was far from perfect, but he was mine and the only man in my life who hadn’t abandoned me. And now he’s gone too… I guess it just reinforces the lesson that I learned at an early age. Eventually, everybody leaves…”
NINETEEN
“Not always,” comes the almost amused voice from the doorway. I turn sharply from the rack where I’m pulling Noemi’s clothing off of hangers, nearly dropping the stack of flowy material off my arm. From where I’m standing, I can’t see the owner of the voice, but it’s vaguely familiar. I couldn’t put a face to it if my life depended on it. Noemi, however, is clearly friendly with whoever it is, because the look on her face is about as far away from distress as it could possibly be.
I poke my head out of the closet and gasp as my gaze lands on a figure that I’ve absolutely seen before. I gather up the clothing into both of my arms and walk quickly out of the closet, trying to disguise my face from the man I recognized instantly as a New Orleans Police Officer. I’m doing everything I can to squash the panic creeping up my throat. Laying Noemi’s clothes out on the end of her bed, I stare at her incredulously as she continues to drop book after book into the box.
No snappy comeback? No wary defense? Up until a few minutes ago, Noemi looked like a feral cat ready to bite my head off every time I saw her. And now, no freaking out with a police officer standing in her room? To be honest, Noemi doesn’t even seem to be surprised. I’m being careful not to turn my face toward the door as I fold each piece of clothing and pack it into a separate box that’s stationed on Noemi’s bed, but I do cut my eyes at her questioningly.
I refuse to turn around and see if the guy has gone yet or not, but the hairs prickling on the back of my neck tells me he’s still standing there. I cut my eyes at Noemi as she looks up from her books, and she bursts into a fit of giggles. Her voice is relaxed in between giggles as she tries to talk, “You… look… like… you’re...about… to bolt…”
I hear rustling behind me, followed by footsteps, and my entire body freezes as I drop the shirt I was folding onto the bed. The voice is louder and much, much closer now as it reverberates behind me. “Relax, Emily. I’m just here to do my job…”
Spinning around, I glare at him with silent accusation written all over my face. He smirks at me as I stare at him dumbly. How the fuck does he know my name? He chuckles as he stops in front of me, then glances over at Noemi. “She looks like she’d stab me with my knife if I gave her the chance to grab it.”
My hand twitches as my eyes drop to his waistband, looking for the telltale signs of weapons. His chuckle turns into a bellow as he realizes what I’m doing. He flips the bottom of his shirt up, revealing a well-defined stomach and, as I suspected, the butt of a gun protruding from the top of his jeans. His voice is low but amused as he adds, “Standard issue, nothing fancy… but you’ll never find the knife.”
Beside me, Noemi makes an indignant noise, then turns back to her books, trying to pretend to be busy. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice that she’s openly ogling the man through the curtain of hair that’s fallen across her face.
Finding my voice, I force out, “How do you know my name?”
His smile widens as he drops his shirt and holds a hand out to me. “The name’s Kyle. I work for your boyfriend. I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I didn’t recognize the woman he’s been dating for nearly six months, now would I?”
Before, I can grasp his hand, my gaze shoots up to his face. As our eyes meet, I narrow mine like I’m trying to decide if he’s full of shit or not. “You work for him? Or you work for him?”
Kyle leans in close to me, grabbing my hand as he does and pulls me almost flush against him. It’d be an intimate gesture if not for the awkwardness that follows. He leans his mouth to my ear and whispers, “Il lupo attende.”
I gasp and jerk away from him, snatching my hand out of his as my eyes widen. I shake my head wildly as his definitive answer catches me off-guard. It takes me a minute before my voice recovers, “What did you say?”
Noemi looks up from her books, tilting her head to the side as a curious look crosses her face. “Don’t mind him, Emily. He may look mean, but Kyle’s harmless to anyone on the right side of the family. He’s my personal guard. You’ve nothing to worry about with him.”
My head ping-pongs back and forth between Noemi and Kyle for a moment as my brain tries to digest this new information. Finding my voice once more, I squeak, “Since when?”
Kyle grimaces and gives me a look that says I’m treading dangerously c
lose to fucking something up. Noemi’s voice interrupts my thoughts as she nonchalantly replies, “Oh, almost three years I guess. Since right after my father jerked me out of school.”
I keep my eyes focused on Kyle as I push for more answers, “Really… and what exactly does his…” I clear my throat, then continue, “...position entail?”
Another male voice, deeper and more commanding answers me from behind Kyle. “He serves in much the same function for Miss Noemi as I do for you and used to do for Luca. We’re considered shadow-guards. Where you are, we are. Where you go, we go. It’s a fairly full-time job. I’ve been employed for a twenty-four hour detail for Luca for years, and I essentially live in the same house as you because it’s Luca house. Kyle’s employed as a shadow-guard when needed and therefore lives offsite and holds dual employment.”
Noemi cuts in indignantly, “And since my father didn’t allow me to leave the house for like ten thousand years, it’s been a while since Kyle’s been around more than a couple hours a week.”
