Six Deadly Steps

by Sonya Jesus

  “Yeah. Every day.” I glance away, feeling the casualties of war just a little bit deeper today. Tony had killed an innocent man yesterday, and I’m a bit ashamed to be happy it wasn’t Luca.

  The machine beeps, distracting me from the ghosts in my mind. I add some honey to my tea and a dash of lemon and rest the mug on the island.

  “You shouldn’t.” Beppe plops the book down on the table with a thud.

  My throat burns, and it’s not that from the scorching tea, it hurts to swallow down my answer. So, I don’t. “Why not? You’re sitting there looking at a family album.”

  He shakes his head and flips the page. “Not what this is.” He leans back, flexing his shoulders back, as if rolling the tension off his shoulders.

  I’m tired of holding my tongue and swallowing back my words. He’ll be dead within twenty-four hours, so he won’t have to listen to me ever again. “We live in the house they died in.”

  He swivels his head in my direction. His round, exhausted eyes focus on me. The red stress veins apparent even from where I stand.

  “We could’ve moved.”

  Those same eyes squint in my direction as he rests his forearms on the dark wood of the table and leans back, pulling a cigar from the suit jacket, hanging on the side of the chair. Only now do I see the blood on his button-up. “Mafiosos don’t move, Isabella. They make a home, make life, and set down roots.”

  He grabs the steel blade guillotine and loops his fingers through opposite ends before sliding the center down the cigar a couple of millimeters. In one smooth cut, he chops the cap off the cigar and holds the guillotine. “There are things you need to learn about keeping the home of a Mafia boss.”

  “More lessons?” I ask defiantly, hiding my smirk behind the steaming mug.

  “Yes, maybe…” He bobs his head and points at me with this cigar before bending his arm at the elbow and holding up the metal utensil. “Fingers fit perfectly in this hole.”

  I don’t doubt that it’s been wrapped around a finger before.

  “Come here.”

  “I have to go back upstairs. I’m waiting for Tony.” I swallow the ‘no’, but not the attitude.

  “I think freedom is getting to your head, bambola. This is my house, and you are in it, drinking the tea I paid for, standing on the tile my hard work earned, so swallow whatever flint of superiority is lodged here...” He clutches at his throat with the cigar wedged between his sausage fingers. “…before I show you what boiling water does to skin.”

  My fingers slide down, tracing the handle of the drawer where the cook keeps the knives. Why wait until Thursday? I look around for someone who could see me.

  “We’re alone, mostly. Vinnie and Tony are busy.”

  “Busy with what?” I know exactly what. Damage control.

  “We were intercepted today and lost a shipment.”

  Beppe’s untrustworthy, so I maneuver with caution.

  “And your guards?” I ask, fully aware of the opportunity being alone with him provides.

  “Busy. Investigating.” He lights his cigar and motions to the cabinets. “Bring me an ashtray.” The cupboard is far away from the knives. “She keeps them over there.”

  I nod and open the cabinet to find a stack of ashtrays, all the same color and size, stacked on top of each other. I take one off the top row and amble over to my father.

  “Sit down,” he says, as he takes the tray from me and rests his cigar on the small indent of the glass.

  “I have a lot of wedding things to do.”

  “Like what?” My hands fly up to one of my braids, and I hold up the ends to show the slightly frayed strands. “Conditioner. My ends are splitting from the stress.”

  “Didn’t you spend all day at the hairdresser today?” Beppe reaches for the braid.

  In order to avoid touching him, I drop my hand quickly and fold my fingers together on my lap. “I didn’t want her to cut it. She always takes too much off—”

  Albeit gently, he yanks on the braid and grabs his cigar guillotine, looping my hair through the circular overture, sliding the metal all the way until it touches the indent below my ear.

  Don’t flinch, I warn myself.

  Just as quick, he glides it back down to the very tips of the strands and slices. “There. No more split ends.” He rests his right elbow on the table, fingers still in the sockets of the guillotine, and points to the other braid. “I haven’t seen you wear your hair like this since you were a kid.”

  My heart is in my throat, and I’m suddenly missing the constant surveillance. Maybe what Tony said was right, Vinnie’s here to protect me, or maybe this is some trick.

  “Why don’t you braid it more often?”

  “It takes too long.” I shift in my seat, pointing my knees toward him so he can have access to the other braid. It’s just hair; if he cuts it off, it doesn’t identify me.

  He holds the braid and smooths his finger over the ends. “It’s silky, like your mother’s.”

  Knowing what I know, being compared to the one woman who betrayed him isn’t a good thing. “I don’t look much like her.”

  Despite having her eyes, everyone tells me I looked like a mix of my grandmothers. Both died before I was born, so I wouldn’t know. My skin tone is a bit darker than Beppe’s, and my mother had porcelain skin.

  “You look like my mother,” he says, and slices the bottoms of the hair off. The small snips falling on my hand. “The older you get, the more I see the resemblance. I didn’t see it when you were younger.”

  Shaking the light pieces off my hand, I reply, “She died a long time ago. There aren’t many pictures of her.”

  Beppe uses his free hand to flip to the front of his album and then touches my hand, his thumb pointing to the rock at the center of my engagement ring. “This middle rock was hers.”

  Out of genuine curiosity, I glance at the picture: a beautiful black and white photo of his mother, in her early twenties, the diamond around her neck in a thin necklace.

  “She was a good woman, not like your mother.”

  “What do you mean?” I’m astutely aware of the guillotine in his hand when he looks me dead in the eyes and with the straightest face, says, “I told you… your mother was a puttana.” He stretches out the Italian word for ‘slut’, as if it were holy. “Unfaithful until the day she died.”

  “Dad,” I choose the word carefully, reminding him of the bond that binds us together. “What are you talking about?”

  “She died because she was a slut.”

  Is he confessing to something? Beppe has always had a way of threatening me without ever showing anger. It’s when he’s calm, collected, and unfathomed by alcohol, that I fear him the most.

  The day at Cielo, he was not drunk.

  The day at the Tree House, he was not drunk, and right now, I don’t smell a drop of whiskey on his breath.

  “And you will too if you follow in her footsteps.”

  My mouth opens just as he slides the guillotine onto my ring finger. It’s large enough to slide right to the band. He glances me dead in the eye, a threat lingering in his glare. “Did you go to church today to confess your sins?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.” I had been alone for the most part. Vinnie only goes inside the church if he has to.

  “I have eyes everywhere. Vinnie doesn’t need to tell me what my daughter does, he just confirms it.”

  “I went to church to light a candle and pray at the Holy Mother’s side.”

  “Good. You should pray for intelligence.”

  Stupid? That one is different.

  “You won’t always be pretty. One day those curves will turn to fat, and wrinkles will make you ugly. A respected woman survives, a puttana is taken out with the trash.”

  Call me slut one more time, and maybe I’ll collect the million dollars myself.

  “Don’t worry, I plan on being a great wife to the man I love.” Some day.

  “I like to hear that, but I find
it hard to believe.”

  “Why?”

  “I heard about Anthony Shard.” The guillotine feels like a real one, ready to cut my head off for treason. “If I were Tony, I’d cut your finger off to teach you a lesson.”

  “What lesson would that be?”

  “Women don’t have the luxury of revenge.”

  He retracts the metal slicer and drops it on the table, plucking his cigar from the ashtray and holding it in the air. “Men like me don’t like to be bullshitted, Isabella. I reformed you to save you from the outcome, from ending up like your mother.”

  “Dead?” I question. “We all die.” Some sooner than others. “I almost died that day; you weren’t here to protect me.”

  His lip twitches and his tongue darts out to moisten the surface. “Death is unavoidable.”

  “Especially when it’s a consequence of occupation.” Because I know better, I point to the island, asking for permission to get up and get my drink.

  Permission. The word hits me so hard, my heart bangs against my ribcage. I don’t wait for the nod or the verbal command because there’s not much he can do to me that he hasn’t already done. Granted, I’d rather leave this house with all ten fingers, but nine are better than none.

  I defiantly get up and pop my tea in the microwave for a minute.

  He blows out air through his teeth and shakes his head, rubbing at the balding spots between his scattered white patches. “You’ve always had too much spirit; that, you got from her.” He pauses to light the butt of the cigar and takes a long drag, blowing the air out slowly before flicking it in the ashtray. “You may not look like her, but you act like a dead woman.”

  “Gee. Thanks,” I mumble softly, as I grab my mug from the microwave a few seconds before it’s done. I bring it to my lips; the hot steam cautions me from taking a sip.

  “There’s always someone willing to take your spot,” he continues.

  The freedom of moving around makes me cautious. I glance around, looking for his men, while debating whether or not to challenge him and stand up for myself, or wait out my stay in peace for a few hours longer.

  I choose somewhere in between. “Are you saying this because of the blonde from Unita?” The one he told me about when he forced me into the pool the other night.

  “I’m saying this because being a capo’s wife is unforgiving, and being the don’s wife is even less forgiving. Tony needs a woman his men will respect and stir jealousy—someone his men want to touch so badly they fear to look.”

  Because he’ll be dead soon, I defiantly ask, “Does it matter what I need?”

  If it annoys him, he doesn’t show it. “Needs are for children. I’ve been trying to prepare you.” He takes another drag of his cigar and looks down at the album, the corners of his lips flat, except for a slight downward slant at the corners. I’ve seen Beppe be a lot of things, but never nostalgic. “Do you know what the people in this book all have in common?”

  “No.” I’ve only ever seen it a couple times when I was snooping in his office. It had a few family pictures, none of him, lots of black and whites, and some other people.

  “Loss.” He slides the book over to me.

  This time, I bring the tea with me as a weapon, keeping it in my hand as I flip through the first few pages of black and white photos with yellowed edges, some torn in places, others ripped or burnt through, as if someone had taken a lighter to the back of the photo and watched the ink melt before gluing it between pages of cardstock. “Everyone in that book is someone I cared for, and every one of those people are dead, except you.”

  I flip through a little quicker to the pages of my brothers. The school photos had been neatly aligned in two rows by order of age. My fingers brush over my youngest brother’s photo.

  Was this his kill book?

  My fingers tremble as I go through each of the photos, one of Robert and me at Veto’s restaurant catches my eyes, and then another of a beautiful woman at Veto’s. The picture had been torn. “Who is this?”

  Beppe glances at the book and twitches his nose in disgust before covering up his reaction with his stinky cigar. “A woman I once loved.”

  Antonia.

  “This is a dangerous world, Isabella. You never know which enemy is out for you, and you never know which friend will turn their back on you.”

  “I know it’s dangerous.”

  “No, I don’t think you do. Luca Cabrali, Anthony Shard, both of these are mistakes that, without my protection, will cost you your life.”

  I scoff and immediately regret it.

  Beppe glares at me, anger cracking through the whites of his eyes. Red veins strain to reach his irises. “I prefer when you keep your emotions to yourself. You may not like what I’m saying, but it’s true.”

  I don’t know if it’s having to look at the faces of people he’s killed that gives me the courage, or if it’s knowing, in just a few hours, I won’t ever have to see him again, but I confront my bully. “Luca Cabrali never wanted me dead.”

  He cocks his head to the side and leans back with a smirk hooking his lips. He shifts on his chair, closing off any alignment our bodies once had. Communication is cut off first before words are spoken. “Maybe.”

  “You lied to me.”

  Amused by this situation, he bobs his head continuously. “I did. Many times. For your own good.”

  “For my own good?” I’m courageous, not stupid. So, when my legs twitch to stand and tower over him, I still them, cementing my feet to the ground.

  “Tony is better for you.”

  “You never gave me a choice.”

  He sighs and rests his forearms on the table. “You don’t get a choice.”

  “Chicago doesn’t merge with the East Coast. Ever. We have different methods, different operations. They are beneath us, Isabella. We have affluent connections, prestige. Your wedding guest list if full of A-listers. Your tryst with Luca sullied my reputation, and it’s taken a very long time to show people the change.”

  “This is about reputation?”

  “I don’t want to be associated with tying up women and turning them into incubators for illegal adoptions, and I don’t want my family—my legacy—to be associated with organ trafficking.”

  I swallow because that tidbit Luca never told me.

  “Ah… your high school crush never told you what exactly his association was with the Beneventis? I didn’t want you near his family. At the time, Magdalena was unstable, and his father was an opportunist. He’d been trying to pawn her off on me since your older brother could walk. You left me with only one option: bring you home.”

  “Is the part about the Cabralis being responsible for the massacre true?” I know the truth, and it’s not like I need any more reason to justify my actions, but I deserve to hear it—to be treated like a woman and not a doll.

  “No. You falling for him did inspire my plan, though.”

  The confirmation blows my mind in ways only truths can do, even if they are without a murder confession. I cross my arms over my chest and stare at the man in front of me. “So, you set a fire and blamed him, so you could support the lie?”

  “I set a fire, ruined your reputation, and turned the rebel into ashes. I reformed you, Isabella, created new life out of the ashes of your last one.”

  “Like a phoenix?” I don’t even think he knows what that is.

  His lip twitch confirms it. “I donned your soul with the ashes of your sins and gave you penitence. Life is short, Isabella. Genesis 3:19 says, ‘For dust you are and to dust you shall return.’”

  “You Ash Wednesdayed my whole life?” I rub at the center of my forehead, finding his justification ridiculous. “The things you put me through. The Tree House, the water…”

  “The water symbolizes baptism. Purification. I could not remove the dirt from your body—”

  “Don’t use God to justify your wretchedness.” Is he shitting me?” “Who the fuck tries to drown their daughter, and then claims
God made them do it? You’re insane.”

  He simply watches me, as if he had been expecting my reaction.

  “Where do you think your actions put you? Going to church every Thursday to light a candle doesn’t give your soul light. You’re not clouded in darkness; you’re clouded in blood. Shining light on it makes it more obvious.”

  “I’m going to hell. My eternal destination was set the second I made my bones, but not yours. Yours still has salvation. That’s why I reformed you, but I won’t always be here to—”

  I stand up, pushing the chair back with a little more emphasis. I should have him committed, but I’ll suffice with sending him to hell. “The whole time, I thought you were evil. Turns out, you’re just crazy.”

  I made it all the way to the room without Beppe following. I sit on my bed, watching the door, scanning the tops of furniture for something that could be used as a weapon, but I’m defenseless and waiting for his crazy to disturb the confines of my room.

  I type out a message to Logan Steele and Teagan before I lie down on my back and stare up at the ceiling, waiting for my life to start and wading through the feelings of my current life.

  I want to be normal, away from everything here, and away from what it feels like to be trapped in a dollhouse—a beautiful dollhouse full of ugly people who play with guns and humans. Within these walls, I’m forced to be something for everyone.

  Obedient, emotionless, flexible.

  Always doing what someone else wants and never showing how hard it is to be me, confined inside an imaginary shell of plastic and trapped within a nightmare.

  Only other dolls know what it’s like to stare in the mirror, and instead of a pretty face, see a broken heart—to use the mirror as a portal to the past, and travel through memories in search of a time when the reflection returned a smile—when life was lived and tears mattered to someone.

  No shattered glass necessary. My reflection is already disfigured by the consequences of life. For girls like me, who wish on splinters of glass, breaking the mirror means freedom, not seven years of bad luck. The shards can be used to cut through the imaginary plastic forced upon our skin, and dig until we bleed life out.