Ruthless Empire: A Dark Mafia Collection

by Seth Eden

  “Oh, yes,” said Dr. Seeley. “I think we might be ready to push! Let’s give it a try, okay?”

  Alana nodded, eyes wide. She turned to look at me and I offered her an encouraging smile, any thought of my own physical pain completely gone from my mind. We’d prepared for this day for nine months. Alana had come home from the library with armfuls of books, and some nights we would stay awake into the small hours of the morning researching endless forums for tips and advice. We had a birth plan and a mental list of everything to expect.

  Still, in that moment, it was as if all the preparation slipped from my mind. All I could think about was the woman in front of me, suffering in pain, about to bring our child into this world.

  “I love you,” I whispered in her ear.

  “I love you, too,” she replied, just as softly, her voice trembling just the slightest bit.

  “You can do this,” I whispered, kissing the back of her hand. “I’m right here with you.”

  I watched as the love of my life set her jaw and fixed a look of raw determination on her face. Then, she took a deep breath and pushed. A cry of pain escaped her lips.

  “Good! That’s so good!” called the doctor, her attention fixed on whatever was happening between Alana’s legs. I didn’t have a free hand to maneuver my chair down that way, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to see for myself, anyway.

  “I don’t feel well,” gasped Alana.

  I frowned as something beeped irregularly on the monitor and a nurse glanced up at it with a furrowed brow.

  “Her blood pressure is dropping,” said the nurse.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  The nurse didn’t answer. Instead, she hurried forward toward Alana. Her mother quickly scooted out of the way, confusion written plainly on her gently wrinkled features.

  Alana’s grip grew weak in my hand and I locked eyes with her, watching in horror as the color drained from her face. More frightening beeps echoed throughout the room.

  “Alana?” I asked, reaching up to jostle her shoulder. “Alana, honey, I’m right here.”

  “What’s going on?” demanded Sherry.

  Alana’s eyelids fluttered.

  Grunting in pain, I forced myself up out of the wheelchair and leaned over her, placing my hands on her face.

  “Baby, stay with me,” I whispered.

  I looked over at Dr. Seeley. Her mouth was set in a thin line, but she wasn’t looking at me or Alana’s mother, or even Alana herself. She was reading the monitor, glancing between whatever was happening on the small screen and the lower half of Alana’s body.

  “Nurse Jackie,” she murmured, so quietly that I wasn’t sure how anyone heard her. But, we all did, loud and clear. “Please clear the room.”

  “Wh-what?” I asked, glancing back down at Alana only to find that she’d fallen unconscious.

  Suddenly, Alessandro and Marco were beside me, each grabbing at my good arm, my waist, my hands, to pull me toward the door.

  I felt as though I was witnessing a movie of my life, standing outside of my own body as I watched one of the nurses, maybe nurse Jackie, tug Sherry Rhodes away from her daughter and out of the room. I fought against my brothers, eyes wide as more nurses flooded into the room, carrying all kinds of machines I couldn’t begin to identify. The doctor was barking orders admist the chaos.

  “Luca, come on,” growled Alessandro. “We need to get you out of here.”

  “No!” I shouted, struggling against my two brothers’ grips. But, I was still weak from surgery, and they were strong even on a bad day. They dragged me out of the room.

  The last thing I saw before the door slammed in my face was a nurse standing over Alana, hands raised as if she was about to begin chest compressions.

  As if her heart was no longer beating.

  My head spun and the fiery pain returned, roaring through my entire body this time.

  I collapsed in the hallway, my brother’s struggling to keep my head from smacking onto the tile. More people rushed down the hall to Alana’s room. Sherry was somewhere beyond my line of sight, sobbing so loud I thought it might shake the foundation of the entire building.

  But, all I could was blink, staring at the linoleum inches from my face.

  Blink. Inhale. Exhale.

  Anna Lorena Varasso was born at 3:26 in the morning on that fateful Monday morning. Miraculously, the rain, which had been pouring down onto the city for weeks, somehow stopped that day. Sunlight poured in through the nursery windows as the nurses cleaned away the birth goo and dressed the little girl up in a small pink onesie; the one that her mother had packed for her to wear when she brought her home from the hospital.

  Two days later, we buried Alana Rhodes at her family’s plot sixteen miles north of the city in a peaceful place, dotted with trees and gardens and flowering vines.

  It didn’t take me long to realize that I hadn’t felt anything since Alana fell unconscious in her hospital bed. I went about the motions methodically, doing everything that was expected of me.

  I listened and nodded when the doctor explained maternal death rate statistics. How uncommon it was. How the autopsy revealed that she’d had a heart defect not a single person had known about, not even Sherry Rhodes herself. I was quiet and patient even as the doctor explained how they’d managed to keep Alana’s heart beating long enough to perform a cesarean section, long enough to deliver our daughter, long enough to cut the cord and declare her perfectly, wonderfully healthy. They hadn’t been able to keep her heart beating for much longer after that.

  I made phone calls, arranged the casket, paid for the floral arrangements and the priest and all the other things that you never think are needed for a funeral until you, yourself are laying a loved one in the ground. Left and right, various family members offered their help, but I brushed them off.

  I went about my life as if I were a robot. My movements were slow, almost mechanical. My mind was numb, my heart even number.

  The only thing that reminded me I was alive was Anna’s big blue eyes, perfect copies of her mother’s. She was a surprisingly calm, easygoing baby, considering who her parents were. She simply slept in my arms as I went about my list of tasks, only offering a gentle whimper when she was hungry or needed to be changed.

  Aunt Diana offered to take care of her. Even my brothers, the least tender-hearted people I knew, tried to convince me to let them watch over her while I got some rest, while I collected my thoughts, while I tried to process everything that had happened, while I tried to find the scattered pieces of my life and my future and put them together into some pathetic semblance of what I was supposed to have.

  But, I wouldn’t let go of Anna. She was the one thing keeping me from doing Jackson Randolph’s job right for him and putting a bullet through my head.

  The memorial, the funeral, the wake. I attended them all. I accepted the hugs and the condolences and the words of wisdom. But still, I felt nothing.

  I felt nothing even as I packed up her things and brought them to her mother’s house. Sherry Rhodes had taken to sleeping on her living room floor, curled around old photo albums. I couldn’t look at them, couldn’t bear to see the familiar snapshots of Alana’s life with her wickedly charming smile and glittering eyes. So, I simply stowed Alana’s things away in Sherry’s attic, cooked her a few meals to store in the fridge, and went on my way.

  I felt nothing even when my father locked Valentina Varasso’s engagement ring away in the family safe again.

  I felt nothing until one day, two months later, on a brilliantly sunny day in June, I found myself wandering through Fairmount Park. The grass had just been cut and the summer heat made everything smell both warm and fresh and so beautiful that I could hardly believe the entire world was simply allowed to go on continuing to exist while Alana Rhodes didn’t.

  That day, out of nowhere, the memories starting coming back to me. They stabbed into me from all directions, leaving me paralyzed, clutching the trunk of a nea
rby maple tree for support.

  Three Years Ago

  Alana’s laughter was like music: melodic, hypnotic, intoxicating. It made me want to laugh alongside her, and laughing wasn’t something I did very often.

  Usually by the third date with a girl, I’d already wined, dined, and seduced her. Usually, at this point, about a week or two in, I was looking for an out. An excuse to cut things off and move on to the next. My brothers, who were just as bad as I was, always told me that I gave them a run for their womanizer money.

  But, this girl? This girl was different. She was like a magnet, pulling me in and keeping me close. I wanted to be with her all the time. I never wanted her to stop talking or laughing. I thought about the color of her eyes and the cute dimples that appeared when she smiled, like I was some kind of lovesick teenage girl. When we were apart, I wondered what she was doing and what she thinking. Maybe it sounded harsh, but I’d never cared about a girl as much as I cared about this one.

  I’d been a reckless in my choice of location for our third date. Love Park, right in the center of the city. It was home to one of the most photographed sculptures in the country, though the artwork was nothing more than massive red letters spelling out the word LOVE. Maybe it was silly and a little too forward, but Alana didn’t seem put off by it.

  In fact, she giggled and insisted I take a photo of her underneath it. She’d admitted to me that she wasn’t from Philadelphia, that she’d actually grown in Boston, and would appreciate a local boy showing her around.

  “Do you believe in true love?” she’d asked after I’d taken a handful of photos and she’d given her official approval on two of them.

  I glanced up at the massive monument. Love, quite literally hanging above us. The moment was impossibly corny, almost unbearably on the nose, but I felt a flutter in my chest regardless.

  Alana giggled.

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “I think I do.”

  “Me, too,” she replied, shooting me a wink.

  I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her close to me. We kissed, softly and sweetly. Her lips were gentle, still unfamiliar to mine after just three dates together. She pulled away first, the ghost of a perfect smile still on her lips.

  I was breathless.

  “So, are you still not going to tell me what you do for work?” she asked, a grin tugging on the corners of her lips as she reached for my hand and pulled me away from the massive sculpture toward the busy summer streets. She’d worked late at the urgent care clinic the night before and was in desperate need of a latte; I was taking it as an excuse to show her a romantic Parisian cafe that was nearby.

  There really was something wrong with. I’d never been a romantic before.

  Three dates and this woman was changing me for the better.

  I chuckled casually at her question. “I told you, I’m… self-employed.”

  “Yes, but self-employed at what exactly?”

  I shrugged, dropping my arm around her shoulders. “I do odd jobs here and there for my father. He owns sort of an… enterprise.”

  But, Alana wasn’t the type of girl to just let things go. That much was clear already.

  Weirdly, I didn’t feel as stressed out as I usually did when girls asked what my job was. I always tended to give a vague answer, like I’d given to Alana, and they’d brushed it off without much follow-up interrogation. Even though Alana was obviously concerned with the details, it felt like it wasn’t because she was nosy, but rather that she was just interested in my day-to-day life.

  Alana snorted quietly, elbowing me in the ribs. “What kind of odd jobs?”

  “Oh, just boring administrative things for the… company,” I replied, keeping my voice light. “Sales, distribution, client follow-up. All that kind of stuff.”

  “Oh,” she said, nodding her head slowly. “Yeah, that does sound a little boring.”

  I resisted the urge to breathe a sigh of relief. Operation deflection: success.

  We wandered into the cafe and Alana gasped in delighted surprise at the Paris-themed decor and French coffee menu.

  “I studied abroad in Bordeaux when I was in college,” she said. “I miss it so much; it’s like you read my mind!”

  I grinned in response and shot her a wink.

  We grabbed our coffees and sat down at a tiny spindly-legged table by the window. My phone buzzed in my pocket and I glanced down at the screen while Alana busied herself taking her coat off and smoothing down her shiny auburn curls.

  Angelo Varasso’s name flashed up at me and I sighed internally. Dear old Dad… always the best timing.

  I didn’t bother opening the text. It would either have to wait, or he would just have to rope one of my brothers into doing whatever he needed. Right now, his precious heir was busy.

  “So, speaking of jobs, what did you want to be when you grew up?” Alana asked, leaning forward and placing her chin in her hands. She was just so… cute. I couldn’t help the slow smile that spread across my lips.

  “Honestly?” I asked.

  “Mhm.”

  “I wanted to be a teacher.”

  I watched her eyes widen in surprise. “A teacher? Like, kids?”

  I chuckled. “Yeah, like kids. High school, preferably.”

  “What subject?”

  “Math,” I told her. “Maybe a little science.”

  She gasped and then giggled. “So, Luca Varasso is a total nerd?”

  I snorted and ducked my head. “Yeah, he is.”

  “I think that’s adorable,” she replied. I met her gaze and was surprised by the affection I saw in it. I knew I was going a little crazy for her, but I hadn’t been silly enough to hope that she felt the same way. But, the way she looked at me… maybe the world wasn’t such a cruel place after all.

  “What about you?” I asked her.

  “What?”

  “What did you want to be when you grew up?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “A doctor.”

  I wasn’t surprised. She was a nurse, after all. We’d met because she’d been the one to treat a minor stab wound that I’d described as a job-related injury. It wasn’t technically a lie.

  God, would she ever be able to handle the truth about me? The truth about my family and our line of work and the legacy I was expected to carry forward? Or would she simply turn and run as far and as fast as she could the moment she found out?

  I wanted to think that we would have a happy ending.

  Not only that, but, for the first time in my life, I found myself thinking that I desperately wanted that kind of happy ending for myself.

  Maybe this girl--this vibrant, beautiful, lively girl--would be the one to break the Varasso curse of endless, cyclical tragedies. Maybe she would be the one to save us. To save me.

  I dared to hope.

  After Alana, I knew I would never be the same.

  I felt the change within me, deep and long-lasting. It was like I was turning to stone. Little by little, starting with my heart, the very core of my chest grew cold. The nothingness that hit the moment my body collapsed onto the tile outside Alana’s hospital room had morphed into something darker, harsher, more animal.

  The stone-cold feeling spread from my heart to my lungs, until every breath I took felt like I was fighting against the weight of the world. It snuck into my shoulders, sank down to the tips of my fingers. The pit of my stomach, full of twists and tumbles and butterflies at varying moments, grew still. My stone legs and feet carried me heavily through the city, dragging like lead.

  And my mind… my mind got the worst of it. Bright bursts of wonder that erupted in Alana’s presence were stamped out. Thoughts colored with hope for the future crumbled to dust. Memories became clouded with a murky fog. The tone of my voice chilled, the light in my eyes went out, and the once rosy color in my skin turned to ashy gray.

  I was a man transformed. A man ruined.

  Alana had been gone for seven weeks by the time I was able to bear the sight of her gra
ve at my feet. I went alone at dusk, ducking out of the meeting in my father’s office without a word. No one bothered me much about my comings and goings anymore, though I knew the tolerance, especially from Angelo Varasso himself, wouldn’t last much longer.

  Her favorite flower had been daisies. I laid a bouquet of them on the fresh mound of earth and traced the curve of the perfect, brand new headstone.

  Before I knew it, my stone legs had shattered beneath me and my knees collided with the ground. I steadied myself with a hand on her headstone, kneeling over the muddy grass as I gasped for air. It had been raining again.

  “Our daughter has your eyes,” I whispered.

  With a single finger, I traced the outline of her name in the stone. Alana Sheryl Rhodes.

  Born…

  Died…

  Beloved daughter, mother, and friend.

  Part of me hated myself for hesitating on marriage. Alana had wanted to wait, of course, but I should have at least asked. If we’d done it the way everyone had wanted to, if we’d had a wedding, had become husband and wife, Alana would also have wife on her headstone. She would have had my mother’s ring on her finger when she died.

  And I would be a widow.

  But, instead, I was just a foolish man, a single father, who’d lost the love of his life.

  “I named her Anna,” I continued, digging my fingers into the soft soil. “I hope that’s okay.”

  I wished I could feel her there, six feet underneath the ground, but of course I didn’t. There was no more warmth, no more heartbeat inside her. Come home to me, she’d said that night. And I had. I’d done as she asked, killed the bad guy, saved the day, I’d done everything right. But, she’d still been taken from me.

  Maybe the Varasso curse wasn’t a myth, after all. We were doomed.

  I’d been fated to lose her all along.

  I choked back a sob. For the smallest of seconds, the stone wall around my heart threatened to crack right down the center. With a gasp, I patched it back up and forced myself back into nothingness.