by Seth Eden
This would be my first lesson.
“You have a responsibility to this family. They will need you to protect them. And you can’t protect them if you’re weak. Do you understand?”
I nodded even though I didn’t. I didn’t want to be struck again.
“Now take this pistol and target those red flowers.” He’d pushed the gun into my hand again, arranging my fingers into the correct position. It’d taken me several tries to hold it up high enough to aim, and even then, it’d required both hands, but I did it.
Afterwards, more of these lessons started to take place. I visited the hidden greenhouses where we processed opiates for delivery for the first time at nine. At ten, I watched my father execute someone. He’d pushed the man down to his knees with his back to us, then he’d shot him at pointblank range. I’d learned by this time that my father expected me not to scream.
Still, that night, I’d had nightmares.
At thirteen, he had me execute my own first kill. He’d done me the courtesy of having this man hooded so I couldn’t identify his face. I’d heard him begging for mercy, though. I’d heard him apologizing for whatever he’d done over and over.
I’d known I needed to pull the trigger. I had to do this for my father, or something bad would happen to me. I’d been scared out of my mind. But I’d done it, mostly out of self-preservation. And then, I’d thrown up right there at my father’s feet.
When I was fifteen and my mother died in that car accident, I overheard various aunts and uncles mumbling about a curse. I hadn’t known what they were talking about. My brothers and I had been staggered at her loss, grief-stricken by it, but our father had shown us that he expected us to be hard. To not break or show sorrow. At least not outwardly.
We’d done our best, though at seven, Sandro hadn’t stood a chance. He’d bawled his eyes out as they lowered her casket into the ground, so I’d carried him away from there. Marco had helped me distract him until Greta put him down for a nap, dosing his drink with cold medicine so he’d stay out for a while.
But later, at the wake, I heard the whole story from an elderly great aunt. Apparently, this happened to every male Varasso at some point. They’d suffer some tragedy, usually something connected to their love lives or families.
There’d been a list. Before my father had constructed the estate we all lived on now, our family had lived in a different house here in Philadelphia. An earthquake had rumbled through three months after my birth, even though such things were statistically so rare as to be almost unheard of. It’d shaken our home nearly off its foundations, and nearly killed the three of us.
The night of Marco’s birth was heralded by a deadly fire all the way across town. It’d killed three of our first male cousins. It’d been caused by arson, so the family business had likely played its hand. Then, when Marco was a year old, our mother miscarried a baby, which had left her diminished both physically and emotionally. It’d taken her six years to heal and have Alessandro.
And these blows kept on coming.
After our mother’s death, Angelo’s adultery had come to light. And although the four of us brothers didn’t know why our father had betrayed the wife he’d claimed to adore, it impacted the way we conducted ourselves with women. None of us had ever cheated. Not once.
I’d made the decision long ago that if I loved a woman, I would always be true to her. I might be villainous in other areas of my life, but not with my girlfriend. And if I ever married, not with my wife. The women I loved were precious to me, and I’d never do something as detrimental or disrespectful as being unfaithful to them. That’s not what love was about.
I hoped that God did exist and that he’d honor my proposal. Because I needed some outside help, something bigger than guns or drug money or family loyalty. I needed something to end all this heartbreak and loss.
And more than anything, I needed Molly to wake up.
34
Molly
Fire. I was on fire. Or it felt like that anyway. My shoulder, stomach, and thigh. All on fire. For that first moment, the pain of that fire was the only thing I was aware of. All I could concentrate on. But then I opened my eyes and found an angel next to me.
My dark angel.
Luca had settled his head next to my hip, his hand resting loosely in mine. His eyes were shut, and he looked utterly exhausted. Under those closed eyelids of his deep half circles shadowed his eyes, making him look thinner than usual. Almost gaunt. His scruff, usually kept trimmed and short, had thickened into a full beard now, and his curly hair appeared tousled as if he’d been shoving his hands through it.
God, even when totally worn out, he was beautiful.
I tightened my grip on his hand, so glad he was here, so glad for his touch. And then wonder of wonders, he opened those gorgeous eyes. He blinked as if not fully conscious, then bolted upward into a seated position.
“Molly? Are you really awake?” he asked me, doubt and hope mingling on his face.
“Yes,” I said, trying to sit up a little and having to repress a hiss of pain.
“No, don’t move,” he said, reaching for something just out of sight. I couldn’t see him anymore, and though it shouldn’t have, it scared me. I didn’t want him to leave. Not even for a second.
“Stay here,” I said, my breath catching. “Stay with me.”
“I’m not leaving, don’t worry. I may never leave your side again.” He said with a smile, coming back and cupping my cheek. I did the same to him, running my thumb under his eyes. They looked almost bruised. I don’t know why but something about the contact made his expression crumple. A single tear leaked from his eye to fall on my thumb. “I’m so sorry, Molly.”
But I didn’t want him to apologize. I didn’t even know why he thought he should.
“I lied to you, and now I regret it. I regret it so much.”
He’d lied to me? I stared at him, at the stark anguish on his face, and had a hard time digesting it. I couldn’t seem to concentrate on things or force them to make logical sense. And I was still on fire. What the hell was wrong with me?
“You told me you loved me, and I lied. I told you I didn’t feel the same. But I do. I did long before then.”
My vision went blurry with tears. “You love me?”
He nodded, his gaze intent. “Yes, I love you, Molly Greene. So much it hurts.” Speaking of hurt, the three points of fire on my body flared higher than ever. I watched as Luca pressed a button on a remote at the side of the bed. My hospital bed. Realizations fell into place like dominos. The nurse, I realized. He was calling for the nurse.
And I was in the hospital and in pain because I’d been shot. And oh, God.
I put a hand on my stomach. “The baby?”
“They aren’t sure about the baby yet.”
Feeling more and more coherent now, I remembered more. I’d gotten shot at a café, the restaurant where I’d been eating with…
“Tara?”
I could clearly read the answer on Luca’s features. “I’m sorry, Molly,” he whispered again.
I burst into sobs, everything coming back to me now. The shattering glass. The points of heat entering my body like molten icepicks. The blood. Tara’s sightless eyes staring at nothing beside me. It jostled my injuries to cry like this, but I couldn’t help it. The grief landed on me all at once, taking whatever it demanded. I had no control over it.
Luca held me to him, and I gripped on to him as tightly as I could, needing something to cling to.
The nurse arrived, but I continued to weep all over Luca, without regard for her. She adjusted a few settings on the monitors, checked my temperature, blood pressure, and so forth.
Then, she retrieved a syringe and plugged it into my IV. Whatever it was cut my pain significantly, my physical pain anyway. After the nurse had been gone for quite a while, my tears eventually slowed and came to an end.
“She was only twenty,” I told him, needing to talk about my sister, to keep her alive in whi
chever way I could. “She had a boyfriend in the Air Force and thought he was getting ready to pop the question. She was going to be an aunt to our baby.” The tears started flowing all over again. “I’ve taken care of her all my life. What am I going to do now?”
“You’re going to miss her,” he said, in a voice that reminded me that he knew what it was like to go through loss and mourning all too well. “For a very long time. And your heart will break when you think of her. You’ll relive memories, and that’ll try to break you, too.”
“But…” he trailed off, looking surprised, “it will start to hurt less than it did. You’ll have memories that will make you smile instead of taking you out at the knees. You’ll appreciate her for who she was and what she meant to you. You’ll forgive her for leaving you. And not once will you ever stop loving her.”
I realized he was clinging to me as much as I was clinging to him.
“I’m so tired, but you look tired, too. How long was I out?” I asked and watched him grimace.
“Five days.”
“Five days?” I echoed back at him, astonished. “But there are things I have to do. Arrangements I need to make and…”
“My brothers have been dealing with that. They didn’t know what you might want, so they put together a closed casket graveside service. They’ve been holding off on it, wanting to wait to see if you’d wake up. We can change anything you don’t like.”
Needing something to focus on, I had Luca ask them to bring me the information. They’d chosen a few things, a cherry wood casket with pink silk lining inside and rose floral arrangements to cover the top, but little else. I added some sprays of irises and gardenias to go with what the Varassos had chosen, and I told them where to find her favorite green dress to bury her in.
I also asked them to locate the contact information for Sergeant Ben Lopez stationed in Saudi Arabia so I could let him know. I’d been around Ben on several occasions and had watched him fall in love with my sister. I’d been happy for them.
I wasn’t looking forward to making that call.
They kept me in the hospital for another week and a half. They’d said they needed to observe the progress I was making, especially since I’d been in a coma for as long as I had. A few days after I woke up, they sent a new lab technician in with yet another scanning machine.
During my time there, I felt like I’d been poked and prodded seven different ways to Sunday. I’d had tests and scans and consultations. It was this endless parade of nurses, doctors, and other medical personnel. But then she spoke, and I knew this scan would be different.
“I’m here to give you an ultrasound,” she said, offering me a hesitant smile. I held my breath. “According to your charts, you should be far enough along for us to hear the embryonic heartbeat.”
What she didn’t say was what would happen if there wasn’t one. If something terrible had gone wrong inside my womb. If my injuries had damaged the life that had been growing within.
I clutched Luca’s hand as the technician raised my gown and rubbed KY jelly on my flat belly. There was no outward indication that I was pregnant at all still, and I hadn’t felt anything. I told her so.
“Oh, you won’t feel anything for a few more months. At six weeks, the heartbeat is just starting to pump hard enough for us to hear it.” She paused, the wand for the ultrasound held aloft. “Are you ready?”
I stared at Luca. I didn’t know if I was ready or not, but as nervous as I felt, he seemed determined. “Go ahead,” he told her. “We need to know.”
One way or the other.
She affixed some sort of belt right at my panty line, strapping it securely in place. I jumped a bit at the coldness of the wand as the technician drew it across my lower abdomen, being careful to not get too near the bandages and gauze on my right side. An image appeared on the screen she’d brought with her, but it was black and white and indecipherable.
“Oh, almost forgot,” she said, looking sheepish as she turned one of the dials to the right. A odd noise began to emanate from the machine. A rhythmic yet sloshy sound, like something wet thumping up against something soft.
Luca gasped, and I brought my attention from the screen to him, amazed to see a huge smile lighting his face. “That’s a heartbeat,” he exclaimed. “The baby’s alive.”
“Definitely,” the lab tech agreed, smiling more fully now, too, as she pointed at one of the indistinguishable blobs on the screen. “See that?” I squinted at it. “That’s your baby. It’s about the size of a sweet pea at the moment, about a quarter of an inch long.”
The blob was infinitesimal. So tiny that if I hadn’t known what I was looking at, I wouldn’t have thought that it would matter at all. But it did. That itty bitty blob was everything. It had all this potential, all these possibilities.
“I’ll print off a picture and bring it to you,” the lab tech promised as she cleaned me up, then left.
“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it’s okay,” I said. I’d been so terrified that I’d lost it. So afraid.
“Our baby is one tough cookie, just like its mom,” Luca said consolingly, giving me a peck on the forehead. He wrapped me in his embrace again, breathing in and out with long deliberate breaths. But then his voice hitched with his next words, “I thought I was going to lose you both.”
I lifted a hand to his face. “Not if I have anything to say about it. I love you, Luca.”
He kissed my hand, his dark eyes intense, then leaned down to brush his lips to mine.
After receiving confirmation that I was still expecting, I was anxious to get back up and around. I felt weak from being down for so long and from the loss of blood, so I was required to use a walker to lean on at first. I’d get dizzy easily and had to be careful. A fall wouldn’t only be hazardous to my injuries, it could put my baby in jeopardy.
And this baby had already been in jeopardy enough.
As I strengthened my body through physical therapy, I noticed Luca becoming more and more distracted. He’d step out into the hallway often to take phone calls, and though he never went out of sight and always came back, it was with that grim stone-face of his that I hated. I let it go for a day or two before I called him on it.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
The stony look softened, giving me back my Luca again. “Just needed to take care of some things.”
“Things?” I asked, unsatisfied with his reply.
“Business.” This time he glanced away from me, clearly concealing what he’d been doing. I was having none of it.
“Am I not Queen Molly? Am I not an integral part of your business?” I demanded, putting up my hands in air quotes when I said “business.”
“You were…” I threw him an irritated look. “Okay, you are an integral part. But I don’t want you involved in this. At least not right now.”
“So we’re returning to the Dark Ages? Since you knocked me up you only want to see me barefoot and pregnant in your kitchen? Is that it?” I was royally pissed off, and he knew it. Luca Varasso was the king of his clan and his domain, but he was no misogynist. He’d encouraged and trusted me to run the drug trade aspect of his family’s business with autonomy.
I wasn’t going to let my condition change that.
“Molly, I’m only trying to keep you safe.”
“Well, your definition of safety sounds an awful lot like keeping me out of the loop, if you ask me.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, huffing out a length exhale. Then, he shut the door and lowered his voice. “You don’t know everything that’s happening here.”
“Isn’t that what I just said?” I questioned him, letting my snarky bitchiness out of her cage. I didn’t care what his reasons were, they couldn’t possibly be justified.
“That’s not what I…” He scrubbed his face with his hands, his expression reticent but also something else. Sad. He turned and wouldn’t meet my gaze. “What I mean is that there’s something bigger tha
n family business going on in the background of my life, in all the Varasso’s lives. And I was attempting to keep it from impacting you, but I failed.”
What was he saying?
“We’re cursed, all right?” he admitted, his tone resigned. “I know it sounds batshit crazy, but it’s true. All of us Varassos are cursed. It’s why so many tragedies have occurred to various members of our family. My mom. My dad. Alana. And now you.”
He twisted back around so I could see his face, and what I saw was pure torment.
“I tried not to fall for you because I knew that would put you in danger. But I fell anyway. Almost against my will. I thought I could stave it off by lying about how I felt and pushing you away, but it was too late. Fate knew I was in love with you even when you didn’t.”
“So you getting hurt was my fault. Your sister getting killed was my fault,” he went on. “I put you directly and literally in the line of fire.”
I gawked at him, so stunned by his train of thought that I didn’t know how to respond. “You think falling in love with me is why Tara and I were shot?”
“I don’t think it, I know it. It’s the only explanation.”
“No, it’s not,” I grabbed his arm when he made to turn away again. “It’s not, Luca. The person responsible for the death of my sister and for my injuries is the shooter. I know that wasn’t you, so you can’t blame yourself.”
“Molly, I knew from the moment that Alana died that I’d have to be alone from that moment on. That I couldn’t risk dragging anyone else into this. But then my father pointed that gun at you and I…”
“You saved me,” I told him. “That’s what you did.”
“I set you up for future tragedy,” he insisted stubbornly. The man was a mule. “Now you’ve lost a family member due to this. Due to me.” He paused, then said, “Let me ask you this. Would you still think of me as your savior if one of those bullets had hit our baby? Or if the trauma you went through made you miscarry? Would you be so willing to let me off the hook then?”
