Ruthless Empire: A Dark Mafia Collection

by Seth Eden

  Ricky shook his head. “I haven’t heard, but I know Sandro has already mentioned he wants to see you. He’ll be at the funeral.”

  I let out a moan of disappointment. I was hoping that wasn’t the case. “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why? Pop Pop loved Sandro like his own kid, and that’s not on me. You were the one who brought him over all the time, telling Pop Pop that Sandro was the man that was going to take care of you.”

  Point taken and fault accepted. “Still.”

  “He wouldn’t miss it for the world, even if he wasn’t looking for an opportunity to see you.”

  My heart did a backflip at the thought. Deep down, I wanted to see him too, but I wouldn’t allow myself to fall back into him again. He made his choice—when I said we were done, I meant it. “Well, you can tell him not to expect much. He turned his back on me the day I left for college, so I turned my back on him. I’ll be cordial because this is about Pop Pop and not me or Alessandro, but I don’t have anything to say to him. Not him or the rest of his underhanded family.”

  2

  Alessandro

  Sometimes, when I stood in my dad’s old office, staring out at the huge, verdant green yard, I liked to pretend that he was going to walk through the double cherrywood doors, his square jaw, curly brown hair, and deep brown eyes an elder depiction of my own. I’d stand at attention and greet him as sir, and then we would both chuckle at the formality of it all. I fiddled with the rings on my fingers, the ones he’d left me in his will, trying to imagine what he’d say if he saw them barely hanging on to my much more slender fingers compared to the sausages he had.

  “At least if you’re gonna wear ‘em, make sure they fit. Only my bonehead kid would walk around with rings that don’t fucking fit.”

  I chuckled at his phantom voice ringing through my head. “Got it, Pa. I’ll grow into ‘em.”

  “You gonna go see Willow with rings falling off your fingers? She’ll take one look at you and laugh her ass off.”

  I nodded. “I know, Pa. I’m good.”

  Willow. My eyes landed on the stone fountain in the middle of the courtyard below, the one my dad had erected in the image of my mom as an angel. It was the last place I’d looked into Willow’s beautiful, blue eyes. I had no idea when she asked me to meet that day that she was going to tell me she was leaving for California, and I either had to leave my family behind and go with her or lose her for good. I loved her more than myself. Why couldn’t that have been enough?

  “You thinking about Dad or Willow?” Luca’s voice sliced into my thoughts.

  I snickered. “Yeah.” I turned around to face him. “You’re late.”

  Luca waved his hand through the air and then situated himself behind my dad’s—I suppose now his—large marble-topped mahogany desk. “Whatever. What have you got going on?”

  It didn’t usually bother me that Luca was late because he’d always had a shit grasp of time, but it did bother me that he acted as if his time was more valuable than mine. He was usually the one setting the meeting times. The least he could do was be there when he expected himself to be. I chose not to bring it up. Our relationship was cordial at best. He was my brother, and I’d lay down my life for him, but as people, we didn’t often see eye to eye. We just saw the world through different lenses. Before my dad’s passing, I wouldn’t have even described us as friends, but ever since he took over the business and admitted to me that he needed my help to do it, we came around to the idea of at least pretending to like each other.

  “How are things going at the border?” I asked, walking over and dropping down into one of the chocolate leather chairs on the other side of the desk.

  “Better than ever. With Mol on the case, you wouldn’t guess it was the same operation that was running there a year ago.” He had a small smirk on his face, ever prideful of his wife.

  “She’s a badass, I’ll give her that.”

  Molly was Luca’s wife and the head of our drug-running operation. She came into the family by accident, having earned the wrath of my father, but Luca took an interest in her and groomed her to work for us. Eventually, Luca fell for her, and the rest was history.

  “More than that.” He glanced at the picture he had on the desk of Molly and his kids and then looked back at me. “Anyway. How are things at the restaurant?”

  Ever since my brother, Marco, got arrested and turned state’s witness with the broad he knocked up, Luca, my half-brother Gabriel, and I were working overtime keeping things afloat. It was good that we had Molly, and she knew how to carry her weight, but the load was weighing on all of us. Right before Marco left, he’d purchased a restaurant to run through and launder money, and it had, of course, fallen directly under the watch of the police after Marco got caught.

  “I turned the burner off for now. The only thing being washed there right now is dishes.”

  It was actually one of Marco’s better purchases. It was a busy place with a lot of traffic. It was easy to get stuff in and out without drawing attention, and no one there was interested in going to the police about anything, only getting their food and moving on. I had plans to continue our work there once things had simmered down, but it was too dangerous for now.

  “Still, do a few drive-bys a day, huh?” Luca said. “Make sure things are operating smoothly, no traces left behind. You know the drill.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I can’t tomorrow, though. I have Alder’s funeral.” Alder Morietti was Ricky and Willow’s grandfather and a man I’d grown to respect in the time that Willow and I were dating. He passed away recently, which was bringing Willow home for the first time in almost six years.

  “That’s right, that’s tomorrow isn’t it? I’ll have some flowers sent over.”

  “Molly already did it,” I said, and Luca looked up at me with a smile. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. She’s great.”

  “So, you’re gonna see Willow then?”

  I nodded. “Probably. I mean, I anticipate we’ll cross paths at the funeral, but I don’t know how much interacting we’ll do. I doubt she wants to see me.”

  “You probably should stay away from her anyway. She did turn her back on us.”

  “That’s not what she did.”

  “That is what she did.” Luca laced his hands together. “She told you to pick between us or her, and when you didn’t pick her, she dropped you like a bad habit.”

  “Luca, I swear to god—”

  Luca held up a hand. “Relax. I’m not gonna hurt her, and neither is anyone else. Even if she refuses to acknowledge everything we’ve done for her family, she’s still protected thanks to her dad. All I’m saying is you can’t be a part of the organization and then cut ties. That’s not how it works.”

  “She wasn’t part of the organization.” I couldn’t quite figure out why I was so staunchly defending Willow when, at the end of the day, Luca was right. “She was only her father’s daughter. She didn’t have any choice over being involved, and as soon as she became a legal adult, she left. She hasn’t taken a cent from us since. There were no ties to cut.”

  Luca held up his hands. “Fair enough. I’ll drop it.”

  “Thanks.”

  I was tempted by my shoulder angel to say something else. To apologize to Luca and make sure that he understood that, just like six years ago, when it was a choice between my family and Willow, there was no choice, but before I could get a word out, there was a knock at the office door.

  “Come in!” Luca called.

  The door opened, and Gabriel poked his head inside. “Hey. Uh, can I come in?”

  Luca shrugged his shoulders. “That would be why I said to come in.’”

  Gabriel took a deep breath and entered the office. Like always, he was dressed in a full suit, despite only being around the family house. It was a bad habit all the Varasso boys shared. One we’d inherited from our old man. He smiled at me, and I smiled back. As far as brothers go, he and I were the closest. Luca mirrored my mom’s resentment for him
as a result of my father’s infidelity, and Marco wasn’t awful to him, but he was simply closer to Luca. I was still pretty young at the time that he showed up, and my dad always told me that blood was blood, it didn’t matter the quantity. I didn’t see Gabriel as a half-brother. I saw him as my brother.

  “Hey, Sandro,” he greeted. “Luca.”

  Luca nodded his head. “Hey, Gabe.”

  He sat down in the other leather chair next to me in front of Luca’s desk. “I finished getting things cleaned up at the docks. We shouldn’t have any problems there.”

  Luca nodded. “And what about downtown?”

  “Um.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Luca barked. “Quit it with this lackadaisical shit and talk like a man!”

  Luca picked at Gabriel; we all knew that. He was way tougher on him than he would ever be on Marco or me, and it was worse because Gabriel was only a little puppy vying for Luca’s approval. Gabriel was always trying to put his best foot forward in the business, but when it came right down to it, this world wasn’t for him, and Luca knew that. Luca, like my dad, believed that once you were in, you were always in, but we would probably pay for involving Gabriel in the underground parts of our lives one day. Not because Gabriel meant to mess it up, but simply because he wasn’t a dark person. The thing my dad loved most about Gabriel was his heart. Dad said it was good that Gabriel didn’t inherit, as the rest of us had, his cold, steely resolve, and it was true. Gabriel wasn’t a man who dealt in finalities. It was much more Gabriel’s preference to make people happy. He should be off enjoying being young, not trying to deal with all of the family’s shadows.

  “Sorry.” Gabriel took a gulp. “They didn’t really take me too seriously downtown.”

  Luca scoffed and Gabriel sat up straight in his chair, waving his hands around nervously. “I told them everything you told me to, that if they didn’t listen, then you were gonna go down there next, and they didn’t want that.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Did you say it like you did just now?”

  Gabriel looked at me. “N-not exactly like that.”

  “You need to have more confidence.” I slammed a fist on the arm of my chair. “Fucking do it, or the next one who comes down here is gonna be the boss, and I don’t think you wanna make him disrupt his day for this piddly shit.”

  Gabriel’s eyes widened. “Yeah. They probably would have been more likely to listen to something like that.”

  Luca looked at me, and I held a hand up. “I’ll go before the funeral tomorrow.”

  “Take him with you,” Luca demanded and then shifted his gaze to Gabriel. “You really need to step it up. We’re already down, and I’m not going to be dragging a floundering fish along.”

  Gabriel nodded. “Yes, Luca.” He looked over at me. “I was planning to go with you to the funeral anyway, so…”

  I nodded and put a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “Yeah. It’ll be fine.”

  “You’re going?” Luca hissed. “Why?”

  “Well, funerals are never easy, and I know Sandro will need some support.” Gabriel sat back in his chair and relaxed again a little. “Are you not going?”

  Luca pulled a cigar out of the top drawer of his desk and nestled it between his fingers but didn’t light it. “No, why would I need to go? I think I met the man once at a Christmas party.”

  “You’re the head of the household now,” Gabriel explained. “I think that you should be there. For visibility. Visibility was always important to dad, so—”

  Luca slammed his hand on the desk. “Don’t tell me what you think my dad would do. I know what he would do. He would do whatever he thought was best as the head of the household. I’m head of the household and the organization now, so I will do whatever I think is best.” His voice got lower and more menacing. “Do you have a problem with that, Gabe?”

  Gabriel shook his head. “No.”

  Luca looked at me, and I rolled my eyes. “Do what you want, Boss.”

  3

  Willow

  I was barely maintaining my emotions as I filed into the packed chapel. Getting closer to the casket at the head of the pulpit was like forcing two negative magnets against each other. The nearer I got, the further away I wanted to be. I looked across the pews and saw that Ricky had situated himself next to two of the Varasso brothers, Gabriel and, the one I was most nervous to see, Alessandro. Just looking at Alessandro’s back gave me chills. I wanted to believe that I was more equipped to be close to him again, but all of a sudden, I would rather get closer to the casket.

  “Willy!”

  I scanned the crowd to the other side of the chapel and saw one of my distant cousins, Hannah, waving her hand in my direction. She was actually a cousin of my mother’s, but she was fairly close to me in age. When we were little girls, we spent a lot of time together, but once my family got mixed up with the Varassos, we stopped interacting with most of my parents’ extended families altogether.

  “The Varassos are our family,” my father would say, as though believing it cemented it in stone. They aren’t my family, dad.

  I sifted through the group until I was at the pew where Hannah was sitting. I filed over to the spot next to her and sat beside her.

  “Wow, it’s been so long!” She raked her fingers through her long brown hair. “It feels weird. This is supposed to be a somber thing, but I’ve been feeling excited all day to see you.”

  Call me an asshole, I hadn’t thought of Hannah once in fifteen years. “Pop Pop would want us to be happy.” I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug. “It’s good to see you, Hannah.”

  Next to her, a man turned and looked at me with a smile. He had blond hair that had been pulled back into a bun and had a goatee that had been shaved down, likely for the occasion. He nodded at me, and Hannah put her hand on his knee.

  “This is my husband, Eddie.” She smiled at him, holding out a hand toward me. “This is my cousin, technically my second cousin, Willow.”

  Eddie stuck out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Willow. I’ve heard great things.”

  I took Eddie’s hand and shook it. “Nice to meet you, as well.”

  Hannah looked at me. “Where’s your boyfriend?” She clasped her hands over her mouth. “Or are you two married now?”

  “Um,” my eyes darted over to where Alessandro was sitting and then back to Hannah. “What?”

  “I know that Pop Pop hadn’t been well for a while, but the last time I spoke to him, he told me that you had a boyfriend that you were crazy about. He said that he would for sure be part of the family one day.”

  My grandfather suffered from dementia near the end of his life. It wasn’t shocking to hear that he’d clung to the last few memories he had of me before he passed on. I had seen him one last time before I left for college, but it was before I went to see Alessandro, resulting in our breakup. I didn’t double back to tell my poor, elderly grandfather that I’d broken up with the only one of my friends he’d ever actually liked. In truth, I was too heartbroken at the time and couldn’t have faced it regardless.

  “We’re not together anymore.”

  Hannah’s face went downtrodden. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah.” I glanced over at Alessandro again. “Me too.”

  The pastor officiating my grandfather’s funeral made his way up onto the stage. He cleared his throat, and the murmur in the chapel hushed. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” the people lining the pews responded.

  “We are here to celebrate the life of Alder Celestino Morietti, a legendary man in body, and a walking summer’s day in spirit.” There were varying sounds of affirmations. “Just before Alder saw his final day…”

  I did my best to check out as the pastor went on. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about the words he had to say, but I hated showing emotions in any situation. I’d already bawled over dinner with Ricky the night before and didn’t want to do too much more than that. They’d talked me into sa
ying a few words about my grandfather, so I focused my energy on preparing myself for that. At one point, Hannah reached over and took my hand in hers and held on tightly. I smiled at her, deciding to be amicable, but I desperately wanted to pull my hand away. Call it not wanting to show weakness, call it not appreciating an emotional connection to someone else, I didn’t enjoy being doted on.

  Soon enough, Ricky was up on stage, sobbing his way through a touching eulogy to Pop Pop, complete with pictures and heartwarming stories. There weren’t many remaining dry eyes as he got to the end of his speech and turned his gaze to me.

  “I know we probably can’t take much more time, but there were few people Pop Pop loved more than my beautiful sister, Willow, and she has a few things she would like to say as well.”

  Hannah squeezed my hand and mouthed good luck at me, then let go. I took a massive breath in and held it as I stood up, scooted my way out of the pew, and walked up onto the raised stage. I stood in front of the pulpit. Apart from the miscellaneous sniffles and huffs of people trying to quell their emotions, the chapel was totally quiet, and all eyes were on me. I let out the breath I had been holding, and as Ricky attempted to climb off the stage, I reached out and grabbed his wrist and held him in place. He returned to standing right next to me and put his hand on my back.

  “Um.” I felt like I was going to throw up. “I’m not much of a public speaker.” Everyone looking back at me offered a light chuckle, even though I was being dead serious. “When I was thirteen, I lost my dad.” I knew there were people associated with the Varassos and even two of the brothers in the crowd, so I didn’t go into detail. “When I needed someone to come around and give me the confidence to face my first day of high school, I called my grandfather. When someone had to come around and threaten my first boyfriend to be good to me or else, I called my grandfather.”

  My eyes betrayed my intentions and landed on Alessandro, remembering the lanky, overconfident teenage boy cowering beneath my grandfather’s stern gaze before leaving for our first date. Alessandro gave me a warm smile, and it broke my heart all over again. I shifted my gaze away from him without giving a smile in return. I was stumbling already, barely managing to stay on the tightrope I was walking.