Ruthless Empire: A Dark Mafia Collection

by Seth Eden

  Finally, I released the bag. It fell from my hand with a speed that suggested there were two tons in the bag, not a few ounces of phone pieces, but that was just my brain having seen the last two days in slow motion.

  I turned and walked back across the bridge until I was back to where I’d left my truck. I climbed in and picked my phone up off the passenger’s seat. I had several calls and texts, but I didn’t care. I hadn’t been home yet, and I had no plans to go, at least until after I’d seen Stacy. I was laying low at a hotel until I could apologize to her and return her things. This time, it wasn’t shame or fear that kept me from my family but blind rage. If I so much as laid an eye on Alessandro, I was likely to sock him on sight, or worse. I needed to see Stacy first. She was the only thing that could extract the thread of my dad that had woven in, and I needed that gone before I spoke with my brothers again. I told Molly to call me herself if anything happened because I wouldn’t answer for my brothers. A scroll through my call log showed that none of the calls were from her, so I cleared the rest from my notifications and set a course for Stacy’s house.

  I’d been by every few hours since she’d first been taken by ambulance to the hospital. I had no other way to get in touch with her, and her phone was now at the bottom of the Delaware River, so my only hope was to wait for her physical return. She was in bad shape when Molly finally got in, but her injuries weren’t enough to commit her for more than a couple of days. They’d give her good drugs, patch her up, and discharge her to recover at home.

  I turned the corner onto Stacy’s street, and my heart stopped. Even before I pulled my car up in front and parked it before hopping out, I could see the front door cracked open and lights on inside. Stacy’s parents had to be at the hospital with her, and after being attacked, Stacy wouldn’t just leave her front door open. I dragged my pistol out of my waistband and braced it as I crept up the front steps. I used my foot to tilt the door away and crept quietly inside. The light was coming from Stacy’s bedroom, and I could hear a quiet shuffling through her drawers. I was glad I had her most valuable items in my car, but whatever idiot decided they’d come back to loot her house was about to have a rude awakening.

  I toed my way up the stairs with my gun held out in front of my face. Stacy’s smell clung to me from all around, but I pushed it away to focus on the task at hand. When I got to the top of the stairs, I saw a figure hunched over the dresser, rummaging. I cocked my gun and stood up straight.

  “Whatever’s in your hands,” I hissed, “drop it.”

  The person’s hands went into the air empty.

  “Now stand up and turn around. Slowly.”

  The person turned around, and familiarity rocketed over me. The pixie haircut and warm brown eyes, I’d seen before, but I couldn’t place it. “Who are you?”

  “M-Mira,” the woman stuttered back at me, shaking.

  I dropped my gun instantly. It was Stacy’s best friend. I’d seen her briefly at the restaurant the day I accidentally stood up Carducci. “Fuck. I’m sorry. What are you doing here?”

  “I flew in to help take care of Stacy,” she responded. “I’m getting her a fresh set of clothes.”

  “You shouldn’t leave the front door open,” I growled back at her, more irritated with the panic she’d caused me than the danger she’d put herself in. “Preferably shut and locked, but at least closed.”

  “I thought I closed it,” Mira said. “Must have been the wind.” She pulled her hands down to her sides but stayed frozen in place. “You’re Gabriel.”

  I didn’t want to give her any information I didn’t have to. That she recognized me was dangerous enough. “When is Stacy coming home?”

  “Today,” Mira said. “Later, after she wakes up. She needs some new clothes, though. She doesn’t want to come home in a hospital gown.”

  “That sounds like her,” I said with a warm laugh, then asked, “Can you tell me what hospital they took her to? Her room?”

  Mira looked at me in silence. I couldn’t tell from her searching expression if she was just weighing the decision or if she was actually managing to put together the role I’d played in what happened. I hadn’t been reacting shocked to any talk of Stacy needing care or her being in the hospital. Maybe Mira figured that I already knew what was happening. Maybe Stacy had told her about my true identity, and she was blaming me for what happened. Either way, she was reserving a response. I didn’t know what criteria she was looking for to give me the information, but I needed to at least see with my own eyes that Stacy was okay.

  “Please,” I begged. “I just want to see her. I won’t bother her, and if she asks me to leave or if it seems like I’m causing her stress, I’ll go.”

  I expected follow-up questions, but instead, Mira pulled out her cellphone. I followed suit and pulled mine out as well. After a quick exchange of numbers, I had the hospital information in a text. I thanked her quietly before leaving her to gather the rest of the things she needed for Stacy. I reemerged back into the chilled Philly afternoon and climbed back into my truck. I’d spent a lot of time inside and turned my nose up as I climbed in. I was sick of looking at it, and this whole ordeal was as likely as anything to convince me to get a new car soon.

  I stopped briefly by the same flower shop I’d been stopping at every time I was planning to see Stacy. When I’d first come, I took an orchid by necessity, but now my eyes searched automatically for them amongst the sea of roses, tulips, and lilies. Understated or not, they were the flowers I bought Stacy, and I realized I found them to be more beautiful than any of the others. Just like meeting Stacy, buying her that first orchid had been fate, and just like with Stacy, I couldn’t bring myself to touch anything else.

  I traveled next to the hospital, where I parked my car in a fifteen-minute spot outside. It was a self-regulator to keep me from staying too long. I wasn’t there to talk to her at length, try and convince her to say, or apologize to her for what had happened. I just wanted to see her. To touch her with my own hands and know that she was still real. I started out of the driver’s seat, but then I pulled back. I reached into the back seat and grabbed the new phone I’d bought to replace hers. I’d placed it in a gift bag, and I hadn’t even unpacked the box. I had slid my number into the bag on a post-it note, but that was the closest I would get to her. If she never used it again, I would understand. I slid the orchid into the bag alongside the phone, climbed out of my truck, and stepped quickly to the hospital so as not to waste any of my short time.

  I checked in at the front desk, Marcus Gilde, and made my way to Stacy’s room. My brothers and I all had aliases, complete with fake IDs, just in case. The second I was clear of the desk, I peeled the temporary badge off my shirt. I could pull it out if I needed it, claiming it just wouldn’t stick, but otherwise, I didn’t need anyone seeing the false name.

  I stopped in front of room 1408, the one that Stacy was in. I could already see through a slit in the window, and I saw her resting but bruised face as she laid in bed. It broke me. It took the already shattered pieces and smashed them even smaller, and then it ground those into dust. Any way I looked at it, Stacy’s injuries were ultimately my fault. If not for her association with me, then at least for my stupid brother’s reckless actions or a rivalry that my father kicked up nearly five years ago now. If she’d just met some guy in her yoga class and let her take him out, they could be a simple, happy couple. They could go out to restaurants and ignore their families and hole up together for whole weekends with no consequences except for maybe some lecturing and uncomfortable prying. Two beasts wouldn’t have snuck into her house and beat her within an inch of her life. But it wasn’t just some guy, it was me, and now she was here.

  Going by was a mistake. I should have stayed away. I turned around, planning to leave when I came face to face with a woman. Looking at her left me with no guesses as to who she was. She had blue eyes as opposed to green, but in every other way, she was the image of Stacy in an older form. It was clearly he
r mother.

  “Are you here to see Stacy?” she asked, blinking at me innocently. Her hands pushed against her mouth. “Oh. Are you the one she’s been seeing. The date she was expecting.”

  I had no idea what version of the story she was referencing, but playing along was my only option. “Yeah.” I looked back at the hospital room. “How is she?”

  “Come, come,” her mom started to push me in. “She’ll be happy to see you.”

  I shook my head. “I’m in fifteen-minute parking downstairs, I just came to give her—”

  I didn’t get the rest of the sentence out. Her mom was oddly strong, but then again, so was Stacy. When I broke the threshold, a man with long gray hair and Stacy’s green eyes looked up at me.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “H-hi.” I tried to swallow away the knot in my throat. It wasn’t at all how I expected I’d meet Stacy’s parents.

  “This is the one she was supposed to see. The one she was naked for,” Stacy’s mom said, and I nearly threw up.

  “W-what?”

  Her dad waved his hand. “Oh, it’s okay. We’re very open with Stacy.” His eyes trailed down to the gift bag in my hand. “That’s nice.”

  “Oh.” I held it up awkwardly, pushing it out towards her dad. “Can you give it to her?”

  “I can, but she should wake up soon. You could stick around if you wanted. We won’t smother you with any uncomfortable questions.”

  The end of his sentence was a distant mumbling in my ear. I’d finally brought myself to look at Stacy, and it had my stomach twisting into knots. I wanted to tell her I was sorry. I wanted to turn back time and make it so that she’d never met me, but the idea of not knowing her was enough to bring tears to my eyes.

  “I have to go.”

  I could hear her parents protesting behind me, but I rushed out regardless. I took the stairs instead of the elevator, even though taking fourteen flights of stairs down sent a burning through my chest. I got into my car with a changed mind. I had to go home without seeing Stacy. If she was smart, she would never contact me again.

  22

  Gabriel

  All of my brothers’ cars were in the driveway when I pulled in, along with Molly’s and Ricky’s. It was a full house. I hadn’t responded to anyone’s calls in a couple of days, so even if nothing else huge had happened, they were bound to be pissed that I was ignoring them. I didn’t care. Alessandro’s arrogance was what pissed Carducci off in the first place. Let them take what happened to Stacy up with him before they scream at me for a few missed calls.

  I’d had just about enough of being more of a pet than a brother to the Varassos. The woman I loved was sitting in a hospital bed because of it. If I’d been with Stacy, I could have protected her. If we weren’t trying to run this stupid business to begin with, she wouldn’t have been in danger. I should have walked away from her the first chance I got. I never should have followed Molly’s encouragement and gone to see Stacy at that hotel. We’d made a clean break, she was safe, and that should have been it. The Varassos’s combined stupidity landed her in a hospital, so unless my brothers were waiting in line with apologies, I didn’t give a shit if they felt like I should have been at their beck and call.

  I reached over to shove my gun in my glove compartment as I always did when getting out of my car but hesitated. I couldn’t place the reluctance. I never felt like I needed my gun when I was in my family home, but lately, that feeling was fading more and more. Luca, Marco, and Sandro stayed armed at all times. Even Molly had a gun on her so long as she wasn’t going to be dealing with the kids, but I knew two things with certainty. Varasso blood was thick, thick enough to keep a man from pulling a trigger on his own brother, even if he hated him, and even if we found ourselves in a pit of danger, I didn’t have the stones to pull a trigger, regardless. I kept two guns in my car—one in my glovebox and one under my driver’s seat—but I’d never used them, and I never planned to.

  So, it was a mystery to me why I closed my glove box without sliding my gun inside and, instead, slid it into the waistband of my suit pants. An invisible force guided it in like I was a marionette being controlled by someone else, and I knew who was pulling the strings. Even from buried in the earth, my dad still had his sausage fingers clutched around all of our throats, more than any of us were willing to accept or talk about. If that fact alone didn’t erode our family from the inside out, the way the business was eating away at our relationships would be more than happy to fill the position.

  I stepped up to Varasso estate with unfamiliar confidence. It wasn’t the joy that bounded me up the path after I’d confessed my love to Stacy. It was something else, almost sickly. It was like wearing someone else’s dirty laundry and discovering it fits all too well. I could see it in the way the staff looked at me as I strode across the threshold. They were well aware of the new atmosphere I carried with me. It was hard not to notice it. The way they cowered away from me as I strode forth, the way they ducked their heads and didn’t make eye contact. It was unlike anything I’d experienced before. It was hard not to lay it out on a countertop in neat lines and snort it through a straw.

  All my life, the people around that manor looked at me with relief in their eyes. Thank god it was the weak Varasso coming, there was nothing to be afraid of. I wanted people to fear me like they feared my brothers or my father. Maybe if they did, Stacy wouldn’t have a thousand cords sticking out of her right now.

  I carried myself up the two flights of stairs to the third floor of the Varasso estate, where all of our business took place. At the end of a long hallway was Luca’s office, the one that used to be my dad’s. I stormed towards it, grabbed the door, and pushed the door aside without knocking. Inside, Luca, Alessandro, Marco, and Molly were scattered around. Their voices broke across briefly when I opened the door but ceased immediately at the sight of me.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Luca barked. “I’ve been calling.”

  I didn’t respond. My gaze had already landed on Alessandro in a leer I was hoping would ignite him.

  “What the fuck are you looking at?” he asked, deep darkness in his voice.

  I had no idea what impulse I was acting on, but all of a sudden, my gun was in my hand, cocked and aimed at Alessandro’s face. Marco was up a second later with his gun pointed at me, while Luca and Molly sat in silent shock. I felt like the real me was out there amongst them somewhere, standing and watching the scene unfold with just as much surprise.

  “Gabe, what the fuck?” Marco asked. He took a step towards me, and my head whipped towards him.

  “Don’t! Stay away from me!”

  Alessandro looked up at me with not an ounce of fear in his eyes. A vicious smile curled across his face. “You gonna shoot me, Gabe?”

  He stood up in spite of the danger. My gun followed his movements. He pressed his forehead against the barrel and carried it to stand with him at full height. “Go ahead.”

  “Don’t antagonize him, Alessandro,” Luca warned, but if Alessandro heard him, he didn’t react.

  “I don’t know whether to be angry or proud,” Alessandro said. “Looks like you finally found your dick. Glad you see you have one.”

  “Sandro.” Marco didn’t move and kept his gun trained on me, but his glare was on Alessandro. “He’s hurting right now.”

  My gun shifted to Marco. “Don’t pretend to know what I’m going through. How’s that pretty wife of yours, Marco? When are you headed back to California to be the Petersons. Tell me, do you meet up with the Johnsons for barbecues on Sundays? How is that? I bet that’s nice. Don’t act—”

  I didn’t get the rest of the sentence out before I was knocked to the ground with my gun flying across the room. Alessandro struggled to get me around to my back, but the second I had the space to do so, I sent a punch right for his face. It knocked him across the cheek. The feeling of another person’s flesh caving in around my fist was strange but not unwelcome. I wanted to hurt Alessandro. If
all I could cause was a microscopic version of the hurt he’d brought on Stacy, I’d be happy if he buried lead into my chest a moment later. I tried to get another swing out, but Alessandro held down one of my arms with his knee and the other with his left hand. His right cocked back above his head and came smashing across my cheek, sending a flare of pain through me and filling my mouth with the metallic taste of blood.

  I was smaller than Alessandro, so I had a wider range of movement. I dug my boots into the ground and used all the force I had to throw my head up. I got just enough momentum to bring my torso up off the ground, even under Alessandro’s weight, and my head collided with his, dragging out another flash of searing hurt. Alessandro fell backward, and I clamored to my feet. I stood over him and with no remorse, jumped off the ground and brought one of my black boots down hard into his stomach. He let out a loud groan as blood trickled down from his forehead to match that I could feel seeping down my own. It was a good thing my gun had been knocked away because I might have shot at the stupid smile on his face on impulse. Instead, I settled for another boot to the stomach.

  At lightning speed, Alessandro’s hands clamped around my ankle and pulled. It was almost enough to take my feet out from under me, but I grabbed the wall next to me for bracing and stayed upright. I kicked my foot forward, crashing it against Alessandro’s chin, and hearing an unruly crunch. I backed away. The sound was enough to bring me to my senses. Alessandro sat up and spit off to his left, creating a new pool of blood where the patches he’d brought from Luca when he snapped had already dried nearby. With the spittle of red came a small white dot—the corner of a tooth. Alessandro cracked his head to the left, and my stomach turned over. It looked just like my dad.

  “Marco.” Luca’s voice was barely audible, but Marco stepped between us, his gun in one hand pointing at Alessandro and my gun in the other, aimed for me.