by Seth Eden
Luca looked at me with a fierceness in his eyes I’d never seen before. “Enough.”
“Keep pointing that gun at me, and you’re next,” Alessandro hissed at Marco.
Luca’s hands slammed down on his desk as he stood up. “I said enough!” He walked around the desk, cocked his fist back, and punched me right across the face, knocking me back onto the couch against his wall.
“You know better than to turn your gun and your fucking fist against your brother,” Luca growled at me in a guttural tone I’d never heard escape his lips before. “Don’t think for a second that I’m going to let you come in here and start doing whatever the fuck you want just because you’re grieving. That’s now how we do shit, and you know that.”
“He went rogue,” I said back to Luca. “He compromised our entire operation and got your wife and children threatened in a grocery store. What if he’d gotten the jump on Molly? Where would Anna and Antonio be?”
“Knock it off.”
I looked past him at Marco. “The stress must be wearing on Kelly. Do you think the baby will be okay?”
Luca took a step towards me, looming over me. “Stop it. Now.”
“What do the unwritten rules say about dogs off leashes, brother?” I asked, no longer fearing for what would happen to me. “What would Dad do if Alessandro ran off and had a meeting with a major boss without consulting with him first? What do you think he’d do if that led to someone threatening your mom? Do you think Dad would get mad at me for checking that wild arrogance, or would he be mad at you for not doing it first?”
Luca reached down and bunched my shirt in his fist. When he dragged me to my feet, my body moved as if it were no heavier than a piece of paper. “Don’t preach to me about what my dad would do. Each one of us knows better than you, you fucking half-breed.”
“Luca!” Molly’s voice screeched out. “Let him go.”
Luca pointed his free hand towards his wife. “Don’t forget your place.”
Molly went silent, and I could see Marco glance over his shoulder at her with the same pain I felt in an instant. What the hell was I doing? I looked at Alessandro, bleeding on the ground with Marco’s gun still set for him. I saw the frustrated look in Marco’s face. The conflict of not knowing if he should stop Luca from killing me, stop himself from killing Alessandro, or go comfort Molly, who was now softly sniffling in the corner. I felt the darkness that had draped over me slip away like rain washing away the mud. Everything I’d done up to this point, I’d done because I wanted to bring my family back together, not tear them even further apart. Molly wasn’t crying because she was afraid. In fact, she was staunchly resolved in not showing emotion because of the strength of who she was, but her husband was the one person who loved her more than anything. He’d never spoken to her that way. That was my fault.
I went slack in Luca’s grip. “I’m sorry.” I looked around Luca to Alessandro. “I’m sorry.” My eyes moved to Molly. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Luca blinked at me like he just realized where he was, and then his grip loosened. He looked over at Molly. “Mol.”
She didn’t wait. She walked around Luca and out of the office. Luca watched her as she went but didn’t follow. Molly’s Porsche roared against the quiet, and we just listened until the rumble of sound was so far in the distance we could no longer make it out.
We stayed that way, silently, for longer than I cared to count. Luca’s hand stayed gripped around my shirt, though it was looser now. In truth, the connection was probably the only thing holding him up. It was probably the only thing holding me up.
Marco kept his gun trained on Alessandro, but his arm was weak, not his typical, tree-branch form. Alessandro was looking at the pool of his blood on the ground, slowly drying with the piece of his tooth in the middle like a deserted island. A pin could have dropped and been deafening.
“Dad would be disgusted,” Alessandro said after an impossibly long time.
Marco nodded. “We’d all be six feet under.” Marco made the first movement after that, pulling his gun down and walking over to slide mine back under my waistband. “Never again.”
I shook my head. “Never again.”
“We turned into him,” Luca said. Finally releasing his hand from my collar. “All fucking four of us.”
That truth was a little too heavy, so silence captured the room again. Eventually, Luca made his way back to his office chair, and as he sunk down into it, he buried his face in his hands. I dropped down onto the couch, and Alessandro and Marco fell into the chairs opposite Luca’s desk. The calm after the storm was almost worse than the storm itself. Our thoughts were all floating around the room in a jumbled mess, and the only thing that was common across us was regret. Old regrets and new ones. Fresh ones that were still bleeding out like the matching gashes on my and Alessandro’s heads. We’d all taken such obscure, winding roads and were now colliding at an intersection. The only way we were going to recover from the crash was together, but it was difficult to imagine what that would look like, so none of us wagered a guess at it. We just sat as the afternoon sun set and left us in darkness.
When my phone buzzed, it scared all four of us. The big, bad Varassos, reduced to jumping at the simple sound of a phone. I pulled it out and looked down at it, heart skipping a beat when I saw it was from Stacy.
I got my new phone.
Thank you.
“I have to go.” I looked at Luca. I said it like a statement, but I meant it like a plea.
Luca didn’t even look up. “Go.”
I didn’t wait. I stood up, and too embarrassed to face any of my broken brothers, I left.
23
Stacy
I sat staring at the screen of my new phone. My contacts were still loading in from the phone company activating the new sim card under my phone account, but I already had Gabriel’s number. He’d slid it into the bag he left with my parents the day before, but I had it memorized. Somewhere between the dozens of times that he called me after we’d parted the first time and my pressing need to call him after he tried to ghost me, I memorized how the digits were strung together.
Why couldn’t I stay away? Why could I bring myself to just cut him off the same way I was prepared to do a month ago when I first figured out who he was? I knew I couldn’t be with him. I knew that. I didn’t even need to list the pros and cons or consider what it might mean anymore. It hurt to breathe because I had a lapse in judgment that sent me flying in Gabriel’s direction without any form of a parachute. When I crashed into the earth, it was hard, and it hurt. Next time, it could be my parents, or it could be Mira. She was already shaken from having Gabriel pull a gun on her. His life wasn’t meant to blend with my life. I didn’t have the gumption his sisters-in-law had. I was a holistic yoga instructor. I couldn’t fly off the handle and date a boss in an organized crime syndicate. What was I thinking?
I’d spent a lot of time punishing myself for the mistakes that I made. I refused to take my pain medication. I ascended the stairs to my upstairs bathroom every time I had to pee because it made my legs scream in pain when I did. I wouldn’t allow myself any cheese. The least I owed my body for getting it more beat up than an old car at a compacting yard was finally making the leap and cutting out dairy. Mira didn’t appreciate my self-deprecation. She said this wasn’t my fault, but how was it not? I had two college degrees, and I allowed myself to get blown up into a fantasy with a beautiful guy like a naive high-schooler. I had so much repenting to do that I couldn’t think straight.
None of that—none of it—could keep me from entering Gabriel’s number into my phone and sending him a text the second I got home. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I sent it, but it certainly wasn’t the lack of response I’d been met with. Part of me wanted to blame him for what happened to me and shout at him for ignoring me in spite of that. Two guys beat me to the point that I was more black and blue than my natural skin color, and he couldn’t even text me back?
Another piece of me knew why, knew that he was avoiding me because he’d already taken the blame on himself. I wished that I could look him in the face and tell him it wasn’t his fault, but would I be lying just to spend another few moments with him, or would we be too afraid to face the fact that we both ignored the inevitable in the interest of soaking up what we did to each other?
“Coffee.” Mira’s voice was sing-song as she walked into my kitchen, cradling a hot mug. She set it down in front of me and then pointed at me like a stern mother. “Hot.”
“Coffee typically is, Mir.” There was more bite in my voice than I intended to be there, so when she raised an eyebrow at me, I hummed, “Sorry.”
I brought the mug to my mouth anyway. It was already scalding against my lips as I set the mug there, but it was nothing compared to the way the coffee seared through my shirt and down to my skin when it sloshed out of my mug. My phone was buzzing in my lap, and the name I most wanted to see was flashing on it.
“Careful!” Mira screamed, having seen me jump, but it didn’t matter. I pulled my phone out of my lap and jumped up from my couch, despite the fiery pain. “Stacy! Be careful!”
I rushed into my lower-level half-bathroom, kicked the door shut, and sat on the toilet. I couldn’t press the lock with my only functioning hand holding my phone, so I opted for holding my foot against the bottom of the door.
I slid my phone to my ear after pressing the answer button. “Gabriel?”
“Stacy.” His voice sounded exhausted and strained. “Hi, baby.”
My heart broke. I couldn’t believe that I was going to have to end things. I loved him more than I loved myself, and just hearing his voice brought tears to my eyes. “Hi.”
“How bad is it?” he asked.
Mira started to pound against the door and scream my name, but I ignored her for the moment.
“What’s going on?” Gabriel asked, alarmed.
“It’s just Mira—Go away! I’m fine!—Sorry.”
“Do I even want to know how bad it is?” He asked.
“Just a couple of scratches,” I lied, and I knew that he knew I was lying.
“No broken bones?”
I leaned over just enough to peer into the mirror that hung on the back of the bathroom door. The corner of my left eye was totally swollen and dark, and my gray cast took up half my torso. “Nope. I got lucky.”
Gabriel let out a sigh of relief. “I’m glad. Stacy, I’m…I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry.” The thick distress in his voice let me know he hadn’t slept.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “You sound exhausted.”
Gabriel let out an exhausted scoff. “Some guys whoop your ass, and you’re worried about if I’m sleepy?” He chuckled. “You’re impossible.”
“You know, you’re not the first person who has told me that.”
Gabriel chuckled a little more, and it made me crack the first smile I had in two days.
“I can’t imagine why,” he grumbled.
“You never answered my question.”
“Which one?” he asked.
“Are you okay?”
“No, Stace. I am not okay.” He sighed. “I’m sorry to ask you this. Can you meet me at the hill?” There was a beat of hesitation. “If you want to meet in a more public place, that’s fine.”
“I’ll meet you there. When?”
Mira banged against the door. “You aren’t going anywhere!”
“I’m headed there now,” Gabriel replied.
I ignored Mira’s angry hisses. “I’ll leave now.”
“Okay. I lo…” His voice trailed off, and it was like stabbing a butcher knife into my chest. “See you soon.”
“Yeah.” Then the line went dead.
I pulled my foot away from the bathroom door, and Mira burst in. “I don’t know who you were talking to, but you’re no—”
I was sobbing in seconds. “I love him so much.”
Mira crouched in front of me and set her head in my lap. “I know, sweetie, but it’s not safe.”
I nodded. “I know. I have to see him, though. One more time. Just to say goodbye.” I looked up. “You can come with. I just…”
I’d filled Mira in on the story once I got home. There was no other option. She’s not an idiot, and after Gabriel pulled a gun on her, she started putting the pieces together. She started to think he was the one who hurt me, and I needed her to know it wasn’t him, so I had to come clean.
“He won’t hurt me.” I looked at her. “I promise.”
“Well, you can’t drive with one arm,” she grumbled. “Where are we going?”
Mira and I loaded into my car, and I gave her directions to the hill forty-five minutes outside of Philly that Gabriel had brought me to. Only after convincing Mira that the place had sentimental value and was safe despite it being a “perfect place to hide a dead body” did she ascend the thin dirt road until we saw Gabriel’s black truck parked in the worn spot from where his dad had parked his car hundreds of times before. Mira pulled into an untapped part of the grass to the truck’s right and parked.
“I’m not leaving,” she told me. “I’ll be right here, watching the whole thing. If you need anything, you throw that good arm in the air, and I’m out of this car, clawing his eyes out.”
“Thank you, but you won’t need to.” I kissed her cheek. “I won’t be long.”
Mira reached up and straightened the flower crown in my hair. I’d spent the past few hours making it from scratch—with Mira’s help—with the orchids Gabriel had bought me. “Take as much time as you need. I’ll be here.”
I gave her a nod and then used my operational hand to let myself out of the car. I walked through the evening air over to where the blanket was unfolded. Gabriel was sitting on top of it. The bottle of whiskey was already totally empty and laying discarded off to the side, and Gabriel had a knee kicked up, resting an arm against it as he looked out over the city. He had to have heard me approaching but didn’t move until I was settling onto the blanket next to him.
He looked over, and we both gasped simultaneously. He was no doubt gasping at the cast on my arm and sight of my eye-socket, and I was gasping at the swelled gash at the corner of his head and the bruise shining up his left eye.
“What happened?” I asked, touching the spot lightly.
“Me? You said you had no broken bones.”
“I lied.” I hurried to move us on from that. “What happened to your face?”
Gabriel closed his eyes and leaned up to meet the soft brush of my fingertips. “I got into a fight with Alessandro.” His eyes opened again, weary and sunken. “I don’t know what happened, Stace. I just…I lost it. I saw you in that hospital bed, and I don’t even remember what happened between that and me pointing a gun at his face.”
My jaw dropped. “You pulled a gun on Alessandro?”
“Things just got nastier and nastier. I turned it on Marco, too. Then Alessandro and I were fighting, then Marco had to pull guns on us both to break it up, then Luca and I were fighting, and then Luca was nasty to Molly.” He shook his head. “We were so fucking concerned with worrying about one of us turning into my dad that we all went and fucking did it.”
He put a hand on my cheek. “Look what happened to you because of it. I’m so sorry.”
Now it was me searching for more of his touch. I wanted to lean in. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted his arms around me to erase the feeling of those that held me down. I wanted to celebrate the love we’d uttered the last time we sat in this spot. There was so much I wanted that I couldn’t have. It created a lump in my throat that was growing exponentially by the second.
“I have a few things for you.” Gabriel pulled his hand away, and I didn’t complain, even though I wanted to. He reached behind him and brought over my laptop and purse. “Molly did it to protect me. She wanted to make it look like a break-in.”
“It worked,” I reported. “The police are looking for a smash and grab robber with a
penchant for beating up innocent women.”
He went to his side again and returned with a basket. It was full of orchids and had a few roses mixed in, and at the heart, there were a couple of boxes of chocolates and a card. He pointed at the card.
“Yeah, don’t read this here. I don’t know that I could…” He shook his head, and I could see tears poking at his eyes. “There’s a check in there, too. To cover your pain and suffering.”
“I can’t accept that.”
“Please, Stacy. I can’t just not…this is my fault.”
“It isn’t.”
“It is!” Tears started to roll down his face. “I’m so sorry for hurting you, baby. I wasn’t there to protect you. I’ll never forgive myself for this.”
He reached out for me but pulled his hand back. “I know that this has to be it.” The words were barely audible.
I gnawed on the inside of my cheek as my own emotions started to spill over.
“It has to be,” I whispered.
It looked like my saying that socked him in the face. It was as if he was expecting me to say otherwise. I wished more than anything that I could.
“I don’t… I can’t…” I sniffled in and let my words die. I couldn’t muster up anything that would make either of us feel better, so I just stopped.
“I love you,” Gabriel said, and it cut deep. “I always will. No matter what happens, never forget that.”
Tears dripped onto my chest and stained my dress there. “I lo—”
Gabriel held up a hand. “Don’t. Please don’t. I can’t. If I hear it…” He shook his head. “Tell me you hate me. Tell me you’ll never forgive me.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t tell him that. It wasn’t true. But I could respect him and not make it worse by saying I loved him, as well. It wouldn’t make a difference, anyway. Love wasn’t strong enough for us. As long as Gabriel was a Varasso, it wouldn’t be.
We sat in silence for so long that it felt like we may both start to grow weeds. We were stalling. The minute we left that hill, we were walking away from each other forever. Neither of us could make the first move. It was a good thing that Mira eventually climbed out of the car and poked her head around. Otherwise, we might have died up there. I imagined she’d been listening to the conversation and knew that it went dead some time ago.
