Ruthless Empire: A Dark Mafia Collection

by Seth Eden

  Denise’s eyes widened as much as my jaw. “Yeah!”

  “Stace.”

  “Cool!” Stacy replied. “I’ll get you a coupon from my bag. Hang on.”

  I watched in shock as Stacy skipped over to her bag and dipped into it. “Will you come back too?” My eyes shot back to Denise, who’d gotten even closer to me. “I’d love to see you—”

  The familiar click of a gun snapped through the air, and Denise nervously raised her hands in the air. I looked back over my shoulder, and relief flooded over me. Stacy was standing in front of her bag with a black pistol held out in front of her, the barrel trained on Denise.

  “Willow, can you call the guys please?” Her sunny expression was gone, leaving only blood-dripping malice in its place. “We’re going to have to find out why our friend Denise knows so much.”

  7

  Alessandro

  Sleeping in the bed that smelled like Willow was as close as I could get to sleeping in it with her. I never got a ton of sleep during my afternoon naps, but an hour or two could make me feel like a new person, at least for a few hours. I stretched my arms as I unfurled my body. I briefly wondered if I could snipe a pillow from the bed and use it on the couch, but it wouldn’t hold Willow’s smell there for long, so there was almost no point. Once I was under a blanket and trying to fall asleep on the couch, I was held awake by the reminder that I’d managed to cost myself the best thing that ever had, anyway.

  I cursed at myself until I managed to pull myself away from the embrace of the blankets and pillows. I grabbed my pants from where they hung over the top of the antique oak dresser and pulled them over my legs. My button-up and tie were on the floor, where I’d thrown them after trying and failing to seduce Willow into bed with me, and my jacket was out on the couch, so I collected the items one by one and redonned them. I could see translucent beads of rain hanging onto the window pane, so I expected she would be sitting on the couch, but she wasn’t there. I begged my mind not to panic. She was likely just wandering the house or enjoying the summer rain from a dry place outside.

  I walked out of the suite and went down to the back door leading out to the garden first. Just outside the door, there was a shallow cement patio with a couple of chairs under an overhang. I peeked to both sides, expecting to see Willow, but she wasn’t there. I went back up to the top floor and started to walk the hallways, listening for voices or any sign of Willow. When none appeared, I headed down to the second floor and did the same lap. When I didn’t see her on that floor, either, I couldn’t convince my brain not to panic anymore. It wasn’t like her to go somewhere without me, and the main floor of our estate was where a majority of the rest of the family hung out, and her being with them without me was even less likely.

  Still, I bolted down to the main floor and started to call out Willow’s name. “Willow?” I ran through our living room and entertainment room, past both bathrooms and the library. “Willow!”

  “Sandro.” I shot my head around, and Gabriel was standing behind me.

  “I can’t find Willow,” I told him, slightly embarrassed at how truly desperate and lost I sounded.

  “It’s all right, man. She’s with Stacy. We convinced her to give yoga a try.” He walked in and set his hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay, man. She’s fine. Stacy texted me about thirty minutes ago and said it’s going great.”

  My heart was thundering in my chest like a stampede of horses. I had really and truly panicked when I couldn’t find her. Waking up and not knowing where she was in the world was a gut punch I wasn’t ready for. The terrible way I felt when she broke up with me and left for college came back. I was a wreck for months afterward, and never really got back to something normal until she came back to Philly and we got back together. How was I going to handle being split up from her for good, knowing there was no going back? My brain and stomach started to twist in on themselves at the thought.

  “Jesus, Alessandro.” I looked up, and Gabriel was staring back at me wide-eyed. “It’s okay.” He rubbed my back. “Everything is fine. Do you think we’d let something happen to her? I mean, Stacy, Kelly, Molly—they’re one thing. They’re our wives, and we’d protect them with everything in us, but Willow, she grew up with us, man. She’s family. Dad would turn over if he thought we let something happen to her. Relax.”

  I nodded, deciding that it was best to let Gabriel think that the total source of my anguish was not knowing where Willow was for that moment.

  “Come on,” he said. “You need a beer. The guys and Molly are in the kitchen.”

  He started to pull me, but I resisted. “They don’t want to see me.”

  “Did I say I cared what they wanted?” He pulled. “Come on.”

  I relented the second time, mostly because I didn’t have the energy to do anything else. All of the life my nap had given me was sapped from my body in the blink of an eye. We walked back through the foyer and into the kitchen, where, exactly as he’d said, Marco, Luca, and Molly were sitting around the birch kitchen table. Luca and Molly were working on beers, and it looked like Marco had a glass of tea.

  Marco smiled when he noticed Gabriel pull me in. “Hey there, pal. Had a little freakout?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t like it when she’s not here when I wake up.”

  Luca opened his mouth, and Marco eyed him nervously.

  “I get it,” Luca said. “Mol used to have to leave notes when she’d get up to deal with the kids and stuff. If I couldn’t find her immediately when I woke up, my mind shot to panic. It’s this life.”

  “Some days, Kelly would get out of bed to pee or something, especially once she got into the pregnancy. I’d shoot up and grab my gun, convinced it was someone dragging her out.” He motioned to an open chair. “Come on in.”

  I looked at Luca and Molly, but they both looked back at me with neither welcoming nor hateful stares, so I took it for as much an approval as I was gonna get and sat down. Gabriel went to the fridge and pulled out a couple of beers, popped them both open, and set one in front of me.

  “Did you guys really convince her to go to yoga?” I asked.

  “It was kind of a group effort, but I think Molly was the nail,” Gabriel replied, settling into a chair opposite me.

  “That’s doubly shocking,” I admitted.

  Molly shrugged. “I knew it’d do her some good.”

  “She didn’t want to go,” Gabriel explained. “Said she didn’t want to leave without you, but we told her we’d look out for you.”

  I took a sip of my beer before growling, “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  Gabriel scoffed. “Because the last few times you were left alone, you were totally fine?” I rolled my eyes at him and opened my mouth to retort, but he cut me off. “Besides. It’s not about that for Willow. She’s just a good wife and doesn’t like not being by your side.”

  I wondered if that was true. My family didn’t know the depth of our issues, certainly not that we weren’t technically together right now, so it was only fair that Gabriel thought that to be the case. I knew that Willow found me to be a chore, a difficult part of her life that she was ready to get over with and put behind her. She thought I had mental health issues that I couldn’t control, so mostly, she stayed by me for everyone else’s protection. Then there were times like earlier that day when she’d stood up to Luca for me that made me think she was just an until-the-end-of-the-world kind of woman. I honestly didn’t know what she was thinking half the time.

  “Are you hungry?” Molly asked, and I didn’t respond. I assumed she wasn’t talking to me. “Sandro,” she growled. “Are you hungry?”

  I looked over at her, slightly surprised. “Oh, yeah.”

  “I made calzones.”

  “They were so good,” Gabriel whined.

  I nodded. “Sure, are they in the fridge?”

  “I got it.” Molly started to stand, but Luca grabbed her arm.

  Marco tapped his glass on the table a couple of t
imes, earning him a glare from Luca, but still causing Luca to release Molly. Molly stood up from the table, went over to the fridge, and a few minutes later, I could hear her messing with the microwave.

  “I was gonna get it,” I said to Luca.

  “Then you should have,” Luca hissed back.

  “Knock it off,” Marco said. “No fighting at the table.”

  It was a rich sentiment coming from Marco, who had engaged in more than one fight at the table, many of them with the rule’s creator, our father. One of the last times I’d heard the rule uttered, it was on the cusp of a fight between my dad and Luca. It wasn’t long after that the Binachis pulled a hit on my dad, ending his life.

  The Binachis claimed that my dad stole money from them but could never provide anything to substantiate that claim. No matter how much Luca and Marco hated my dad, no matter how much Gabriel and I idolized him for the wrong reasons, we all agreed on one thing—he wasn’t a thief. My dad worked his ass off for everything he had, and he didn’t play by the rules—no one in our business did—but to throw away an alliance with a rival family over money when he had more than one lucrative business just didn’t make sense. We might never know the truth with Donovan and Dante gone, and even if Dario knew the truth, he wouldn’t be able to breathe long enough to tell us once we found him, so the reality was probably already far beyond us.

  Marco swatted the back of my head. “Stop it. Don’t dwell on the past. There’s nothing we can do to change it.” Molly set a plate down in front of me with a heavenly smelling calzone sitting on top. “There. Eat your lunch.”

  If I wasn’t starving and exhausted from my panic attack, I might have told Marco not to talk to me like a child, but I didn’t want to argue. Instead, I listened and dug into my calzone, even though it was hot to the touch and probably going to burn my tongue. I chased scathing bites with my chilly beer and sat in peaceful silence with my brothers while I ate.

  Maybe it was Molly’s food that had always had a penchant for patching wounds, or maybe it was just that all of my brothers were sitting at the kitchen table for the first time in years, but I was happy.

  “So…” I broke the silence. “How are you guys doing?”

  Gabriel was drinking his beer and choked on it when he laughed. “What?”

  “What?” I asked as Marco and Luca joined in. “I can ask how you’re doing. Dicks.”

  Even Molly giggled next to me. It was an oddly normal moment for the always chaotic Varasso family.

  “You really wanna know?” Marco asked.

  I gave a noncommittal shrug. “I wouldn’t have asked, otherwise.”

  “Okay, well, I’m pretty good. I mean, considering. Obviously, I wish I were with Kelly, but it’s kind of nice being around here with you guys again.”

  “Did you pick out names yet?” Molly asked.

  “Oh, yeah!” He leaned forward excitedly. “We’re sticking with the A-theme, obviously, so if it’s a girl, Athena, and if it’s a boy, Apollo.”

  “Oh, I love Apollo,” Molly whined. “I hope it’s a boy. Antonio needs another boy around.”

  “I don’t know how you do it. Waiting to find out, I mean,” Gabriel chimed in. “I want to know as soon as we can.”

  All eyes shot to Gabriel, but it was Luca who asked the question. “Are you and Stace…”

  “Oh, no, not yet, but we’ve talked about it, and we’ve decided that we don’t want to wait too long. I mean, obviously, we want to wait until all this is over, but once we’re all settled and comfortable in Maine, I think we’ll start trying.”

  “That’s exciting,” I said.

  “What about you two?” Gabriel asked. “Luca and Molly have two, Marco and Kelly have two. When are you guys popping out another little Varasso?”

  “I’m surprised they haven’t already,” Luca said.

  Marco nodded. “Me too, actually.”

  I couldn’t tell them the truth, that Willow and I had been having problems since not long after Alexis was born and that we’d probably be divorced before deeds were finalized in Maine. “I don’t know. Willow’s kind of stressed out right now. It wouldn’t be good for the baby.”

  “That’s true,” Marco said somewhat sadly.

  “But what about when we’re all done?” Gabriel asked. “You two won’t have nearly as much to worry about, and you could focus on expanding.”

  I chuckled awkwardly and noticed Luca’s eyes slid over at me.

  “You good?” he asked.

  “I’m good,” I responded, but it was clear in his gaze that he didn’t believe me. “I’m happy for all of you guys,” I said, hoping to change the subject. “I promise we’re gonna end this soon so that we can all get on with our lives.”

  Luca didn’t push, and everyone else seemed to find peace in the thought of putting the business in our rearview. A rare, harmonious quiet fell around us. We engaged in a little bit more idle chatter until my phone finally rang. I pulled it out of my pocket and answered it immediately at the sight of the name on the caller ID.

  “Hey.”

  “Hi. Are you with your brothers?” Willow asked.

  I looked around at all of them. “Yeah, my brothers are right here. Molly, too.” They stopped and looked at me at the mention of them. “Is everything okay?”

  “Well…”

  Panic bulldozed through me again. “Willow, what’s wrong? What happened?”

  “I’m okay. Stacy’s okay. Stacy’s more than okay, she’s a badass, so we’re fine, but we need you to come to the studio.”

  “What happened at the studio?”

  Gabriel sat up straight, his eyes wide with fear. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a woman here. Just bring your brothers and Molly.”

  I nodded. “We’re on the way.” Everyone started to move immediately.

  “Oh, Sandro?”

  “Yeah?”

  Willow sighed. “Come armed. We definitely have a problem.”

  8

  Alessandro

  My brothers wanted to drive to the studio together, but they were taking too long. When Marco went to his gun locker, I abandoned all hope that they were going to move with the urgency I needed them to and ran to my car on my own. I hopped into the driver’s seat and jumped a little at my passenger’s door opening.

  Gabriel climbed in and looked at me. “I agree. They’re moving way too fucking slow.”

  I didn’t respond, nor did I need to. Stacy was the other one there with Willow, and even though she’d long since proved she could take care of herself, Gabriel was likely just as panicked as I was. I started my car, and it screeched against the road as I burned rubber getting out of the driveway. Gabriel shouted shortcut directions at me as we sped through the streets of Philly until we were finally pulling up in front of Stacy’s studio. We were barely parked before we were both out of the car and stepping quickly to the door.

  We opened it, and I followed Gabriel through the abandoned front room into a glass-enclosed studio. There was a woman with black hair in a chair with Stacy standing in front of her, pointing a gun directly at her face. Willow was standing back against the wall perpendicular to the door, and a wave of visible relief rushed over her when she saw me.

  “Sandro.” Her voice calling out to me was like the pull of a strong rubber band. I completely ignored Stacy and her hostage in the interest of running over to Willow to make sure she was okay.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked, my eyes already scanning her form for signs of unrest.

  “I’m okay,” Willow replied. “I was actually having a really relaxing time before all of this. I like yoga. It helps a lot. I’d like to keep doing it.”

  “Then I think you should,” I responded, running a hand through Willow’s hair and smiling when she didn’t resist.

  She nodded. “I think so, too. Maybe not here, though.” She looked over at Stacy and the woman in the chair. “Although I don’t think I’ll ever feel unsafe around Stacy again. She’s a mons
ter. I didn’t expect it from our resident hippy.”

  “Holistic person,” Stacy responded. She didn’t like the word hippy, less for the word’s actual meaning and more for the stereotypes it carried.

  “Well, she’s a ride-or-die type of woman, just like all of the Varasso wives. We all got pretty lucky,” I said. Willow eyed me, but instead of her usual discomfort with my tendency to continue talking to her like we were happy and in love, she had warmth behind her eyes.

  The door to the studio opened, and Gabriel and I immediately pulled our guns and pointed at the door. Luca, Molly, and Marco came walking in, and we relaxed. Luca turned and locked the door to the studio while Marco, the Varasso’s muscle, pulled his own gun and trained it on Denise without hesitation. I took my first real look at the woman in the chair then. She had long, black hair hanging over her shoulders and down her back and lavender eyes, and she seemed oddly calm for the situation. It seemed like Willow and Stacy were right to suspect something was up. Anyone who could sit calmly with two guns pointed in her face after being taken into custody by a ruthless yoga instructor wasn’t a run-of-the-mill citizen.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “After Stacy introduced me to her class, Denise here called herself a Varasso fangirl. She knew exactly who Stacy and I were and about Kelly being pregnant.” Willow said and eyed me with venom in her eyes. “She asked about Alexis…by name.”

  My blood boiled at the thought. If she was subtly trying to threaten my daughter, I’d be hard-pressed to let her out of that yoga studio with her life.

  “She knows about Harpswell, too.”

  “What?” Luca growled, and then his hand went to his waist, where he pulled out his gun and cocked it on Denise, as well. “How do you know that?”

  Marco’s finger was flexing on the trigger of his gun. “She’s too much of a risk, regardless. Please let me neutralize it.”