by Reed, Sophia
Bella nodded, satisfied. “Good.”
We entered the small, off-the-beaten-path deli we used to go to all the time as kids, ordered cups of coffee and sandwiches, and found our favorite table near the window. Bella reached across the table and took my hands into hers.
“Sweetie, I’m so sorry I missed Pop Pop’s funeral. My asshole boss said that unless it’s my grandfather, it’s no excuse to call out of work.” Her voice was low and cartoonish as she imitated her boss.
I shook my head. “It’s okay. Honestly, I wouldn’”t have subjected anyone to that. Everyone in Philly was there.”
Bella raised an eyebrow. “Including Alessandro? My chest contracted at his name, and I could feel my face warming. Bella giggled. “Oh, I’ll take that as a yes.”
“I totally started to have a meltdown, and he came over and fixed everything. He was so much sweeter and caring than I remember, and then at the end of the night, he asked me out.”
“Tell me you said yes,” Bella groaned when I bit my bottom lip. “Why not? You’re obviously still in love with him. He’d probably move to be with you. You’re adults now, and distance shouldn’t be such an issue.”
I’d purposely kept Bella out of my family’s dealings with the Varassos. When I broke up with Alessandro, I told her that we broke up because I was leaving for school, and the distance was going to make it too hard to date. At the time, it helped that I was still very much in love with Alessandro because it made it more believable that we had a reluctant breakup, but now, it was perfectly normal for Bella to suggest I should see Alessandro again. Any normal best friend would.
“I don’t see myself leaving Cali, and I don’t see him leaving Philly, so what’s the point?” I picked and pulled at a napkin on the table.
Bella stared at me through suspicious eyes and raised eyebrows. “Okay, out with it.”
I looked up at her. “Out with what?”
“I always knew you were keeping something from me about him, and now you’re lying straight to my face.”
I shook my head. “I’m not.”
“You are. You didn’t have any plans to move to California, and then all of a sudden, you decided to apply for school there and left without so much as an explanation. You graduated from college, like, two years ago, and your job can be done from anywhere in the world. If you love Alessandro and you could stay here and be with him, why wouldn’t you?”
I could see in Bella’s face that I couldn’t hide the truth anymore. Apparently, it’d been stupid to think I could, to begin with. “All right, we’re adults now, so I can say what I couldn’t say to you as a kid.”
“Okay?”
I looked over one shoulder, then the other, and then leaned across the table toward her. “Alessandro isn’t any guy. He’s one of four brothers who run a major crime syndicate deeply seeded in all of Pennsylvania. There isn’t one thing they do that’s legal. They’re the reason my dad got arrested.”
Bella’s eyes widened. “I thought he was falsely accused?”
I thought back to the day my father was arrested. He was sitting and waiting for the cops to arrive at a blood-soaked scene where a man had been brutally murdered. The police assumed it wasn’t my father, that he was covering for the Varassos, who were known to have a rivalry with the victim, but when they questioned my father, he was tight-lipped. Not only did he not give up any names about who had actually murdered the man in question, but he pled guilty to the crime. He told my mom and the police that he’d done it all by himself, even despite the mountain of evidence that suggested otherwise. By taking responsibility for the crime, not only did he keep the Varassos out of trouble, but he ensured no one else could be charged with that murder. I knew my dad didn’t kill that man; he wasn’t a murderer. He took the fall for the Varassos to protect them, even at the sacrifice of his own family. Someone died that day, but it wasn’t the man the Varassos murdered; it was my father. My dad left my house that morning, but the man who went to prison for them was no more than a willing sacrifice for the Varassos’ greed and violence.
“He was,” I said finally, “he was willing to be. To protect them.”
“So, that’s why you never went to visit him?” Bella’s face hardened. “I’m so sorry.”
“That’s why things with Alessandro and I can never work out. He’s a reminder of what his family did to mine. When I left for school, I asked him to come with me, and he told me he could never leave his family. So that was it for us. If he was willing to be loyal to the people who’d taken my father from me, then he obviously didn’t really love me.” Tears started streaming down my face without warning. “I want to see you and spend a little more time with Ricky, and then get back to where this stuff doesn’t exist. There’s nothing for me here.”
Bella placed her hand on top of mine. “I understand.”
The rest of our meal was a bit more somber than I had intended it to be. Bella tried to keep the conversation light by talking about her family, the silly dates she’d been on in the time since I’d seen her last, and just about anything she could think of to try and keep a smile on my face. I wasn’t unappreciative of her efforts, but speaking so candidly about how the Varassos had ruined my life had killed my spirit. We parted ways with a promise to talk more frequently, and then I made my way back to my mother’s house. I still had no interest in spending any time with her, but it was where Ricky lived as well, so I was willing to endure it to spend a few more hours with him before heading back to California.
My rideshare pulled up in front of the huge, white brick and terracotta-roofed manor, and my jaw dropped.
The driver looked out the window and let out a hollow whistle. “Wow, is this your place? Looks like you have a secret admirer.”
I climbed out of the car with my mouth still hanging open. The entire front courtyard to my mother’s manor was blanketed with bouquets of white roses, my favorite flower. I could barely see the front door. I stepped carefully on the only available pathway up to the door and walked inside. Ricky was standing there with a large, silly grin on his face, his hand already outstretched with a card inside.
I didn’t need to open it to know who it was from, but I opened it anyway. My heart raced, in a confusing and upsetting blend of frustration and anticipation.
* * *
Willow —
I know that you likely still haven’t forgiven me for what’s happened with us in the past, so forgive this foolish man for asking an even more foolish question.
Will you have dinner with me?
— Sandro
6
Alessandro
My meetings were bleeding into one another, so much so I was losing track of who I was talking to. High-ranking members of the organization may as well have been grunts for how much I was paying attention. My mind was at a manor in a Philly suburb, wondering what Willow’s response to my request for dinner was going to be.
I never expected seeing her again to be as difficult as it was. My stomach was still trying to unknot itself. Did I know what I was going to say to her if she agreed? Of course not. I was just as likely to sit down at dinner and treat her like a business associate as I was to run in, drop to my knees, and beg her to take me back. I was a trailer park, and Willow was a towering tornado. There was no way to know what would hold to the ground and what would go flying into the sky. She made me feel out of control and grounded at the same time.
“Mr. Varasso?” I snapped to attention, noticing that one of my henchmen was standing in my office with a look of concern on his face. “You good, Boss?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” I shuffled some of the papers on my desk from one side to the other, pretending I was doing something of importance.
“Because I asked you for the blueprints for the new Tarot House, and you handed me your lunch receipt.” He held up the receipt to prove it.
I snatched the receipt from him before flipping papers over, looking for the blueprints in question. “Why don’t
you get them from Luca?”
“He’s out of town, sir. He’s visiting the expansion in—”
“Baltimore. Right, sorry.” I had the blueprints. Where the hell did they go? I continued to shove papers all around until I accidentally tipped over the glass of water I had, sending it washing over the papers and drenching them. “Shit!”
The henchman rushed from the room. “I’ll go get a towel.”
I had to get it together. I still had a business to run, and with Marco gone, and Luca out of town, and Gabriel being Gabriel, it was up to me. If I could get a few minutes alone with Willow, I was certain I could talk myself out of the funhouse I was in. I needed her to know that I still loved her and probably always would. I needed her to know that I’d regretted my decision ever since I made it. Seeing Marco fall in love and find a way to be happy with his wife, it made me realize that I sacrificed my own happiness for something that was always crumbling. That’s all the life was, using a small bucket to toss out water while more and more holes break the helm. One day, I was going to drown. We all were. Luca had found Molly, but what did I have? My dad was here one day, and then, in the blink of an eye, he was gone. What did he have to show for his legacy? Four sons, most of whom had ambivalent feelings toward him, a wife, deceased, and a slew of enemies on a bloodthirsty trail that didn’t stop with him. Did my dad take his final breath feeling like his life had been worth it? Something told me, probably not.
“You made a mess.” Gabriel rounded the corner into my office with a towel in his hands. He started pulling papers out of the deepest puddles on the table and setting the towel down. “I just passed Johnson, and he said you were a wreck. What’s going on?”
“I sent flowers to Willow.” Even as the notion left my lips, my soul abandoned my body, knowing it was cursed to a life of idiocy.
Gabriel lifted the cup off the table and set it to the side. “What like a dozen or something?”
I reflected back on myself having pressed the send button on the order of a hundred and fifty dozen roses like it was a marvelous idea. “Or something.”
“Why? I thought you decided to wait for her to call you after giving her your card.”
My eyes narrowed at Gabriel. “I didn’t invite you in here to remind me of my past decisions.”
“Technically, you didn’t invite me.” He snickered. “Sorry. What did she say?”
I sat back in my chair, my eyes finding the ceiling in the hopes that the most recent wallpapering contained some sort of magical ability to solve my problems. “I don’t know. I haven’t heard from her yet.”
“When did you send them?”
“I ordered them last night to be delivered this morning.” I imagined Willow waking up this morning, seeing the flowers, and being so blown away that she would call me immediately and agree to see me. In the same fantasy, she told me she loved me and wanted me to take her to the nearest hotel. Neither version of Willow had manifested as the afternoon sun started to crawl it’s way back toward the horizon. “Her lack of an answer is probably a no, right?”
Gabriel poked his bottom lip out and to the side. “Probably, bro. I’m sorry.”
I did have Willow’s number. She’d changed it the day she left for California, but Ricky gave me her new one. He made me promise not to pressure Willow into anything, but he also believed we were made for each other. I’d planned not to use it. I already made a pitch to her, twice now, and if she wanted to see me, she knew how to get a hold of me, and where I lived, for that matter. I wasn’t so weak-minded that I would allow someone to continue rejecting me. The ball was in her court.
But her smile filled my mind, pressuring me to call her like a little red devil on my right shoulder. I was drawn to Willow now more than I was when we were together. I could chalk it up to seeing her again after so long, but in reality, I’d barely managed to force the part of me that breathed for her into a suitcase and get the zipper closed. When I looked into those crystal pools of hers again, it was like taking a bolt cutter to that zipper. Emotions flung out like snakes out of a prank can.
I opened my computer and navigated to Willow’s social media page. “If I was going to buy her something else, what would I buy her?”
“You’re going to buy her something else?” Gabriel finished cleaning up the mess I’d neglected and started taking pictures of the soaked papers with his camera phone, likely to salvage the information before the ink ran and it was illegible. “What’s the point?”
“I want to show her what she’d be missing by not giving me another chance.” I scrolled through her pictures, many of them with an actress that I recognized from a few big action flicks. Willow was the actress’s buyer. “She’s in the fashion industry now. What do people in the fashion industry want?”
Gabriel sat on the couch against the eastern wall, crossing one leg over the other. “Uh, clothes?”
“No, something they typically can’t afford right away at the beginning. You know, like when Molly first got here, and Luca bought her those outrageously expensive knives because it was something she’d always wanted as a chef and couldn’t afford? What do fashion buyers want?”
“Fuck, I don’t know, Sandro. Do I look like I’m dressin’ up chicks for red carpets over here?”
I couldn’t keep from laughing. If only he talked like that more, he might not be half-bad at his job. “I need to Google it.”
“Just get her jewelry. Chicks love jewelry.” Gabriel was staring at me like it was that simple, and I was an idiot for missing it.
“Willow’s deeper than that. She wants something meaningful. Like, I sent her roses, but I sent her white ones because I know they’re her favorites.”
A small knock on my door yanked my attention. One of the housekeepers, Marina, was standing in the doorway, sweating like she was about to give birth. “S-sir. I’m sorry to tell you, but a truck just arrived with about a million white roses in it. The driver said they were paid to pick them up and bring them back to the sender.”
I gritted my teeth together, something I tended to do when I was irritated. “Thanks, Mari. Give him a couple hundred to dump ‘em.”
She nodded and disappeared from sight so fast she left a plume of cartoon smoke behind her. The housekeepers hated bringing my dad bad news because he had an awful temper that he tended to take out on whoever was closest. Luca had inherited this trait, and though it wasn’t as strong before my dad died, once he took over, it rivaled the old man’s, if not surpassed it.
“Sorry, Sandro. I wish it could have worked out. I know you—”
“Does she think I’m some sort of weakling?” I asked, cutting Gabriel off.
“What?”
“She thinks she can send them back? Does she not know who she’s dealing with?” I returned to my computer. “I’ll show her.”
My afternoon then became a game of cat and mouse. I started by sending Willow several yards of some fabric the internet said was in style. She at least had the courtesy to sew the ends of the rolls together before sending them back to me. Then I sent an expensive camera, complete with over one hundred attachments designed to give any fashionista a reason to click! She returned the camera to me with a single picture on it, Ricky’s bare ass as he changed into a pair of swim trunks. Gabriel found that particularly funny until I told him if he didn’t get the fuck out of my office, I was going to punch him in the throat. On his way out, he told me to go with jewelry, which I did, sending her a fourteen karat diamond necklace. She returned it to me untouched; she hadn’t even taken the box out of the bag that it was gift wrapped in.
It started out as a genuine gesture to try and get her to see me and turned into a childish attempt to prove to her that she was missing something by not being with me. I was wrapping money around pebbles and chucking them at her window, but she was not opening the curtains. In fact, she’d turned the light off. By the early evening, I was so annoyed that I could have started spitting fire. I picked up my phone and called Ricky.
> The line clicked on with Ricky on the other end, laughing already. “Hey, man. What’s coming next? A car?”
“Shut up. Did you have anything to do with that picture?”
“What picture?” His voice got quiet, then he called, “Did you take a picture of me? Willow!” His voice returned to normal volume. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“Whatever. Look, I need you to leave the house.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m coming over.”
Ricky’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I really don’t think she wants to see you.”
That knocked all of the rage out of me in one fell swoop. That’s right. I was actually trying to accomplish something meaningful. One could argue it was my penchant for losing sight of the goal that lost me Willow in the first place. I needed to not make that mistake again.
“I have to see her,” I responded with all the sincerity I could muster. “I…” My heart started to crack again. “I have to tell her I love her. That’s it. I’m going to tell her one last time what she means to me, and if she rejects me after that, I’ll let her go.”
Ricky let out a sigh. “All right. Give me ten minutes.”
7
Willow
“Where are you going?”
Ricky and I had spent the majority of our day by the pool. Apart from being constantly interrupted by Alessandro’s incessant gifts, we were having a great time.
I didn’t realize Ricky had such an active dating life, given he’d pitched a tent far up the Varassos’s asses. Apparently, he’d come close to getting down on one knee for one woman until she discovered who he worked for and hit the bricks. Can’t say I blame her. Who would want to stick around knowing they could be raided or killed at any given moment? No one wanted to live that life, and I told Ricky so. As long as he stayed leashed to the Varassos, nothing but pain and loneliness were in his future.
