A Famiglia Christmas

by Daniels, A. J.

  "Well, hopefully, everyone comes back in one piece this year," Bri says, settling back in her seat with her hands cupped around her mug. We all agree.

  “So, who’s up for manis and pedis?” Jess asks, wiping the remnants of a cookie from Cameron’s mouth and fingers.

  We finish up our coffees and pastries and head over to the salon next door. Thankfully, Nico fell asleep in his stroller almost as soon as I put him down and he sleeps straight through our appointment. Kai agreed to watch Cameron and take him to see Santa so that Jess could get her nails done. When the two of them come back, Cameron has a big grin on his face and a sucker clenched in his fist while Kai looks like he’s upset.

  "Everything okay?" I ask him while reaching for my wallet so I can pay for the appointment.

  “Oh yeah,” Kai nods. “Good. Great.”

  I eye him, not believing him for a second. Jess joins me a couple minutes later; Cameron having gone over to help Brielle pick out a color for her toes. With both of us eyeing him, Kai shifts his weight from one foot to the other and back again before finally giving in.

  “Okay, fine. I’m pretty sure Santa pinched my butt,” he leans in to whisper so that everyone in the salon doesn’t hear him.

  “What?” I laugh. “Santa did not pinch your ass.”

  Kai scoffs like he’s offended. “Are you saying I don’t have a pinchable ass, Mrs. De Luca?”

  “I am not touching that comment.”

  “What was your ass doing within pinchable distance anyway?” Jess asks. Good point.

  “Cameron was a little freaked out when he was sitting on Santa’s lap so I went over to reassure him and try to make him laugh so that the photographer could get a good shot. I had just turned around to get out of the frame and swear to God, I felt him pinch my ass.” He covers his face with his palms and groans. “I’m scarred for life. Santa is supposed to be holly jolly. Not an ass pincher.”

  Jess laughs, “obviously you haven’t seen Bad Santa.”

  “What?” Kai drops his hands, his eyes going wide.

  “Yup, he swears, and drinks and I believe he even gets arrested and has sex,” she adds, and we watch as Kai’s expression goes from scared to truly horrified.

  “You take that back. Santa is kind, and funny and only drinks milk and eats cookies.”

  Jess and I both burst into fits of laughter, ignoring the looks from the nail techs and other customers.

  "Screw you guys, I was traumatized." Kai huffs spinning on his heel and pushes out of the salon.

  Best girls’ day ever.

  Chapter 7

  Cooper

  “Coop!” I hear my dad calling for me, but I’m too focused on the kid holding Lil’s hand. “Cooper!” My dad yells again.

  "What?" I snap without thinking and wince, immediately feeling like the worst son on the planet.

  “What’s up with you today? You’re usually the first one down the hill,” Dad says, coming to a stop beside me. “Whatcha looking at?”

  I nod over in Lil’s direction. “Lil fell. I was going to go help her up but…”

  “Who’s that?”

  I shrug, shoving my gloved hands into the pockets of my snowboarding jacket. “Some random kid. He beat me over there. Why is he even still holding her hand? She’s six for god sakes!” Something hits the back of my helmet. “Ow!” I look over at my dad and he’s scowling. “You and the other adults swear all the time.”

  “Doesn’t mean you can or should,” he says. Then adds, “at least not out in public,” under his breath.

  I roll my eyes and go back to watching the kid with Lil. Soon Dylan and Skylar are sliding up on my other side.

  “Who’s the weirdo with Lil?” Sky asks, flipping his goggles up to sit on his helmet.

  My dad mumbles something about us growing up too fast but he turns around and goes back to where my uncles are waiting behind us. A grin spreads across my face as I turn to my two best friends.

  “Want to have some fun?” I ask, and one by one the twins nod their agreement, their grins matching my own.

  I take off toward Lil and don’t stop until I’m sliding right in the middle of her and the kid, I kick my board up a little so that it sprays powdered snow up his front and forces him to take a couple steps back.

  “Hey!”

  I ignore him and focus on the girl in front of me. “You okay?” I ask, taking her appearance in myself to make sure she’s in one piece.

  “That wasn’t very nice, Coop,” she says instead of answering my question. Her hands fly to her hips and her little face morphs into a frown.

  “We’re just looking out for you, Lil,” Skylar says, throwing an arm around her shoulders.

  “Yeah,” Dylan adds. “What kind of big brothers would we be if we didn’t look out for you.”

  Lil turns her scowl on D. “You’re two months older than me. And also, none of you,” she points a stern glove at each of us. “are my brother.”

  Dylan grins. “Which makes us older,” he answers, totally ignoring the second half of her argument. The four of us may not be related by blood but we’re closer than any siblings.

  She rolls her eyes at him. I shove Skylar back, and take one of Lil’s gloved hands in mine, tugging her along with me as we rejoin our dads.

  “Alright,” my dad says, putting his phone back in his snowboarding jacket and zipping up the pocket. “We have time to get a few more runs in before we have to head back down for lunch.”

  “If you get done before anyone else, meet at the chair lifts,” Lil’s dad says, before snapping his own goggles in place over his eyes.

  I grin. This is one of the reasons why I love this family. They don’t baby us. Well, except for Liliana because she’s the only girl, but it’s almost like an unspoken agreement that Lil will probably stick with Skylar, Dylan, and me for the rest of the day. As long as the four of us are together, they’re not super worried about us breaking off. It could have something to do with the type of work all of our dads do too. I heard my dad use the word Famiglia in his office a couple weeks ago, but when I looked it up, it said it meant Family so whatever that means. But from what I overheard, no one messes with our family, and we all are family.

  I turn to face Lil and reach up to adjust her goggles in place. “Ready?” I ask, which is such a stupid question. Guessing from the way her cheeks are squished up, she has a huge smile on her face. Lil is as much of an adrenaline junkie as I am, even at six-years-old.

  This kid has been able to keep up with me ever since last year when we went on our first snowboarding trip. Lil’s dad got us all season passes so we could go up to Dagmar every weekend, and we did. Snowboarding in the winter, BMX biking, skateboarding, and downhill mountain biking in the summer. Our dads took us to Whistler last summer and Lil was the youngest kid biking down the mountain. Her dad almost grounded us both when he found out I took her down the downhill trail instead of along the cross-country trail.

  He was none too pleased when I reminded him that he couldn’t ground me because I wasn’t his kid. My dad had yanked me out of that conversation so fast it was almost funny. Mom and dad made me apologize to Uncle Braxton and Aunt Klara, but I didn’t really mean it. Lil had so much fun. Plus, she was the one who begged me to take her down that damn mountain in the first place. I would always take the fall for her, though. Always.

  The four of us do a few runs but before we can get another chair to take us back up, Lil tugs on my arm.

  “I’m tired, Coop,” she says on a yawn, her helmet and goggles already tucked under her arm.

  “Okay,” I say, removing my own and then reach out a hand to smooth down her wild blonde hair.

  Skylar, Dylan and I wait with Lil at the bottom by the chair lifts.

  “I need to pee!” Lil complains after a few minutes of waiting and when I look over she’s already doing her pee dance.

  “Can’t you wait?” I ask, looking back up the slopes to see if I can spot the grownups yet.

  �
�No,” she says and before I can answer her, she takes off for one of the bathrooms.

  “Go after her. We’ll wait,” Sky says, lifting his chin in the direction Lil ran off to.

  I take off after her and make it just in time to see her coming back out. The pee dance nowhere in sight.

  "Feel better?" I ask. Lil grins and nods then links her hand through mine. We begin the walk back to the twins when she tugs on our connection. I glance over to see what she wants and that's when I notice two big men dressed in black on us. One has grabbed Lil under her arms and is hauling her back against him and the other launches at me, but I jump out of the way and reach for Lil.

  A few people nearby try to intervene but then the man who has Lil whips out a gun and presses it against the side of her head. He demands that everyone back off, and they do. Wimps. If our dads were here this asshole would already be dead. The man behind me grabs me and throws me over his shoulder. I start kicking and pounding my fists into his back, but it does nothing.

  As we move closer to the vehicle, I catch a movement out of the corner of my eye and when I lift my head to see what it was, the same kid who was talking to Lil earlier up on the mountain is half hidden behind a tree. A smirk painted across his face. They shove us into the back of a black car and get in on either side of us, and then we're speeding off.

  Chapter 8

  Cooper

  “Coop, I’m scared,” Lil whines, shuffling closer to me.

  “I know, Lil. I’m going to get us out of here, okay?” I put an arm around her and pull her closer into my side, kissing the top of her head.

  The room they stuck us in is cold and dark. It’s so dark that I can barely see my hand in front of my face or Lil sitting beside me. When I tried feeling around earlier, it felt like there was nothing in the room except for the mattress on the floor we both woke up on. There’s one window up high on one of the walls but there’s barely any light coming in from it.

  “Do you think our dads are out there looking for us?”

  “Sure, they are, Lil. I bet they’re searching the entire town for us right now,” I say, hoping I sound more convincing than I feel. I have no doubt that our dads will search high and low for us, but if they find us… that’s another thing.

  “Coop?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry you have to spend your birthday like this.”

  “It’s okay, Lil. I’m with you.” I give her another squeeze and lean my head back against the wall, ignoring the cold. Truth is, this isn’t all that different from the birthday’s I spent at home before the Ferrara’s adopted me and Cameron.

  We lived in a shitty apartment above a whore house. We didn't have any heat and barely any food because our mom decided that feeding her addiction was more important than feeding her kids. Cameron was barely older than a newborn. I tried as best as I could to take care of him but, I was eight I didn't know anything about taking care of a baby. And then the Ministry of Children and Family Services came and took us away. The night we spent in the center was the first night I was warm in a very long time. And then Jessika and Alessandro came along and said they wanted to adopt us.

  A smile tugs the corners of my lips. I’m glad we have them. I’m glad that Cameron will never know our birth mother or the way we lived before Jessika and Alessandro came into our lives. They are our parents. They’re mom and dad.

  “Coop,” Lil whimpers, trying to crawl inside me by the way she plants herself into my side.

  I’m about to ask her what’s wrong when I hear it. Footsteps bounding down the stairs above us and then shouting followed by loud pops.

  “Cooper,” Lil sobs, burying her nose into the side of my neck while I hold her close.

  “Lil,” I say, before taking a deep breath. “Liliana, I need you to listen to me, okay?” I pull away from her and grip the tops of her arms so that I have something to anchor me to her. “I’m going to distract them so that you can run.”

  “No,” she cries, her hands clutching the front of my sweater.

  “You can, Lil. You need to run and go find your dad or mine and tell them where I am.”

  “No. I can’t. I don’t want to leave you.”

  “I know,” I put a hand behind her head and pull her into me for one last hug. “But you have to. You’re smaller and faster. You can do it, Lil.”

  “No, Coop. No.” I can feel her shaking her head against my chest, but I need her to understand. I doubt whoever took us planned to give both of us back. I’d rather get hurt or die trying to get her out and know she’s safe than risk us both getting killed. The guys who grabbed us didn’t sound like they were playing any games. I just need to get her to one of our dads and then everything will be okay.

  “Do you want to know what I got you for Christmas?” I ask, hoping to calm her down.

  "What?" she sniffs and then hiccups but the full-body sobs have stopped. Her head is still resting on my chest though, but I don't care.

  “I painted you a picture.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeap,” I say. “Want to know what it is?”

  “What is it?”

  “A purple Lily.”

  “Really, Coop? It’s really purple?”

  "Uh-huh. It's your favorite, right?"

  "Yeah," she answers, her voice sounding small in the dark room. I hear her taking a deep breath and feeling it warm against my chest when she blows it out. "I have to run, don't I?"

  “Yeah, Lil. You do.” I rub a hand up and down her back, feeling her breathe in deep one last time and let it out before her head lifts from my chest. I can’t see it, but I can feel her looking at me.

  “They’ll hurt you, Coop.”

  “I know, but then they’re not hurting you.” I remove my hands from around her and feel down her arms until I can take her hands in mine. “You can do this, Lil. You’re brave.”

  There are a couple more pops right outside the door and then it's quiet.

  “Are you ready? You have to be ready to run as soon as the door opens.”

  She’s quiet for so long that I think maybe she didn’t hear me, but then her little hand squeezes mine.

  “I’m ready.” She sounds so sure, so much older, that for a moment I wish we were anywhere but here right now.

  I slip one of my hands from hers and put it on the wall behind us while Lil and I push up to our feet. Then I slide it along the wall as we make our way around the room and closer to the door by touch. We’ve just made it to one side of the door when I hear the lock click.

  Lil whimpers, squeezing my other hand and pushing her face into my back. I can’t look back at her now or ask her if she’s okay because they might hear us and know that we are this close to the door, so I squeeze her hand back and try to reassure her.

  The door swings open, light immediately streaming into the room from the open doorway. A man dressed all in black walks into the center of the room and looks left and right. I don’t wait. Dropping Lil’s hand, I rush him. Remembering the way the football players on TV tackled the other team, I dip my shoulder and ram into the man causing him to fall back. I fall on top of him, but I’m younger and faster and manage to regain my balance first. I punch him in the gut the way my dad taught me too. He grunts and moves to grab me but I jump out of his way. I don’t know where Lil is and I can’t look right now. I just hope she listened to me and ran as soon as I tackled the man.

  Something in his pocket catches my attention. It looks silver and sparkles in the light coming in from the still open doorway. When he lunges for me again, I let him and slip the object out of his pocket. He punches me in the side of the face and I fall on my hip on the cold, hard ground.

  “You little punk,” he hisses, spittle hitting me in the face.

  The object had skidded across the floor when I landed on my side, but it’s not too far out of my reach. I scramble up and race for it, but the man trips me and I fall back to the ground again, hitting my nose off it. My vision blurs and I want
to cry out in pain, but I have to buy enough time to make sure Lil gets out. I swallow down my cry and the taste of blood with it. I belly crawl faster toward the shiny object and have just curled my hand around it before the man kicks me in the stomach. This time I do cry out.

  “I think somebody needs to teach you a lesson!” he spits. He rears his foot back again but when he swings it forward, I jab the object up through his foot and yank it out. He cries out immediately and hops back on his other foot.

  I push myself up to stand ignoring the pain for just a little bit longer. I stalk towards the man and plunge the object into his stomach. His doubles over, placing one hand on my shoulder, while his other hand wraps around my wrist that’s holding the object. I yank it out and plunge it in again, over and over. Until he collapses on top of me.

  More footsteps pound down the stairs, but I don’t think I have any fight left in me. My nose hurts and my side burns. But then I hear my dad’s voice calling out my name, and I almost sag in relief. She did it. Lil made it out.

  “Cooper,” Dad says, his big shadow filling the doorway.

  Leaving the object buried inside the man, I push him off me and he falls to the ground on his back, blood already pooling around his middle.

  “Cooper!” Dad rushes to me, gripping my face in his hands and turning it from side to side as he looks over my broken nose. When he’s satisfied, his eyes hold mine. Something passes behind them but I’m not sure what. “You did good, Son.”

  Son.

  I’ve waited my whole life for someone to call me that.

  “Is Lil…?”

  Uncle Antonio appears beside my dad and clasps me on the shoulder, unphased by the fact that I’m covered in blood. I was so busy looking at my dad, I didn’t see my uncle with him.

  “She’s okay, Coop. She’s safe,” Uncle Antonio says. The smile on his face says he’s proud of me, but it’s also a little sad.

  I nod and turn to look back at my dad who’s crouched down in front of me. “Dad?”