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Epilogue
A new beginning
“Oh, how I love thenew baby smell,” Mamma commented as she cradled our ten-month-old to her chest. She then looked at me, and tears rolled down her cheeks. “I already missed so much of her life.”
I bent to kiss my mother’s still smooth cheek. “Just a few months. You won’t miss more if you live with us.”
“Gianni, I can’t live with you. Even me being here is putting you at risk.” She bounced Safiya slightly as she moved around the make-shift nursery. We decided to meet my mother in Grenada instead of our home in Jamaica for precaution. We’d leased a sprawling home near the beach, and she’d been with us for the last week. “Enzo was suspicious of me asking to visit my old friend in Barcelona.”
I’d hired security to follow my mother from the airport from Barcelona to St. George, Grenada. “He didn’t have you followed, or one of my men would have told me. We can figure all of this out. I want my baby to really know you.”
“You don’t think I want that too? It’s enough. I missed Courage growing up. I don’t want to miss out on this precious one too.” And our daughter was precious. The spitting image of her big brother with his same honey skin, pouty pale pink lips, and high cheekbones, except her eyes were the color of a shiny penny instead of hazel.
“Then be with us. I still have the means to protect us.”
She looked past me toward the door and lowered her voice, “If you take back New Orleans, Enzo will forgive you.”
“Taking back New Orleans is starting a war withmyfamily. Come on, Mama, Wisdom will never give up what he’s worked so hard for, especially not the territory the mafia took from his father. Besides, I don’t want that life anymore. Paris and I are happy.”
“How can you be happy if you have to be on the run from Enzo?”
“So the solution is to go back in the fray and risk my life, my wife, and baby?”
“No, Enzo’s solution won’t involve you going back into the mafia. You said yourself that Wisdom is family. Make him understand this is the best way.”
“Wisdom is still battling Capricio. Even if he agrees, we have to fight Capricio’s thugs.” Capricio was another made man in New Orleans who’d threatened my power over the years. “It’s been almost two years, and I have peace in my life.”
Mamma hissed, “We can handle Capricio. We’ve done it for years. Wisdom is the key. We get him to give us our territory back. He can keep his father’s like you originally planned. We’ll be able to really be a family again.” She walked closer to me, still holding her granddaughter soothingly despite her words of war. “Even Courage agrees.”
“I don’t want that life anymore. What part aren’t you getting? Who’s going to run the organization if it’s not me?”
“Courage can take over. I’ve been training him.”
I lowered my eyes, assessing my mother. “Courage has been to see you, hasn’t he? I should’ve figured something was up when you insisted he visit us the same time you’re here.”
She straightened her shoulders. “I am his grandmother.”
“Let me guess, Enzo met him and was impressed?” I placed my hands in my pocket, fighting the urge to curse. My mother had a blood thirst that seemed to be her birthright. Of course, she would turn her attention to my son once she couldn’t influence me the same way she’d been able to for most of my life. And my son would impress anyone with his intelligence, calm, and maturity. Even I thought he was much older than his twenty-one years when I first encountered him before I knew he was my son. He has shown to be a good soldier and would someday lead with a quiet fierceness that his uncle nor I could ever do. “Of course, he would agree to take my place. But that means he would be against Wisdom.”
“They could co-exist in New Orleans.”
I laughed. “Wisdom may love his nephew like his own son, but Wisdom loves the power he has. Why would he ever agree to step down? If I was still in the game, I would never agree.”
“Yet you gave it all away.”
“What’s your point?”
“Make him see the benefit, Gianni. It’s for his own good.”
“Is Enzo threatening a strike?”
