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“The massacre at the theatre is all over the live news,” she says. “I knew you were performing tonight and so I rushed over here as fast as I could. I was worried sick about you.”
Lucas runs right up and hugs my mom, almost as if he already thinks of her like a grandma. She hugs him back, and then squeezes me so tight that I can’t breathe for a second or two. “I’m sorry, Mom,” I say. “You were right. I never should have done the show.”
“Live and learn,” my mother says as she smiles gently. “It’s the best we can do.” I had been expecting a harsher scolding from her than that. I guess it’s because she’s just happy I’m alive. Then she looks over at Vari. His shoulder is still bleeding profusely, and even though he’s leaning on his brother, it looks like he’s starting to get dizzy. “I can stitch that up for you if you want,” she says to him. I’m surprised by her offer, not only because she’s helping acapoof the mafia she despises so much, but also because my mother can’t even show a button on, nonetheless stitch up human flesh.
Vari nods without protest and it’s a weird feeling to see him and my mother getting along. I have trouble picturing my mother stitching up a mafia boss’s bullet wound, especially considering that she’s one of the gentlest women I know. But as soon as we all get back to Vari’s apartment, she gets right to work at it.
“Get me the sewing kit,” she says to his brothers.
“You’re going to fix him up with sewing equipment?” I ask, aghast.
“They know what I mean.” She nods at them. “The mafia sewing kit.”
She helps Vari sit down in one of the chairs by the window and helps him gingerly peel off his shirt, exposing the two bullet wounds. Within a couple of minutes, Alessio returns with the sewing kit she requested. I stand beside them as my mother opens up the box and sets it on a small end table. Inside, there are needles much bigger than those used for regular thread, and some first aid supplies like iodine and rubbing alcohol. There’s also a wrap of thread that looks thick enough to lace a shoe.
“This is going to hurt,” she says to Vari as Petre hands him a shot of whiskey.
“Do you want one too?” Petre offers my mother.
“She doesn’t drink,” I say in answer for her at the very same time that she nods her head toward him. I watch in shock as my mother tosses back a shot of whiskey before jamming a pair of large tweezers into the hole in Vari’s shoulder to pull out a bullet.
I’m dumbstruck. Who is this woman and what has she done with my mother? She’s acting as if stitching up bullet wounds is something that she has experience doing. And the last time I saw her drink anything alcoholic at all was at a Christmas party three years ago when she had a spiked eggnog. But right now as I watch her pull out the second bullet before sticking the needle through skin and starting to stitch up a man’s shoulder blade, I’m starting to wonder whether I really know my mother at all. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t even look worried. She simply dutifully sews up the wounds until Vari is all patched up.
As soon as he’s stitched up, he thanks my mother and then heads upstairs to his bedroom, so weary that he almost passes out right there and then, so I decide to put Lucas to bed for him. I find his son sitting on the edge of his bed up in his room, still looking teary-eyed and overly tired. “You’re so brave,” I say with a smile as I come in and pull the blankets back for him to get into bed. He’s already cleaned himself up, taken a bath, and put on fresh pajamas. When I was his age, I could barely clean my room without my mother’s help. But this kid is practically raising himself.
“I don’t feel very brave,” he says.
“I know.” I smile at him again as he slides beneath the sheets. “But you don’t need to feel brave in order to be brave.”
“You don’t?”
“Nope. Bravery is a funny thing. You’re actually the bravest when you feel the most scared but keep pressing on anyway. And from what I’ve seen, you’re the bravest kid I’ve ever met.”
Lucas lays his head down on the pillow and looks up to smile at me. It’s the first I’ve seen him smile all night. Granted, there hasn’t been much to smile about. “For real?”
I nod my head. “For real,” I say. “Try to get some sleep, okay? I know tonight was scary, and that you lost another person that you cared about. But tomorrow will be a better day and everything will be okay. You still have people here who love you very much.”
Lucas leans up to give me a hug and I kiss him on top of the head. There’s something about being with this kid that just feels so natural to me. And he certainly deserves to have people who truly care about him. I know that his dad does; I could see it in Vari’s eyes when he went in to that theater to rescue Lucas tonight. I think sometimes he just has trouble showing it.
For a second, I linger in the boy’s doorway, watching as he closes his eyes and hoping he doesn’t have nightmares tonight. But exhaustion wins out and he falls soundly asleep without a peep.
When I get back downstairs, my mother is still there. She’s having a second drink with Alessio and Petre, who are both getting ready to get up and leave. I pour myself a drink as well. I need one in order to try and wrap my head around all that’s happened tonight. “How in the world did you learn to stitch up gunshot wounds?” I ask when I sit down beside her. My mother seems different to me tonight—older, wiser and stronger than I’ve thought of her before.
She breathes in slowly, and then lets out a long sigh before answering me. “Dahlia, there’s something I’ve never told you,” she says. “Your father was in the mafia too.”
“What?” I gasp in surprise. I never knew my biological father. All this time I thought I was just a normal girl with no ties to the mafia at all. And all of this time, my mother’s always acted like she despises the mafia. Now, to my utter shock, I find out that my mom herself was a mafia bride?
“I know it seems a bit hypocritical now,” my mother says with a melancholy chuckle. “But nights like this one is exactly the reason I ran away from the mafia, and why you never knew your father. It’s exactly the reason I didn’t want you to get involved with Vari.” She pauses. “But I can see now what a good man he is, and how good you two are as a couple. And I can also see how much little Lucas could use you in his life. So I decided tonight was the night to finally come clear with you about it all.”
We give each other a big, long hug, and then she says, “C’mon, now let’s kill this bottle of whiskey. We’ve all officially earned it tonight.”
22
VARI
A few days later I’m finally healed up enough to get back up on my feet. I head back to the theatre with Alessio and Petre and try to figure out how I might be able to salvage something out of this. I’m an investor by nature, and I have connections all over the city that can get me undercut deals on renovations. Perhaps a smarter man might walk away from a project like this, but I’m determined to bring this theatre back to life again and back into the city’s good graces. It wasn’t the theatre’s fault that it was stained by a murderous event.
We spend the day there, talking to contractors who come by to provide me with bids, when suddenly an idea occurs to me. “You know,” I say to my brothers, “it’s pretty obvious we’re going to have to gut the entire inside of this place. So why couldn’t we rebuild it with our drug trafficking in mind? Like here, for example.” I point to the coat-check room we’re standing in front of. “We could build a false door in the back here that leads to a main distribution room behind it. We could then have a tunnel in the basement to our production facility a few doors down.”
