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I’ve only just taken the seat the guard points to when there he is, led in by another guard.
Fabrizio Soldano Senior. My father.
Thinner and graying, but still him. Our eyes meet and a flicker of recognition lights in his face. He drops into the chair as though his legs are weak. “Bricker?” His voice is rough.
My throat closes up. I can only nod. We stare at each other, a lifetime between us, and I start to wonder if this was a mistake. He’s just…staring at me. I clear my throat and force myself to speak. “Yeah, it’s me.”
He studies me, taking in the muscles, the scars, avoiding my eyes. “Look at you. All grown up.”
Another uncomfortable silence stretches between us. I fidget in my seat, unsure how to bridge this yawning chasm.
“How’ve you been?” I finally ask lamely.
He barks out a harsh laugh. “How do you think? This ain’t exactly a country club.”
I wince. “Right. Dumb question.”
“You keeping safe?” he asks after a moment, almost grudgingly.
“Yeah. I mean, mostly.” I rub my cheek, trying to figure out a way to let him know what’s going on without breaking the Family codeorletting the Feds in on anything. Because they’ll be listening to this conversation, either now or later.
“Your mother told me you moved up in the world,” he says at last, and I know he’s talking about my promotion to Capo.
Mom still writes to him, I know, even though she doesn’t come to see him. “Yeah.” I let a proud grin slip out, but it dies quickly. “Or at least, I did, for a while. I think I…might get demoted again. I don’t know. It’s complicated.”
“Complicated how?” he asks sharply.
I hesitate.
“You can talk if you’re smart about it,” he tells me in a low voice. “They don’t listen in too much here. Long as you keep it general.”
Still, how much can I really reveal? My oaths bind me to the Maestra, to my Family. But this man is my father, and I came here for a reason. I want him to know me.
To be proud of me.
“I got…assigned a new guy to help out. An outsider.”
My father’s eyes narrow. “An outsider?”
“A Castellani,” I say, so softly that it’s practically a breath. “Things have happened recently that made us…look around for allies.”
“You can’t trust anyone, Bricker,” he growls. “You should fucking know that.”
“I know,” I say defensively. “But this guy, he’s proven himself so far. And...” I take a deep breath, “the thing is, we’ve gotten close.”
“Close?” I don’t like the tone in my father’s voice. It was a bad idea coming here. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft over some stray dog.”
“It’s not like that!” I insist. “I just...IknowI can trust him. But I don’t know what to do about the rest of it. I was—we were—betrayed. Someone sold us out.”
My father leans forward, eyes blazing. “I told you already what you need to do. You trust no one, Bricker. A real man stands alone, does what needs to be done with his own two hands.” His intensity unnerves me. “Even if that means taking out your own men,” he raves on, and my eyes flick to the guards, hoping like hell that it’s true they don’t listen in. Dad fixes me with a piercing stare. “They’re a liability, the lot of them, and you can’t trust them. If one turned, they all will. You should get rid of them before they get rid of you.”
I recoil. “I’d never do that! That’s—”
“They’re a means to an end,” he snaps. “The only thing you can really count on is blood, boy. Don’t you forget it.”
“Things have changed since you went inside,” I say quietly after a moment. “Loyalty means something now. And Max...” I hesitate, then steel myself. If I can’t be honest with my own father, what kind of man am I? “Max has proven himself to me. And like I said, we’ve grown close.” I search his face anxiously for a reaction. “You have to understand, Dad. The world isn’t the way you remember anymore.”
For a long moment he just stares at me, eyes cold and expressionless. Then he smiles, but there’s no warmth to it. “Max?”
