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He walks down the hallway. Once he’s gone, I stumble against the wall, shaking all over. All I want to do is cry and scream that life’s not fair. There’s only so much I can take, but now the debt’s on my head and Mom’s.
I remember a few years ago, before the most recent move, Mom and me in the kitchen, Mom kneading dough, singing a few notes, then looking over at me with a daring, alert glint in her eyes—the kind of glint she never has anymore.“Go on, Scarlet. I know you can do better than me…”
When I sang, her whole face lit up. I think about that all the time. It’s one of our best moments. Whatever else is true about Mom—the pills, the hopelessness—she doesn’t deserve this, and neither do I. So what the hell are we going to do?
CHAPTER2
Elio
“Try to smile,” Luca says, nudging me in the arm.
I glance at my little brother, shaking my head. “Maybe you smile too much.”
“We’re going to make a lot of money tonight.”
“By partnering with low-level street criminals. We don’t know enough about their operation. We don’t know enough about their income streams. We haven’t properly vetted them.”
“Building the stadium is a big project,” Luca says. He steeples his fingers, just like Dad often does… or did before his stroke. Luca’s hair hasn’t turned silver yet. He’s thirty-two, an entire decade younger than me, and it’s often difficult to see him as the man he is. “They’ve got the contact. They came to us because we’ve got the manpower. It’s a win-win.”
“Maybe it is,” I say, “but I’d feel more comfortable if we knew more.”
“If you were officially the don, what would you do?”
Luca addsofficiallybecause, since Dad’s stroke, I’ve been handling the Family business. Dad barely has any input. That’s another reason this is so damn troubling. I thought Dad was relaxing in his apartment, being tended to by Mom and his staff. Then he calls me in for a meeting with the construction contract but not with the Italian mob. Not even with the Irish mob or the Bratva. We will be in business with a low-level gang known as the Shanks.
“Even their name is stupid,” I grunt.
“The Shanks,” Luca says, nodding. “I agree. It’s a little dramatic.”
“It sounds like something a bunch of kids would brand themselves—a bunch of high schoolers wanting to seem tough. Dad’s always been proud of the Family, maybe too proud. He’s refused to work on lucrative contracts because it meant working outside the Family, but now…”
“You think too much,” Luca says, sounding grumpy.
“One of us has to,” I reply.
“I’m just following Dad’s orders. Just because he’s had a stroke, it doesn’t mean he’s a different man, Elio.”
I close my eyes and let the car carry us through the city. There’s no point getting into this discussion with Luca. No matter what I say, he won’t accept that Dad is, in fact, not the man he once was. His mind has slowed as much as his movements.
“You need a woman,” Luca says a moment later. “That would set you right.”
“You sound like Mom.”
“Maybe she has a point. You’re an old man.”
I laugh gruffly. “Don’t I know it, but there’s too much work.”
“Even before you were acting don, you weren’t interested. Mom thought you were gay for a while. Then she saw you weren’t interested inthat, either.”
“Maybe I was put on this earth to be a cold bastard and handle business, and that’s all. You’ll find a wife once you leave the clubs and the bars behind. You’ll carry on the family name. That’s enough.”
I grind my teeth and look out the window, watching the city pass us by. We’re on our way to a restaurant with no ties to either the Family or the… Goddamn, it’s hard even to think it’s so ridiculous—theShanks.
“Are you happy, though?”
“Happy?” I snap. “What does that even mean? I work fourteen, fifteen, sixteen hours a day to keep this family afloat. When you’re with your women and bottles, I’m in the office, settling accounts until my eyes hurt. Happy doesn’t come into it.”
Luca huffs. “Maybe you’re using all that work as an excuse. Did you ever think about that?”
