Sweetest Sorrow

  "Of course not," Bobby said. "He had some questions, so I humored him. Besides, you know, he's angry about what happened with his sister."

  "Rightfully so," Johnny said.

  Bobby's eyes narrowed, but he continued on like Johnny hadn't interrupted. "He's angry, and anger makes people careless. Makes them reckless. Way I see it, I don't have to kill him, because he's already well on his way to being dead, thanks to his own father. Just gotta give him enough rope to hang himself."

  Gabriella couldn't take much more of that conversation. It was making her stomach churn, her vision blurring around the edges. She gripped the back of her father's chair, shifting position in an attempt to shake off the dizziness, but all it seemed to do was garner attention.

  Bobby gave her a quick once-over before turning to Alfie. "She yours?"

  Alfie glanced up at her. "Yeah, you remember my little girl, Gabby."

  "Of course," Bobby said. "She's just not so little now."

  "They grow up quick," Alfie said.

  Johnny cleared his throat. "The ones who get to grow up."

  "Speaking of," Alfie said, "any word on Matteo?"

  Bobby picked up his cards, sorting through them as he shook his head. "I keep calling, keep asking, and it's always the same answer. Nothing. No sign of him. They claim they'll keep looking, but I know better. They never bothered from the start."

  "So what now?" Alfie asked.

  "Now, I guess I put an empty coffin in the ground."

  The air grew suffocating with those words.

  Gabriella sensed it was time for her to go.

  Leaning down, she kissed her father's cheek before slipping away from the table, nobody saying a word about it or trying to stop her. She headed right for the front door, having had her fill of family. She showed up, she brought stuffed mushrooms, so now it was time for her to get the heck out of there.

  When she stepped outside, someone was coming up the small path that cut through the yard, leading to the front door. He strolled along, like he didn't want to come any more than she had, which explained why he was two hours late. She took in the sight of the black slacks and plain black button down, the short, dark hair and the steel blue eyes.

  Gavin.

  He looked at her with confusion, like he didn't recognize her, before smiling. "Gabby?"

  "Gavin."

  "Look at you," he said as he laughed. "Looking like you're heading to a funeral."

  She rolled her eyes. "I'm not the only one."

  Gavin motioned to the house behind her. "With these people? You never know."

  "Tell me about it," she muttered.

  "You leaving already?"

  "Girls aren't really welcome in the big boys club, you know? The guest of honor showed up so I figured that was my cue to disappear."

  "And sadly, my cue to get my ass inside," Gavin said, nodding as he passed her. "It was good to see you, Gabby."

  He headed for the door, while Gabriella stayed rooted in place. Her feet were like lead, too heavy to move, no matter how hard she tried. Her lips parted, words on the tip of her tongue that she wanted to say but she just… couldn't.

  Her family shared everything. They always had. When Gabriella was six years old, playing hide-and-seek with her father, she'd found a gun tucked beneath her parents' mattress. She'd never seen one before, except for in movies and on television, so she'd picked it up, to play with it, forgetting all about her father coming to find her. He startled her, shoving the bedroom door open, declaring, "Got you!"

  So Gabriella did what any frightened kid would: she shot.

  Swinging around, her finger squeezed the trigger, a loud bang echoing through the room. She'd dropped the gun with a shriek as a bullet ripped into the wall right beside her father, a mere few inches to the right of him. Alfie leaned against the doorframe, calm and collect, and glanced at the hole as he said, "Looks like we need to work on your aim, little girl."

  It was her earliest memory. The world didn't really exist before then. Her father, while he did work with cars, lived another life within the Jersey crime family. It was her mother's family, a family that had happily welcomed Alfie Russo in. They were messy and blended, a dysfunctional tribe that branched out into other families through marriages, and not all of them got along. Occasionally, though, for just a few hours, they pretended they didn't want to shoot each other in the face, and they did it because of the women.

  Their mothers. Their wives. Their sisters.

  Sisters.

  Taking a deep breath, Gabriella swung around to face Gavin, starting to ramble, but it was pointless. The front door closed as he disappeared inside the house.

  Crap.

  Crap. Crap. Crap.

  She thought about following, sticking around, but she'd lose her nerve long before she got the opportunity to talk to him.

  So she walked away, pulling out her phone to call a cab. She didn't own a car—although, once upon a time, her parents had given her a Ferrari. Graduation present. She left it behind when she moved to the city, much to her father's chagrin. She'd wanted a fresh start. She wanted to make her own way. She wanted to help people and make a difference.

  The last thing she wanted was to get caught up in that world, but it seemed inevitable.

  Fate was a douchebag.

  "Fuck."

  The curse slipped through Dante's clenched teeth in the form of a growl, loud in the otherwise silent room. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  Wearing nothing but a pair of white boxers, fresh out of the shower, Dante stared down at the wound on his side. He ran his fingers along the medical tape, wishing like hell he still had some painkillers left. It wasn't that it hurt so much as it bothered the fuck out of him. He wanted to forget it happened. He wanted to forget it all happened. In his short life, he'd been stabbed, punched, and kicked… his bones had been broken, his organs injured, his skin set on fire… he hadn't been shot, yet, but he figured it was only a matter of time before someone decided to put a bullet or two in him.

  It was exhausting, being a goddamn magnet for trouble.

  A knock sounded out from the bedroom door as he stood there, water still dripping from his damp hair. He ignored it, walking back into his connected bathroom. He grabbed a tube of antibiotic ointment, rubbing some of it along the wound, when the knock rang out again, this time louder.

  "Whatever you're selling, I'm not buying," Dante called out, tossing the ointment back down before reaching for a bandage. Before he could put it on, his bedroom door opened, someone knocking again the same time they walked in.

  Umberto peeked around the door. "Dante?"

  "Do you make it a habit to go where you're not invited these days, Bert? Because I don't think I asked you to come in."

  Dante's brash tone made the guy frown, but it didn't stop him from stepping even closer, further into the room, where he really wasn't welcome. "Says the guy I trailed to Soho."

  Ignoring that, Dante stuck the bandage on and made sure it was secure before stepping back out of the bathroom to get dressed. He waltzed past Umberto to his closet.

  "Look, Dante, I know you're upset, but don't be like this, man. Don't overreact."

  Dante snatched a black shirt off a hanger and slipped it on. "You think I'm overreacting."

  "Well… yeah. It's not that bad. Not as bad as you seem to think it is. I mean, you're alive. You're fucking alive! You bested those assholes. And they lost. We took his kids, his wife is gone, and maybe he's still got his territory, but for how long? We walked up in there, and what happened? Huh? Nothing."

  "I got stabbed, Bert, in case you forgot."

  "Of course I didn't forget, but Barsanti's weak, and you proved it. He's beaten. Everything is ripe for the picking now. I know you went through hell, but we won. You won."

  "Nobody won," Dante said. "Not yet."

  He grabbed a pair of jeans from his dresser and slipped them on before searching for his shoes.

  Umberto sighed. "So, what are you going to do? Gi
ve up?"

  Dante slid his feet into a pair of sneakers and sat down on his bed, cringing as pain tugged at his side. "Does it look like I'm giving up?"

  "I don't know, man. I don't know."

  Dante glared down at his untied shoelaces. There was no way he could reach them without opening up his wound, tearing the tape apart that flimsily held him together. He was about to kick them back off when Umberto crouched down in front of Dante to tie his shoes for him.

  "I swear to God, if you tell anyone I'm doing this..." Umberto muttered, double-knotting the laces so they stayed in place.

  A joke was on the tip of Dante's tongue, slipping out before he could swallow it back. "You say that to every guy you get on your knees for?"

  Umberto shot him an irritated look as he stood back up, but his expression cracked damn near instantly, a laugh replacing it. "Fuck you."

  "Sorry, but you're not my type," Dante said. "I like them a little taller than four-foot-eight."

  "Fuck. You."

  "Again, I'm gonna have to pass, but I appreciate the offer." Dante stood up from the bed, running a hand through his hair. Just like that, in the second it took him to move, all humor was sucked from the room, the air around them growing stale once more.

  "What are you going to do?" Umberto asked again.

  Dante stared at him, dead serious as he said, "I'm going to make sure the man who tore apart my life pays for it. Then maybe I'll be able to piece something back together, some shred of an existence out of whatever's left."

  A grin spread across Umberto's face. "See, I knew you had a plan. Tell me what I can do to help."

  "What you can do is stay the hell out of my way."

  Dante snatched his keys and cell phone off the top of his dresser before walking out, leaving Umberto standing there alone. He trudged downstairs, listening to the sea of voices coming from the first floor. Primo's office door stood wide open, half a dozen men sitting inside, drinking Scotch as they discussed business. Typical Saturday.

  Strolling to the office, Dante paused in the doorway, scanning the men inside. The usual suspects: underboss, consigliere, along with a couple capos… the administration and a few of the supervisors, so to speak. They set the rules the rest of the family had to follow.

  It only took them a few seconds to notice him, based on the shift in their demeanor, conversation dwindling, but it took a lot longer for any of them to acknowledge his presence. Primo regarded him with a cautious eye. "Son."

  "Sir."

  "You heading out tonight?"

  "That's the plan."

  "Where are you off to?"

  "Depends."

  "On?"

  "On whether you've got any work you need me to do."

  His father stared at him when he said that, stared at him as if he'd spoken in another language, like he just couldn't comprehend those words. Lifting a hand, he motioned toward the other men. "My son and I need a moment alone."

  The others vacated, not a single one greeting Dante as they passed him. Suspicion clogged the air like smoke. Dante felt it in every breath, infecting his lungs and tightening his chest. They didn't know what to make of the kid who came back from the dead. They looked at him like they'd once looked at Matteo Barsanti—like he was a ghost.

  "Shut the door," his father said after everyone cleared out. "Take a seat."

  Dante shut the door behind him but made no move to sit down.

  The man swirled his glass around, waiting, before he said it again. "Take a seat."

  It was an order. He wouldn't tell him again. The man rarely repeated himself. Getting a third chance was unheard of, even for his own kid.

  Dante's steps were slow as he approached, sitting in the first chair he came to, perching on the edge of it, not letting himself get comfortable.

  "Heard about your incident the other night," Primo said.

  "I'm sure you did."

  "I want to know what you were thinking," he continued, "why you thought going there was a good idea. I want to know what you expected to happen when they saw you. You just got out of the hospital! You almost died. I thought I lost you! Do you know what that did to me? Losing you to them after I'd already lost Joey? And you just… go there again. Willingly. For no reason."

  Dante listened to his father's rant, the words going right through him, not stirring up the remorse Primo sought. If anything, it touched a nerve. A bad one.

  "I need you to use your head. I need you to start thinking again. I can't lose you when I just got you back. Do you know what that would do to me? It would kill me!"

  I… I… I…

  Me… Me…

  Why did he always make it about him?

  Dante almost asked that, but instead he merely said, "Yes, sir."

  Primo regarded him, that suspicion still weighing down the air. He knew something was off about Dante, that much was clear. Dante expected him to press for some sort of explanation, but he merely sighed, drinking his Scotch.

  Nobody said anything else.

  Eventually, Dante stood and headed for the door. His father wasn't treating him like he treated the Galante soldiers. They'd sit there all night in strained silence if he waited for a dismissal, because it wasn't business at that moment. It felt personal.

  Was that how Genna had felt? Always on the outskirts, never allowed inside.

  It was a helpless feeling.

  Dante didn't do helpless.

  He pulled the door open to leave when Primo's voice cut through the room. "I've got some guys down in Little Italy that owe money, if you're up for it."

  Dante nodded. "I can take care of that."

  "Good." Primo waved him away. "Take Umberto with you. He knows who they are."

  Dante stepped out into the foyer, where Umberto lurked. He grinned at Dante, like a kid on restriction that finally had permission to play again. "So, where are we going?"

  "To Hell," Dante muttered, pulling his keys from his pocket. "Otherwise known as ground zero."

  "Little Italy," Umberto said. "Got it."

  The drive took over an hour. Umberto yammered on and on, filling Dante in on every excruciating detail of what had gone down in his absence, noticeably skipping over anything having to do with Genna.

  It was like she'd never existed.

  Strange, Dante thought, since Umberto used to have a problem keeping Genna's name out of his mouth. All day, every day: Genevieve this, Genevieve that. His crush on her had been damn near intolerable.

  "Is this weird for you?" Umberto asked when they pulled onto Mulberry.

  "Which part?" Dante asked, whipping his car into a parking spot across the street from the blast. "The fact that you're acting like I never had a sister or the fact that she might've died right there? Because I wouldn't say it's weird for me. I'd say it's more fucked up than anything."

  Umberto's expression fell as Dante cut the engine. "Look, about Genevieve…"

  "You don't have to say anything," Dante said. "The silence told me enough."

  "You know how I felt about her. She was amazing. Beautiful. Sassy. But she went another way. She went the wrong way. And when someone turns their back on the family, when they go against the family, what do we do? We make it so they don't exist. You know how it is."

  "And that's why it's fucked up. Because she deserves more than that, she was more than that, but we're all too goddamn self-centered to admit it."

  Dante got out of the car before Umberto could respond. His hands shook, and he shoved them in his pockets, hoping if they weren't accessible he wouldn't feel compelled to punch anyone. Umberto joined him on the sidewalk, uncharacteristically mum.

  "The guys stay in some apartments around here," Umberto mumbled, glancing around the neighborhood. "It's Michael Parsons and his friend, uh, what's-his-face… the one with the glasses?"

  Dante cut his eyes at him. Well, that narrowed it down. Didn't matter, though, because Dante knew where to find Parsons. "How much do they owe?"

  "Parsons owes three
grand, and his friend, about five hundred."

  Dante walked down the street, heading for a deli on the corner at the end of the block, beneath a set of decrepit apartments. Umberto stayed in step with him, not asking any questions.

  "Take the back," Dante told him, grabbing the door to step inside the deli. It was Sunday evening, nearing closing time, so customers were scarce, the last two leaving right as Dante appeared. Parsons stood behind the counter, cleaning the meat slicer, wearing a filthy white apron and smelling like cold cuts. Dante clicked the lock in place on the glass door before grabbing the open sign, flipping it over.

  Parsons turned, smiling in greeting, the expression on his face freezing. Terror drained the color from his cheeks. "Dante, what can I do for you?"

  "I think you probably know," Dante said.

  A few seconds passed. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. Parsons stood, frozen, until self-preservation kicked in.

  Grabbing a stash of utensils, he hurled them across the counter before sprinting behind the refrigerated meat cases. Dante ducked from the flying knives, aggrivation stirring up inside of him. Of course the motherfucker would have to make this hard.

  Jumping up on the counter, Dante dropped onto his feet on the other side, knocking displays over in his haste to follow. Parsons forced open the swinging door leading into the back storage room, grabbing metal racks and throwing them down, sending things spewing all over the place. Dante went after him, trying not to trip over shit as he ran, catching up to the guy just as he reached the back exit.

  Dante grabbed his shirt, yanking on it, sending him stumbling. Parsons turned, panicked, and blindly swung, his fist connecting with the edge of Dante's jaw. The blow was strong enough to make him stagger, throwing him off enough for Parsons to slip from his grip. Son of a bitch.

  Parsons yanked the door open, heading out into the alley, as Dante's aggravation turned to fury. He saw red. Springing out the door, Dante tripped the guy, knocking him to the ground, Parsons' face slamming against the grubby asphalt. He cried out, blood pouring from his nose.

  Umberto appeared in the alley, pistol in his hand, finger hovering over the trigger. "Get the fuck up, Parsons. Don't do anything stupid."