Within a matter of seconds, the woman reappeared. She wore nothing but a burgundy silk robe, her curly brunette hair haphazardly pinned up. Smeared makeup covered her face, splotches worn off to expose aging skin. Not as old as Vito, but she approached middle age.
"V, this is my kid," Vito said. "We just talked about him, remember?"
"Yeah, right!" Her eyes sparkled. "I've heard a lot about you."
Corrado wished he could say the same. He stared at them, silent, stoic, as his father wrapped an arm around her petite waist. She giggled, plucking the cigar from his mouth before kissing him, smearing what was left of her pink lipstick onto his chapped lips.
"I'll let you boys talk," she said. "Great to meet you, Vito's kid."
Corrado cringed.
Vito watched her scamper away, a dopey grin on his face, before turning back to Corrado. He slapped his son on the back, squeezing his shoulder as he stepped out on the porch. "Vivian Modella. Met her years ago when she was a student at the university. She's still a looker, alright, but man… she was something back then."
Corrado was dumbfounded. "You've been seeing that woman for years?"
Vito cast him a sideways glance at the judgment in his voice. "Don't you look at me that
way.
We do what we
gotta
do. Your mother... well, your mother's your mother. I'll always love
her,
I'll always support her. I take care of mine, kid. But a man has needs... needs your mother ain't taking care of."
Corrado had no idea what to say. A conflicting sense of loyalty nagged at him.
"Enough about that," Vito said. "What's going on with you?"
"I, uh..." Corrado hesitated. He'd come to talk to someone who might understand his situation, but instead, he'd found a man whose judgment he wasn't sure he trusted anymore. Did vows mean nothing to Vito? "It's nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Yeah," he said. "Forget about it."
Corrado tried to leave when his father caught his arm. "You okay, kid?"
"Fine."
"You got a birthday coming up soon, right? We ought to do something for it. Maybe catch a Sox game. You been paying attention this season? They're doing pretty good."
They're doing terrible
. Celia's words ran through his mind, but he didn't verbalize them. How could he expect his father to know that when he didn't even know his birthday was still months away? "Sounds great."
Vito squeezed his shoulder again before heading back inside.
Corrado turned his gaze to the Lincoln. The streetlight had flicked on as the sky gradually darkened, giving him a better view of the car. It was rusting, Corrado realized, around the back wheels.
Respect was a funny thing. It took a lifetime to
build,
a lifetime to secure, but a mere moment wiped it all away. And once gone, things looked different, the rose-colored glasses that once beautified the world now a set of grimy bifocals, tainting the view. An infallible man was no longer faultless. A flawed woman had been wronged the entire time.
Maybe the perpetrator was just as much the victim.
Maybe things weren't as clear-cut as he'd thought them to be.
The energetic tunes from the live band filled the busy banquet hall as a Sinatra look-a-like commanded the stage. A crowd gathered along the floor, stumbling their way through a dance. Corrado lingered in the doorway of the entrance, surveying the gathering. His black jacket felt heavy, weighed down by the thick envelope shoved inside the pocket.
Vito sauntered inside, pausing beside him. He appeared relaxed, confident, and happy to be there.
Corrado would rather have been somewhere else.
"The celebration awaits, kid," Vito said. "Eat. Drink. Find a pretty girl to take home with you tonight."
Corrado's eyes were instantly drawn to the front of the room. He excused himself, strolling to the head table as he pulled the envelope from his pocket. Antonio glanced up as he advanced, assessing him before looking back away in approval.
Nobody approached without his permission. The guys scattered along the edges, incognito in all black, made sure of that. Enforcers were the most ruthless of the bunch. They were the intimidators. The murderers.
It still hadn't sunk in that Corrado was one of them.
Taking a deep breath, Corrado approached the person on the left. Celia's attention had been on the crowd until Corrado stepped in her line of sight. Almost as if it took some painstaking effort, she forced her gaze to him. She didn't smile. She said nothing.
She looked beautiful, though. Celia DeMarco wasn't just a
pretty girl
. Even with such a stern expression, even with resentful, narrowed eyes, her face had a passive calming effect on him. Her navy dress fit snug, complimenting the blue graduation cap perched on the table in front of her.
Corrado cleared his throat, holding out the envelope. "Miss DeMarco."
She still said nothing. After a moment of awkward silence, she reached out and snatched it from his hand.
"Celia Marie," her mother scolded. "That's no way to act toward a friend."
"Sorry, mother," she muttered, not sounding apologetic. "Thank you, Mr. Moretti."
He nodded, stung a little at her formal addressing of him.
"It's great to see you again, Corrado," Mrs. DeMarco said, her words more genuine than Celia's had been. "Antonio says such great things about the kind of man you've turned out to be."
The praise made Corrado uncomfortable. Thankfully, Antonio chimed in before he had to respond. "Now, now, Gia, enough of that. You give the kid a big head, and he'll be no good to me."
"Nonsense," she said. "From what I've heard, he's earned his ego.
Strong, passionate, and handsome to boot?
He'll make some young Italian girl very lucky someday."
Uncomfortable put it lightly. Corrado was
unnerved
.
Celia hastily shoved her chair back and stomped off, high heels clicking against the wooden floor as she went. Corrado cast her a glance and frowned when she disappeared into the crowd.
"Honestly, I don't know what's wrong with that girl." Mrs. DeMarco waved her off flippantly. "We raised her better than this."
"It's probably hormones," Antonio said, picking up his glass of wine to take a sip.
His wife huffed but didn't disagree. Corrado caught Antonio's eyes, seeing the truth, silently acknowledging the real problem.
Him
.
"If you'll excuse me," Corrado said, nodding politely. There was something to be said about being the source of conflict. It was the quickest way to end up eliminated, point blank.
"Of course," Antonio said.
"Go on." Mrs. DeMarco smiled. "Enjoy yourself, since it seems like my own children can't. Ungrateful brats. I don't even know where Vincenzo went!"
Corrado slipped into the crowd, relieved once out of the Boss's line of sight. He strolled over to the bar, hesitating, before sliding onto an empty stool. He waved to the bartender, asking for a glass of water, before turning to his right.
Celia.
She fidgeted with a small glass in front of her, half-f of clear liquid. Corrado ventured to guess they hadn't ordered the same drink. His suspicion was confirmed when she took a sip and grimaced.
"And here I thought the drinking age was twenty-one."
Her body stiffened at the sound of his voice. "I can do what I want."
She sounded like an entitled princess. She was in a sense.
A spoiled rotten
principessa
.
"Congratulations," he said, deciding not to point that out to her. "I'm happy for you."
"Yippee," she said sarcastically, twirling a finger in the air. "I survived high school."
"It's a big deal."
"It's a piece of paper."
"It's an accomplishment."
"Whatever." She took another sip and sputtered, shoving the glass away from her. "Did you graduate?"
"I stopped going in tenth grade. I stopped caring in fifth."
"Because it wasn't a big deal."
"No, because they couldn't teach me what I needed to know."
"And you think they taught me?
Yeah, sure.
They squeezed in Mafia Wife 101 between economics and calculus."
He frowned. "That's not who you are."
She'd seemed to give up on her drink, but his words made her think better of it. Grabbing the glass, she tipped it back, downing the rest of it in one large gulp. She coughed, her face turning bright red, but it didn't deter her from gasping out her next words. "What makes you think I won't be just like my mother someday?"
"Because there isn't a hateful bone in your body." He cast her a sideways glance. "You put on a good facade, Miss DeMarco, but I'm not fooled. You're bigger and brighter than this world."
"You don't get it," she said. "That's like saying the stars are too bright for the sky. Maybe they are, but it doesn't matter, because that's where stars have to be. I'm
in
this world, Corrado. I always have been. And I belong here, just as much as you do."
"You're better than it."
"Yeah, well, so are you. You can't see it, but it's true." Celia waved for the bartender and asked him for another drink—vodka, straight up. Corrado wanted to interject, to order water for her instead, but thought better of it. A tenacious woman like Celia wouldn't like to be told what to do. "It was wrong of me to snap at you. I get it—I do. I know what happens when people disobey an order, and I know being with me isn't worth dying for."
He stared at her, wishing he could find the words to tell her how wrong she was about that. It was worth dying over. He lived his life in a box—she'd been right about that.
A box where he felt nothing.
It was only when he stepped from that box, when he treaded lightly into her domain, that he came alive. Being with her would be worth risking it all.
Risking everything, of course, except for
her
.
He wasn't a good person. Festering poison consumed him, his heart a hideous, bottomless pit, a shell incapable of giving her what she would want. Incapable of loving her like she deserved. He'd taken lives, callously, casually, and without remorse. How could he ever be enough? His own mother hadn't found him redeeming.
He was barely worth the oxygen intake.
"I'd infect you with my darkness."
"Or maybe I'd cure you of it."
"You can't know that."
"Neither can you."
He spared her another glance. A frown tugged her lips, her eyes downcast. Pouting at
her own
party.
"You should be celebrating," he said. "Dancing."
"Will you dance with me?"
"Not a chance. I wasn't made for dancing."
"Then we'll just sit here," she said, shrugging, "and not dance…
together
."
He shook his head, picking up his glass and swirling the ice around in the water. He stared at it, watching the ice clink against the sides as water rushed overtop of them, swarming them briefly before they resurfaced again. The water churned, round and round, matching his insides—the scarcely confined tumultuous cyclone of his soul.
"Why?" The question he hated so much… the question he'd been taught never to ask… spilled from his lips as he stared into the glass.
"Why what?"
"You hardly know me, Celia, and what you do know about me isn't pleasant. Why would you ever torture yourself pursuing me?"
"Torture?" She laughed. "You might think you're dangerous, Corrado, but you don't scare me."
There was no
think
about it. Corrado knew what he was capable of, and dangerous put it mildly. He was a man with a gun and no regard for his own life. It was hard to see what was so special about breathing when your own mother thought smothering you with a pillow was an ideal solution.
"Besides," she continued, shrugging, "you pursued me first."
"It was a mistake."
She recoiled. "Ouch."
Setting his glass down, Corrado shifted in his stool to face her. "
You
weren't a mistake. I like you, Celia, and I have no shame about that. But it couldn't work, and the mistake was thinking it could. Maybe we exist in the same world, but we live on opposite ends."
"Then we move to the middle," she insisted. "I don't see why you can't get that."
She made it sound simple. So simple, in fact, that he didn't know what to say. He shook his head, muttering, "You're far too beautiful to be so damn wise."
Her dejected look perked up as she swung her body toward him, knees knocking against his. His eyes were immediately drawn downward to a set of creamy, bare legs. "Beautiful, huh?"
"You know you are. That's half the problem… you use it."
"Oh, I haven't used it." Her voice dropped low as she leaned toward him, slowly crossing her legs, her dress riding further up on her thighs. "Yet."
Corrado suppressed a groan and yanked his eyes away from her bare skin just in time to see Antonio's approach. Shoulders squaring, Corrado shifted his body away from Celia as the Boss surveyed the two of them. Celia remained relaxed, boldly moving closer to him in response to his subtle retreat.
Enforcers lingered behind Antonio, keeping a few feet distance to give the Boss his illusion of privacy, but Corrado knew they were listening.
"Sir," Corrado said.
"Corrado." He turned his attention to his daughter as he stepped even closer. Corrado moved his head out of the way as the Boss reached past him, snatching the glass off the bar. Bringing it to his nose, he sniffed. "Liquor, Celia? You're only 18!"
"It's mine." The words were out of Corrado's mouth instantly. Celia's eyes widened in shock, but she straightened her expression out as her father glanced between the two of them again.
He didn't believe it. That was clear from the narrowing of eyes, the thin line of his lips. Antonio held the glass out to him. "Drink up, then."
Corrado took the glass and brought it to his lips, pausing to take a deep breath, before throwing it back. It felt like rubbing alcohol scorched his throat, tasteless and harsh, setting his chest on fire. He swallowed back bile as his body tried to force the liquor back out.
Eyes watering, he slammed the glass on the bar with a grunt.
"That's not right," Celia said, crossing her arms over her chest. "He's 18, too!"
"He's a man," Antonio said nonchalantly. "You're my little girl."
She huffed. "Double standards are a bitch."
Anger sparked in Antonio's eyes. "Language, young lady."
She grumbled, reaching over and snatching up Corrado's glass of water. "It's totally unfair. I can't do anything—you tell me what to drink, what to say,
who to date
."
She sneered the last part. Corrado tensed, whereas Antonio merely laughed. "I've never told you who to date."
"But you—" Corrado knocked his knee into hers and shook his head, warning her not to go there. Her mouth remained open as she considered it, but she conceded eventually. "Did you need something, Dad?"
"Just wanted to say goodbye," he said. "I have work to do."
He pulled her into a hug, nearly yanking her off the stool. Celia kissed his cheek, saying goodbye as he backed away. His gaze turned to Corrado then. "Moretti."
"Sir."
"A word, please."
Tensing, Corrado slid off the stool, avoiding Celia's concerned eyes as he followed the Boss. Antonio wandered a few feet away, to a pocket of empty dance floor. The enforcers followed, maintaining their distance, but their looming presence made Corrado's defenses prickle.
"Make sure my daughter gets home safe," Antonio said. "I know she's been drinking."
He hesitated for a fraction of a second. "Yes, sir."
Antonio cut his eyes at him. "That was honorable, what you did, but it was fucking stupid. You gotta let a woman fight her own battles."
"Yes, sir."
Slapping him on the back, Antonio nodded his goodbye and headed for the exit. The enforcers followed, moving around Corrado like he was a boulder in the middle of a rushing river. Corrado stood there for a moment before turning back. Celia sat halfway in her stool, halfway leaning across the bar as she yelled at the bartender. Corrado's brow furrowed as he approached, hearing her agitated voice. "Give me a break, man! It's just a drink!"