I’d even had a few people say I should write my stories down and share them. It made me feel good, even if I considered such an idea completely ridiculous. While I liked the attention and hearing good things, my stories were more about letting stuff go so it wouldn’t fester, nothing more.
The image that caught my eye today was an older guy with a salt and pepper mustache looking serious and sullen as he shook hands with another dude in a law enforcement uniform. Since that sort of facial hair was mostly passé nowadays, I happily targeted Mustache Man to make fun of.
The caption under the picture said “Angelo Varasso, billionaire businessman, is seen with the Chief of Police.” I’d never heard of this businessman, billionaire or not. But anyone rolling in that much dough should be able to take some criticism.
I spent the next few minutes comparing him to everyone from Tom Selleck in Magnum P.I.—I used to watch reruns with Old Man Bertolli—to Dr. Phil.
I did an impersonation of the police chief as Dr. Phil, speaking to Mustache Man in the psychologists’ distinct accent, “That’s a really limp handshake you got there. Makes me wonder if other things about you are limp. How that’s working for you?”
Why would a man worth billions wear such a somber expression anyway? Making that kind of bank, he could pay people just to amuse him.
By the time I finished recording and uploaded my video, it was late. Drained from my rant and knowing I’d have to deal with my fresh case of unemployment tomorrow, I removed my mask, showered and got ready for bed. Too exhausted to worry about the clusterfuck my life tended to be, I laid my head on my pillow.
I pictured all the wonderful things that would happen if I ever became a billionaire and drifted off, a smile on my face.
2
Luca
Anna made adorable cooing sounds as she pulled her small body up into a standing position using my hideaway sofa for leverage. Twelve months old now, she’d begun to grow strong and I knew she would take her first steps soon. I regarded the perfection of her dark curls and tiny cherubic cheeks, feeling a beam of pride burn through the blackness of my heart.
My daughter was the only thing in my life that kept me even partway human.
I crouched beside her a few feet away, encouraging her to walk towards me. But when she looked at me with those giant baby blue eyes of hers—the exact same shade as Alana’s—my heart sent a stabbing pain through my chest. The woman I’d loved had died giving birth to my daughter, and since that moment, my life had become an obsidian chasm I couldn’t escape from.
The only sliver of light I could see from inside that chasm was Anna. My baby girl.
She wore a pink ruffled dress and matching tights, a present from her maternal grandmother. My daughter smiled brightly at me, and I attempted to smile back, but my face seemed to have trouble configuring itself that way. Instead, I dropped to my knees and spoke.
“Come here, sweetness. Come to Daddy.”
“Da… Da…” This was as close as she’d come so far to her first word.
She took one step, still clinging to the overstuffed sofa, then managed another shaking stride before dropping to her bottom. But this lack of success didn’t stop her. She merely grabbed onto the sofa arm and brought herself up again.
A few months ago, I’d moved back into my family’s gigantic forty-room mansion. Before renting the modest apartment I’d shared with Alana, I’d grown up here. The second floor was made up of multi-room living spaces like mine, places we could all live together in but still maintain some individual privacy.
When Alana had still been alive, I’d bucked at the tradition of residing here or on any part of the vast Varasso estate. But as time passed, I realized Anna needed more than the stony gaze of her father to enrich her life. I also needed someone to watch her as I went about the various errands necessary for the family business.
Moving back in with my father and brothers made too much sense to ignore.
One of my siblings would often take it upon himself to drop in on us. Since I’d disappeared for several weeks after losing the love of my life, it was their way of checking up on me. It probably also had to do with making sure I stayed amongst the living, something I’d contemplated not doing more than once. Anna’s existence was the only reason I continued to keep going, to keep breathing. This morning, the one to visit was Gabriel, my half-brother.
“She’s almost there,” he said from behind me. I didn’t look at him, choosing to keep my daughter in my sights instead. “Before you know it, she’ll be racing around the house full speed.”
“Yes.” I put my hands out and clapped softly, taking in Anna’s loving gaze as she thrust one of her chubby hands toward mine.
“Did you want this?” My half-brother asked me. “To become a parent?”
I considered his question before answering. “I never thought about it until…” I couldn’t finish my sentence. Although it’d now been a year—we’d celebrated Anna’s birthday two days ago—saying my girlfriend’s name still hurt. “When she became pregnant, we just went from there. We didn’t choose it, exactly.”
Alana had gotten pregnant by accident. We’d only forgotten birth control once, but it was enough.
“But this life. It’s… dangerous.”
As the son of my father’s mistress rather than our mother, Gabriel was the newest member of the Varasso clan. And though he’d been included in both the family and the business for over a decade, he still seemed to struggle with reconciling that life with the notion of someday having a marriage and children of his own.
“Yes,” I said, knowing what he was getting at. Like me, he was the type to prefer long term commitments and relationships with women rather than the constant bed-hopping that Marco and Alessandro tended to favor. “But it’s my life. Our life. She’ll grow accustomed to it.”