My half-brother nodded, going silent and introspective. I wondered when he settled down and brought a woman in to join our family, if he’d choose not to procreate at all. As the third son born outside of marriage and a product of adultery, his sons would never be directly in line to lead anyway. If he didn’t want to have kids, that was his choice.
“Youstill miss her?” Gabriel spoke again. “Alana?”
My breath caught in my chest, and I stared out the nearby window, taking in the misty September afternoon. This time of year, the weather in Philly could be hot and muggy or chilly with fog or rain. Just like the day of her death, this one had started as unseasonably warm and foggy. That similarity along with the sound of her name hit me like a physical blow.
No one had said the love of my life’s name out loud in my presence since then.
Until now.
I closed my eyes, my throat aching with emotion. But I couldn’t give in to it. I had never fully given in to it. I feared if I did, I’d be dragged under by those riptides forever, to drown endlessly in sorrow. It’d destroy me. I loved my daughter more than anything but seeing her served as a constant reminder to me of what I’d lost.
“Every day.” Despite my decision to rein in my grief, my voice still hitched, betraying me.
“I’m sorry,” my half-brother grasped my shoulder, his tone portentous and quiet. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories for you. I’ve never wanted to believe in that fucking curse, but…”
But the evidence was overwhelming. Although I’d resisted thinking it might be real before, now I knew the truth. All of us Varassos were cursed, and we always would be. There could be no other explanation.
Taking a deep breath, I pushed these thoughts back to a far corner of my brain and stood. Gabriel released me as I did. “I have business I need to attend to.”
“It was business I came here to discuss,” he said, and I glanced over at him. “There’s a problem. Some woman disguising her identity with a mask posted a video online. It casts our father in a less than favorable light.”
We crossed to the other side of the room, putting some distance between us and my daughte
r while keeping her in view. Gabriel pulled out his phone and showed me the clip. The woman’s video was a sophomoric attempt at humiliation, idiotic and insulting, yet it’d managed to go viral with over ten million views, nonetheless.
Had it not become such a widespread phenomenon, we might’ve blown it off, but now we had no other option but to address it. We couldn’t let the slight go unanswered. Any attack on the Varasso family, even a minor one, could snowball if we allowed it to. We had a reputation to defend, one we took very seriously.
“Alessandro track her down?” I asked him. Our youngest brother was the most tech minded of us, and his hacking skills had protected our business interests more than once. If he hadn’t been born into our family, he could’ve obtained a job with any security firm or law enforcement agency in the country.
“Already traced her IPO. She may have concealed her face, but he found her signal with no difficulty. We either need to collect her or kill her outright,” Gabriel said. “Make an example out of her.”
Reinforcing the stone wall I’d placed around my heart, I focused exclusively on dealing with the issue at hand. The busier I kept myself, the easier it was to not think about what I’d become. The emptiness of it. The darkness that grew within me each passing minute, making me more and more callous. More and more a monster.
In the past year I’d gone out of my way to find each person who’d ever worked for Jackson Randolph, the man responsible for shooting me a year ago, the man who’s greed had stolen from me those precious last hours I could’ve spent with the mother of my child. Alliances. Hired thugs. Dealers. Runners. Drivers.
I slaughtered them without even a modicum of remorse.
I’d hoped to feel better by doing this. Feel some sort of justice or retribution had taken place, but I didn’t. No matter how ruthlessly I cut them down, I felt nothing. It was like I no longer had a soul.
Now, dealing with this admittedly trivial threat, I still felt nothing but a need to handle it quickly. I glanced over at my brother, weighing my feelings for him. At one time, I’d had so much love for my family that I’d risked my life for them daily. I continued this modus operandi, but it was out of habit. As I peered into my half-brother’s face, it was like staring at a blank wall.
I felt nothing. No love. No duty. No real connection. The only person I felt any positive emotion for at all was Anna, and even my devotion to her remained tinged with loss. Now, concentrating only on Gabriel, I didn’t even feel that. When I spoke, my voice came out as a robotic monotone.
“Probably be easiest to kill her. Don’t need anyone nosing around where they shouldn’t.”
As though through the prism of an alternate reality, I remembered a time when my answer to someone being a nuisance wouldn’t have automatically been execution, but I flicked the memory of who I’d once been away. That person had died the same day Alana had.
“Want me to do it there or should I bring her back here?” he asked me, his features going as cold as mine.
There had once been a time when my father had held me responsible for Gabriel’s tutelage. Angelo had wanted the son not raised entirely by him to be well versed in our dealings and had yoked me with the task. But that had been long ago. I thought back to the night Gabriel had proven himself to be as formidable as any Varasso, the night of my daughter’s birth.
Had my half-brother not had my back, had he not been an accurate shot, Anna might well have been left an orphan. As it was, he’d saved my life. Sometimes, I wanted to resent him for that, but then logic would reassert itself. Anna needed me. And in truth, I wanted to raise her, to be her father.
“Return here,” I told him, bringing my mind back to the present. “No need to draw undue attention. Take Marco with you and have Alessandro drive. Keep things low key. I’ll be waiting for you when you get back.”
3
Molly