But the curse has to end right here and right now. And it has to end forever.
I’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere in this process, I must’ve entered some weird state of semi-consciousness.
Even though I wouldn’
t allow myself to sleep, I imagined seeing this immense hand reaching out, snatching up my mother, my father, and Alana and pulling them away. It was just about to reach for Molly as she held a brown-eyed baby, when the images meshed unrecognizably before becoming something else.
Something I eventually concluded to be a memory.
I was seven and Marco five. Sandro hadn’t been born yet, and we didn’t know about Gabriel. I’d been a boy like any other, darting around and roughhousing without a care in the world. We were with Greta outside in the backyard, playing hide and go seek.
We’d been playing for a while, though Marco had been younger than me, he could be extra quiet when he wanted to be and was hard to find. Dad appeared through the back door of the mansion and approached.
He’d been scowling. He always seemed to be scowling. So gruff. He came up to us with a silver pistol in his hand. Ordering Greta to take Marco inside, he thrust the gun into my palm. At the time, I remember it seeming humongous and difficult to lift. It’d dwarfed my hand, its handle coming up past my wrist.
The yard had been filled with pots of flowers, my mother’s hobby. She’d been gifted with a green thumb and had spent hours watering her plants, tending to them. She’d loved to watch them bloom. My father told me to aim at one of these baskets of flowers, one that hung from the branch of a maple tree, to find it through the sights running down the barrel.
Maybe because I knew my mom would be upset if I damaged her flowers or because I’d never picked up a gun before, I protested. “I can’t, Dad. It’s too heavy for me to hold.”
Without warning, he’d backhanded me so ferociously I’d seen stars. “You are a Varasso, and Varassos are strong. There will come a time when this weapon will be the difference between you staying alive or being shot dead. Do you want to be dead?”
“No,” I’d whimpered, my nose throbbing. He’d nearly broken it. At that point, I’d seen my father be stern, but while he’d yelled at me on occasion, this was the first time he’d ever hit me.
Prior to that, my mother had explained that my father ran this massive empire, and that he was the king of this empire. She’d told me I was his Crown Prince, the one who would take over for him someday. But I’d been too young and naïve to appreciate the true definition of what that meant.
This would be my first lesson.
“You have a responsibility to this family. They will need you to protect them. And you can’t protect them if you’re weak. Do you understand?”
I nodded even though I didn’t. I didn’t want to be struck again.
“Now take this pistol and target those red flowers.” He’d pushed the gun into my hand again, arranging my fingers into the correct position. It’d taken me several tries to hold it up high enough to aim, and even then, it’d required both hands, but I did it.
Afterwards, more of these lessons started to take place. I visited the hidden greenhouses where we processed opiates for delivery for the first time at nine. At ten, I watched my father execute someone. He’d pushed the man down to his knees with his back to us, then he’d shot him at pointblank range. I’d learned by this time that my father expected me not to scream.
Still, that night, I’d had nightmares.
At thirteen, he had me execute my own first kill. He’d done me the courtesy of having this man hooded so I couldn’t identify his face. I’d heard him begging for mercy, though. I’d heard him apologizing for whatever he’d done over and over.
I’d known I needed to pull the trigger. I had to do this for my father, or something bad would happen to me. I’d been scared out of my mind. But I’d done it, mostly out of self-preservation. And then, I’d thrown up right there at my father’s feet.
When I was fifteen and my mother died in that car accident, I overheard various aunts and uncles mumbling about a curse. I hadn’t known what they were talking about. My brothers and I had been staggered at her loss, grief-stricken by it, but our father had shown us that he expected us to be hard. To not break or show sorrow. At least not outwardly.
We’d done our best, though at seven, Sandro hadn’t stood a chance. He’d bawled his eyes out as they lowered her casket into the ground, so I’d carried him away from there. Marco had helped me distract him until Greta put him down for a nap, dosing his drink with cold medicine so he’d stay out for a while.
But later, at the wake, I heard the whole story from an elderly great aunt. Apparently, this happened to every male Varasso at some point. They’d suffer some tragedy, usually something connected to their love lives or families.
There’d been a list. Before my father had constructed the estate we all lived on now, our family had lived in a different house here in Philadelphia. An earthquake had rumbled through three months after my birth, even though such things were statistically so rare as to be almost unheard of. It’d shaken our home nearly off its foundations, and nearly killed the three of us.
The night of Marco’s birth was heralded by a deadly fire all the way across town. It’d killed three of our first male cousins. It’d been caused by arson, so the family business had likely played its hand. Then, when Marco was a year old, our mother miscarried a baby, which had left her diminished both physically and emotionally. It’d taken her six years to heal and have Alessandro.
And these blows kept on coming.
After our mother’s death, Angelo’s adultery had come to light. And although the four of us brothers didn’t know why our father had betrayed the wife he’d claimed to adore, it impacted the way we conducted ourselves with women. None of us had ever cheated. Not once.
I’d made the decision long ago that if I loved a woman, I would always be true to her. I might be villainous in other areas of my life, but not with my girlfriend. And if I ever married, not with my wife. The women I loved were precious to me, and I’d never do something as detrimental or disrespectful as being unfaithful to them. That’s not what love was about.
I hoped that God did exist and that he’d honor my proposal. Because I needed some outside help, something bigger than guns or drug money or family loyalty. I needed something to end all this heartbreak and loss.