For bringing him back to us.
The dynamic between Luca and I had altered ever since I’d been hurt. I’d only recently been able to participate in the family business meetings again, and every time I’d disagreed with him, he’d reacted not with the shortened fuse he used to have, but with careful consideration. I thought of a conversation we’d had a few weeks ago.
He’d mentioned expanding our drug trade operation up into Canada. It was something we’d discussed before that Roman lunatic had demolished our mansion. Luca had said he wanted to move forward with his plans and see who might be open to bribery when I objected.
“This is different than Mexico,” I’d said. “This isn’t Central or South America. Canada isn’t some third world starving nation. We need to be more careful or their law enforcement will be all over us.”
Honestly, I hadn’t intended to be a thorn in his side, I’d only meant to play devil’s advocate. I thought expansion would probably be a good thing instead of a bad one. I was mainly just urging caution. In the past, my brother would’ve either told me to shut up or that I was being an ass.
If I pushed him past his limits—which I have to admit I used to enjoy doing—then he might even physically accost me. It’d happened more than once. But this time, he simply gazed over at me and answered with a calm patience he usually only reserved for his wife and children.
“If that’s what you think is best, Marco, we can wait. Alessandro, let’s do more research before we go forward.”
My little brother Sandro, the youngest and geekiest of us, had always been tasked with the more technical aspects of the business. He’d thrown me a long measuring glance, but then he’d nodded at Luca, not protesting or questioning anything. Both of my brothers, while not deferring to me, were allowing me to have my way to a certain extent.
Which might’ve been great if I hadn’t known it was because of the fire. Because I’d been injured. It felt like they were attempting to avoid upsetting or agitating me.
Like they thought I was too much of a pansy-ass weakling to handle anything.
Even Molly, Luca’s wife, hadn’t offered her customary loud-mouthed dissent. The night I met her, she’d spat in my face and shown me nothing but contempt. We’d kidnapped her, to be fair. At Angelo’s behest, but still. The animosity we’d once shared had evolved into friendly banter a long time ago, but she wasn’t one to pull her punches.
So when Queen Molly, so named because she headed up the entire drug line with expert efficiency, had simply nodded at me, it felt disingenuous. Off. Luca wasn’t the only one being careful with me, she was, too. Then, at their newborn son Antonio’s cry from the nursery next door, Molly had rushed off to breastfeed him and Luca had ended the meeting early.
My half-brother, Gabriel, had been the only one to stay behind and give it to me straight. “Sorry, bro,” he’d said.
“Sorry about what?” I’d snapped back, and he frowned.
“About how everyone’s acting. They’ve just been so worried about you, you know?”
“You mean like how we used to all worry about Luca?”
He shrugged. Of the four of us, Gabriel had always been the most empathetic, the one least like our father. “Well… yeah.”
“Shit.”
It’d been two and a half months since that night, and I still had difficulty sleeping on my back. The skin on the top of my shoulders and stretching above my shoulder blades was rough, weepy in places, and discolored—really, it was ugly as all hell—but I did my best to live with it.
Alessandro had put some feelers out and discovered that while most Mounties were extremely law-abiding, a few of them had their price. The weakness of the Canadian dollar seemed to be at the heart of things, giving us an in. Marijuana was legal across the entire country there, but the distribution and sales were closely monitored. We planned to start small with online sales Sandro would disguise as legitimate. Then, we’d see how it went.
One thing that we had an ever-increasing need for were new businesses we could launder money through. Molly, who I loved to call Queenie just to pester her, had increased sales to such
a vast extent that this was becoming more and more of an issue.
Washing too much through any one business’s books could become suspicious and problematic, so Luca had tasked me with buying another one to decrease the likelihood of being discovered. Early on, Alessandro had mentioned going to Las Vegas and purchasing chips which could then be cashed in without drawing any undue attention.
Such a method was employed by many to launder money but traveling almost twenty-five hundred miles didn’t appeal to me. While my burns had improved, spending hours on a plane where my ability to redo my dressings or take off my shirt to let my wounded skin breathe would be impossible sounded like torture to me. Not to mention unnecessary.
Cashing in poker chips might be quicker than funneling the excess funds through a restaurant, but I didn’t mind taking my time. I’d never been a particularly patient man but enduring the healing process had taught me that patience was an attribute which could be learned.
Not that I’d had a choice in the matter.
Nearly everything about dealing with these burns had been long, drawn-out and excruciating. Even though I’d wanted to scream or even lash out physically many times, I’d realized taking my frustrations out on those working to help me would be stupid. The only thing I could do was follow the doctor’s directions, get my treatments on time, and wait.
Wait for the extenders to stretch some healthier pieces of my skin enough that it could be sliced off and used to cover the areas damaged beyond repair. Wait to be scheduled for each surgery. Wait to see if the grafts would take. Wait for the pain to diminish. Wait. Wait. Wait.
So even though mixing our money with the legitimate take of the restaurant might not be the fastest of procedures, it made the most amount of sense for us.
For me.