It occurred to me that the man sitting here knew Marco better than I did. That he’d grown up with him in this bizarre existence. That this brother had chosen to be married with two kids while running an organized crime ring. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t make the concept compute.
“Marco’s not who I thought he was,” I said, wondering how Luca would react to this.
“I can’t make excuses for him—for my family in general—so I won’t. Up until recently, he and I fought like cats and dogs. But one thing I have to say is that once Marco gives you his loyalty, you have it forever. His word is gold. If he says he’ll do something, he’ll do it.” His gaze became distant as he scratched at a place on his left shin. “He told you about the fire?”
“About how he got his burns? Yes.”
“Did he also tell you that he received those burns because he was saving my life?”
I stared at him. “No.”
“I was stuck under part of the fallen ceiling on the second floor and couldn’t get out. I also had a broken leg. Marco pulled me free and tried to carry me to safety, but we ended up getting trapped together under a cave-in on the first floor. He took the brunt of it, getting burned as he protected me.” He paused as if it was too difficult for him to go on. “I owe him everything.”
“That’s what I can’t get past. He hid so much from me, but he’s also sweet and…”
Luca chuckled, and I pursed my lips. “I apologize,” he said. “Marco is many things, but no member of our family would consider ‘sweet’ to be one of them.”
“But he was. He was sweet with me,” I insisted. “It’s like he’s these two different people. The man he was with me, someone who nearly died himself while saving his brother, and…”
“A Varasso,” he completed my thought. “A member of the Italian mafia.”
I nodded. “How do you do it? Run this humongous criminal organization with your family right there with you? Don’t you worry about them? About their safety?”
He offered me a bleak smile. “Twenty-four seven. I’ve gone to massive lengths to keep them out of harm’s way, to keep the more unpalatable aspects away from them, but…” He made a movement as if to put a hand on my arm, but then hesitated, as if rethinking the idea. “There have been times when
I’ve failed.”
“So why continue to do it? Why not leave it all behind?”
“Like Marco is doing, you mean?”
“Well, yes,” I said. The answer seemed so obvious to me.
“I’ve often wished I could, but as the patriarch of the family, my network of unsavory connections is wide-reaching. Closing up shop, as it were, would threaten the stability of the structure itself. It would flush out and expose a lot of dangerous people. Retaliation from them would be inevitable, and I can’t take that risk.”
“So you think it’s safer to stick with the status quo than to do something like join witness protection?”
“I’m much more visible in mafia circles than my little brother has been. For now, my best bet is to maintain what already is.” He sighed. “If I’d been given the choice early on, I would’ve chosen something else for myself, but I wasn’t given that choice. None of us were.”
“But if you thought you could put your past behind you and start over again safely with your family in tow, would you?”
Luca had been staring unfocused in front of him, but at this question, he focused directly on me. “In a heartbeat.”
I don’t know why, but this comment made me feel so much better. I realized the Varassos were a family like any other in some ways, and that I’d been judging them incredibly harshly. Not that they didn’t deserve that judgment to a certain degree, but at least as far as this generation was concerned, it sounded as if these men led difficult and complicated existences.
They had done some horrible things, but they weren’t pure evil, either.
My life had become entangled with theirs, and now I had to make a tough decision. Continue to live my life without Marco and figure out what to do about the fact that his child was growing inside me. Or walk away from everything I knew, abandoning all I’d always held dear, to go be with him.
And whatever way I went, someone would end up hurt and disappointed, which I hated. Tears sprang to my eyes as I sat there, overwhelmed by the fact that this was a no-win situation, and I felt Luca place a tentative hand on my shoulder. There was no escaping the truth of the matter.
I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t.
26
Marco
The day after I proposed my deal to the FBI disappeared in a flurry of paperwork, recorded testimony, and lots of discussions happening behind closed doors. It was only after I’d been taken back to my cell late that night that my thoughts and anxieties crept up on me.