Luca nodded his head. “Hey, Gabe.”
He sat down in the other leather chair next to me in front of Luca’s desk. “I finished getting things cleaned up at the docks. We shouldn’t have any problems there.”
Luca nodded. “And what about downtown?”
“Um.”
“Jesus Christ,” Luca barked. “Quit it with this lackadaisical shit and talk like a man!”
Luca picked at Gabriel; we all knew that. He was way tougher on him than he would ever be on Marco or me, and it was worse because Gabriel was only a little puppy vying for Luca’s approval. Gabriel was always trying to put his best foot forward in the business, but when it came right down to it, this world wasn’t for him, and Luca knew that. Luca, like my dad, believed that once you were in, you were always in, but we would probably pay for involving Gabriel in the underground parts of our lives one day. Not because Gabriel meant to mess it up, but simply because he wasn’t a dark person. The thing my dad loved most about Gabriel was his heart. Dad said it was good that Gabriel didn’t inherit, as the rest of us had, his cold, steely resolve, and it was true. Gabriel wasn’t a man who dealt in finalities. It was much more Gabriel’s preference to make people happy. He should be off enjoying being young, not trying to deal with all of the family’s shadows.
“Sorry.” Gabriel took a gulp. “They didn’t really take me too seriously downtown.”
Luca scoffed and Gabriel sat up straight in his chair, waving his hands around nervously. “I told them everything you told me to, that if they didn’t listen, then you were gonna go down there next, and they didn’t want that.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Did you say it like you did just now?”
Gabriel looked at me. “N-not exactly like that.”
“You need to have more confidence.” I slammed a fist on the arm of my chair. “Fucking do it, or the next one who comes down here is gonna be the boss, and I don’t think you wanna make him disrupt his day for this piddly shit.”
Gabriel’s eyes widened. “Yeah. They probably would have been more likely to listen to something like that.”
Luca looked at me, and I held a hand up. “I’ll go before the funeral tomorrow.”
“Take him with you,” Luca demanded and then shifted his gaze to Gabriel. “You really need to step it up. We’re already down, and I’m not going to be dragging a floundering fish along.”
Gabriel nodded. “Yes, Luca.” He looked over at me. “I was planning to go with you to the funeral anyway, so…”
I nodded and put a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “Yeah. It’ll be fine.”
“You’re going?” Luca hissed. “Why?”
“Well, funerals are never easy, and I know Sandro will need some support.” Gabriel sat back in his chair and relaxed again a little. “Are you not going?”
Luca pulled a cigar out of the top drawer of his desk and nestled it between his fingers but didn’t light it. “No, why would I need to go? I think I met the man once at a Christmas party.”
“You’re the head of the household now,” Gabriel explained. “I think that you should be there. For visibility. Visibility was always important to dad, so—”
Luca slammed his hand on the desk. “Don’t tell me what you think my dad would do. I know what he would do. He would do whatever he thought was best as the head of the household. I’m head of the household and the organization now, so I will do whatever I think is best.” His voice got lower and more menacing. “Do you have a problem with that, Gabe?”
Gabriel shook his head. “No.”
Luca looked at me, and I rolled my eyes. “Do what you want, Boss.”
3
Willow
I was barely maintaining my emotions as I filed into the packed chapel. Getting closer to the casket at the head of the pulpit was like forcing two negative magnets against each other. The nearer I got, the further away I wanted to be. I looked across the pews and saw that Ricky had situated himself next to two of the Varasso brothers, Gabriel and, the one I was most nervous to see, Alessandro. Just looking at Alessandro’s back gave me chills. I wanted to believe that I was more equipped to be close to him again, but all of a sudden, I would rather get closer to the casket.
“Willy!”
I scanned the crowd to the other side of the chapel and saw one of my distant cousins, Hannah, waving her hand in my direction. She was actually a cousin of my mother’s, but she was fairly close to me in age. When we were little girls, we spent a lot of time together, but once my family got mixed up with the Varassos, we stopped interacting with most of my parents’ extended families altogether.
“The Varassos are our family,” my father would say, as though believing it cemented it in stone. They aren’t my family, dad.
I sifted through the group until I was at the pew where Hannah was sitting. I filed over to the spot next to her and sat beside her.