“It’s fine. I want you to come over.”
My heart leaped up into my throat. “What?”
“I want to be with you. I love you.”
“Stacy, are you sure you’re okay?”
She chuckled. “I’m fine. I’m the best that I’ve ever been because I met you.”
The images of her bruises skipped across my mind. “That’s not true.”
“It is.” She sniffled again. “I know that something bad happened, but I’ll just be more prepared. You can teach me how to protect myself. We’ll figure it out. You said Luca’s wife joined the business. Maybe I—”
“No,” I cut her off. “I won’t drag you into this.”
“It’s too late for that,” she replied.
I was still staring at my darkened house for any signs of movement while trying to listen to Stacy. I got a nasty flashback of talking to Stacy instead of meeting with Anthony Carducci. If I’d been on time, Stacy wouldn’t be broken right now. I couldn’t make the same mistake twice.
“Stace, I have to go.”
“No, Gabriel. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I shot back quickly. “I want to be with you. If that’s what you want, we can figure it out, but right now, I have to go. I think my family may be in trouble.”
“What do you mean?”
“The house is dark. The house is never dark.”
“You should call the police.”
I snickered at her ignorance. “You don’t call the police in my business, beautiful.” I looked at the console again. “Hey, listen, if I never see you again, know that I love you so much.”
“Gabriel. Do not hang up this phone. Do not go in that house.”
“I have to. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
“Gabriel—”
I hit the button to end the call, and the car fell silent.
I climbed out, shut the door quietly, and started my slow ascent up the front steps. I opened the front door, knowing it’d be unlocked. We usually had air-tight security hanging around every corner, so there was no reason to lock it, but there were no guards present. In fact, there was no one at all. There was almost always sound in our estate. The sounds of cleaning staff fluttering around, Luca conducting meetings, some of the lower-ranks talking about some matter or another. Just like the Varasso estate was ne
ver dark, it was also never silent.
I cocked my gun and made my way up the first flight of stairs. All of the doors I could see were open, and the lights were off. I was considering journeying down the row when I noticed the spill of lights at the top of the next flight of stairs. It was faint, not something I would have been able to see from outside, and was likely coming from Luca’s office. He only had back-facing windows. I crawled up the second flight of stairs and followed the thin stream of light down the hallway, down to Luca’s door.
Something told me not to knock. The last time I entered, I’d barged in and pointed a gun at Alessandro, but this time, I got a sinking feeling that I’d be alerting my presence when I shouldn’t. As quietly as I could, I wrapped my free hand around the door’s handle. My stealth wasn’t entirely necessary. It was a massive office, but it wasn’t so big that if I opened the door, I wouldn’t be seen.
All at once, I was transported back in time to the moment I found out exactly what kind of business the Varasso family was really in. Most people in our line of work had fronts for their shady dealings. My dad did a little bit of everything, but one of his sweetest ventures was a southern border drug hive, the one Molly now ran. Runners would travel from one end to the other of an endlessly twisted cavern of underground hallways, transporting drugs back and forth. He’d called this leg of his business many things, but he most often referred to it as the beehive. Young Gabriel heard his father talking about bees and believed that our family was in the honey business. I didn’t understand what was so lucrative about something I could go out and find in any hive, but I didn’t question it. My father told me not to.
I was already older than my brothers were when they first started learning the business at ten. I was coming up on my twelfth birthday and still didn’t understand what qualified Luca, Marco, and Alessandro to work with the honey when I still couldn’t. My dad would never admit it, but I believed he was considering not dragging me in. Maybe my life changed that day I crawled out of bed, looking for him one quiet, wintry morning. It was still before sunrise, and though my pre-teen self could still sleep until someone was throwing lunch at my head, on occasion, I would wake up before the birds. My dad had brought me to the hill for the first time the day before, so we’d done a bit of bonding, and I wanted to see him.
I didn’t know when my dad slept because he was always in his office. Even in the wee hours of the morning, when everyone else was snoozing away, apart from the overnight crew, I knew I would find my dad in his office or not find him at all. I snuck up the stairs quietly, so as not to wake up my brothers’ mom. She already hated me enough, and she wasn’t a morning person. I tiptoed down this same, mostly dark hallway, towards the same thin veil of light seeping out from under the door. I was going to knock and announce myself when I heard my dad’s thundering voice roar out.
“What do you mean they found the hive?” he barked. “Where are the bees?”
He was silent, but then he growled again. “How many did we lose?”