30. Titus
TITUS
Finding everything that the twins broke within my Bratva has been a challenge.
The protocol for an attempted uprising against a Pakhan is to kill anyone who had even considered joining the opposing side.
That is the only way you can ensure a lasting peace as there would be no one to come after the leaders of the last rebellion.
Unless the deaths of the leaders were severe enough to knock everybody back in line, which I’d say is the case this time.
Once word of how Cyrus and Cyril died started circulating, members of the brotherhood who were against me either came to me and begged my forgiveness or tried to run.
The brothers who wanted to offer true contrition either had to take a large pay cut from their current profits or give over a finger.
Surprisingly, only two readily parted with their pinkies in order to retain their places in the Bratva.
As for the ones who tried to run, the first few were found and dealt with in that first week. It’s been three more since then, and now that Ignat is back on his feet fully, I have no doubt that the remaining absconders will be found in the coming weeks.
Now that most of those pieces have been repaired, I can focus on the most important people in my life.
I asked Sofia to meet me out here and to bring Luka with her. I’m standing under the tree that shields Angela’s grave from the sun, but it’s a mild day for once. The warm weather has finally broken and the sun feels welcome and warm as it parts the leaves above me in little shafts of light.
I glance down at her grave, the white lily I brought for her lying motionless against the breeze on top of the gravestone. I’m doing the thing that I couldn’t do with you. Maybe this time, I can do it right.
“Titus?”
I turn to see Sofia walking toward me from the path leading into the cemetery.
She’s wearing a flowy blue and white sundress that lifts up a little on the breeze, showing flashes of her calves.
Luka is walking next to her wearing a striped T-shirt and blue jeans, his baseball cap sitting low, the rim covering his eyes.
“Thank you for coming,” I say as she approaches. She smiles gently, but I can see the confusion in her eyes.
“What’s going on? Why did you want me to come to a cemetery, of all places?”
I take a breath. Here we go.
“Sofia. Luka,” I say, motioning to the grave. “I’d like you to meet Angela Martino. She was someone very important to me…” I look down at Luka, who’s staring at the stone marker. “And also, the mother of my son.”
Their faces change simultaneously. Sofia’s brow creases with concern and Luka’s eyes widen as he looks up at me, sheer shock on his face. “M-Mom?” he asks, his voice barely a gasp.
I nod. “This is where she’s buried.” I kneel down next to him, getting on his level. “I’m sorry I never brought you with me to see her. I should have. You deserve to know where your mother is buried.”
He just stares at the gravestone, his mouth open slightly. After a minute, he looks over at me and asks, “Can I touch the… the…?”
“Yes. Of course, you can.”
He walks over to it and gets on his knees, tracing his hand over her name in silent reverence. “Dad,” Luka says suddenly. “Can she hear me? I mean, if I talk to her?”
“I think she can,” I say. “Whenever I come to see her, I talk to her.”
He nods and looks over his shoulder at me. “It’s just that she hasn’t been around since I was a baby. I want to tell her everything. So she’ll know all about me.”
“That sounds like a great idea.” I stand and look over at Sofia. She’s visibly troubled, her mouth turned downward and the corners of her eyes dipping.
“Are you all right?”
She nods quickly. “Sure. I’m just…” Her mouth moves, but no sound comes out as the words are lost. She looks up at me and says, “I’m fine.”
She’s not. And I don’t blame her. All these new feelings we’ve been having for one another and then I spring this on her…
I take her hand and say, “It’s important to me that you know what happened. Everything that happened.”
She swallows hard and glances around. “Can we sit down?” She nods toward a nearby bench.
I look down at Luka and say, “We’re going to give you a little privacy. So you can tell your mother everything without me hovering behind you. All right, Son?”
He nods without looking at me. “Thanks, Dad.”
Sofia and I walk to the bench a few feet away and sit, where we stay in silence for a few seconds as Luka starts to talk to his mother, his voice soft on the breeze.
“You’re bothered by my bringing you here?” I ask Sofia. She shrugs a little.
“You’ve never really talked about her,” she says. “I guess I just thought that the subject wasn’t up for discussion, so… I don’t know, Titus. I didn’t think you wanted to talk about her.”
“I didn’t,” I say. “As you are aware, her existence as it pertains to me was a secret until very recently. I didn’t exactly have anyone I could talk about her to. Except Ignat, of course.”
A little smile appears at the corner of her mouth. “Good thing he’s loyal to you.”
“Yeah. Good thing.”
We listen to Luka’s low talking. He sits cross-legged on the grass, leaning into the stone marker as if it were actually Angela standing before him. Sofia leans her head on my shoulder.
“You really loved her, didn’t you?”
I take a deep breath. There’s no simple answer to that. And as much as Sofia knew about my relationship with Angela, however she found out about it, she doesn’t know the whole truth. It’s about time that she did.
“I think it was maybe a year or two before the troubles of our respective worlds started to interfere,” I say.
“Angela was starting to get cases that were adjacent to the Arkhangelskaya. Boeviks from rival Bratvas in the city were starting to get caught up in sweeps conducted by the police. This Bratva has always been among the most feared, and we only started growing exponentially after I became Pakhan.”
“Papa always said you were his biggest rivals,” she said softly.
“It was true. But the Penza and the Arkhangelskaya didn’t step on each other’s toes. None of us did, really. Every organization, every gang in the city, we all stuck to our own territories. As ready for war as we all are, no one really wants it.”
She doesn’t say anything, but I feel her stiffen slightly. Maybe she knows what’s coming.
“And then one day, people started to question why none of my men had been arrested or hassled by the D.A.’s office.
Then a rumor started floating around that she and I were sleeping together.
I don’t know who started the rumor, but it was happening on both sides of the line.
People in her office were talking about it as well as the brotherhood.
” I snicker. “The ironic thing is that if she had just been incompetent instead of actually sleeping with me, people might’ve come to the same conclusion.
Angela was a very beautiful woman. And, as I’m sure you understand, some people have a problem taking beautiful women seriously. ”
I feel her smile against my arm. “Tell me about it.”
“Well, when I discovered these rumors about us were happening, that was the first time we talked about the possibility of splitting up. I certainly didn’t want to do that, but the consequences of our being together were just too high.
All it would take was the wrong person to take that rumor too seriously… ”
I have to stop for a moment. I’m coming to the part of this that she doesn’t know. The part that I’ve hesitated in telling her. I’ve been questioning that since our relationship changed and I’ve been holding onto it, protecting her from the truth.
I don’t want to hurt her. That’s what it all comes down to. But she has to know about this if we have any future together at all.
She lifts her head and looks me in the eye. “So, the wrong person found out. That’s how she was killed.”
I look away from her, looking at Luka instead. “Yes. Your father found out about it.”
She tenses, but she doesn’t say anything. I go on.
“As I understand it, he came upon the knowledge of our relationship through someone who claimed to have witnessed us together. Knowing the kind of damage that would do to my Bratva, I imagine he had several choices. One of them being to kill her and then kill me, then absorb the Arkhangelskaya.”
“Stop,” she says pulling away from me. “What are you saying, Titus? My father is the reason for this war?”
She’s scowling in disbelief at me. “By the time he found out about our relationship, we had been broken up for a while,” I go on, “but… but then I heard he was looking for her. Ignat discovered that he knew somehow and… When I realized what was happening, I went to Angela’s house…”
I don’t like to think about what I walked into that night. I’ve pushed it to the far corners of my mind all those years ago. Her lying dead in the foyer of her home, a single gunshot to her head, blood pooling out under her… and the sound of a child crying somewhere in the house.
“She was already dead,” I tell Sofia. “We think she had been gone for hours because Luka was crying hysterically in his crib, hungry with a soiled diaper. I knew she’d been pregnant, but somehow, I thought that she…
I guess I didn’t think she’d really decide to have him without me.
” I clear my throat to chase away the burning in my eyes.
“But I also knew he was mine. And I knew I had to make sure that they didn’t kill him for something he had no say in being a part of. ”
Sofia’s not speaking. She’s not looking at me, either. She’s watching Luka with a deep frown.
“I needed you to know the truth, Sofia,” I say to her. “About your father and about everything that brought us all here.”