Chapter 38
Ostia.
Part of the Commune of Rome, but separate from the main city, is what locals refer to as a “large neighbourhood” but what the rest of the world might call a small town. Ostia, being on the edge of the Tyrrhenian Sea, has made it not only a decent tourist attraction, but also a summer getaway for those that don’t already call it home.
Including those residing in the mid-sized villa I’m walking to at the end of a dead-end road, the waterfront to one side serving as endless protection for the occupants.
Sticking to the building’s shadows, I peek over my shoulder and check I’m not being watched or followed, before hopping the hedges into the villa’s modest yard, exactly as I’ve done so many times before.
Around the back of the building, by the single door that’s always locked, I slip my key into the metal and enter the dimly lit space. Being late, the lights in the house have been lowered, except for the main one down the hall, which means she’s probably lounging with her preferred TV show.
My steps remain silent. So silent that when I enter the small living room, she doesn’t turn around from her place on the couch. A lamp in the corner casts a glow that adds to the TV’s brightness, which is playing some American reality show. She’s obsessed with them for some reason. They’re dumb and predictable and nothing about them is “reality,” but for the most part, they keep her in the house, so they have their use. She can watch them all to her heart’s content if it means my hair won’t be turning grey any time soon.
Across the room, the second occupant smiles immediately. Considering I messaged her before beginning the forty-five-minute drive from my place to here, my presence isn’t a shock.
I wave to mia madre before stepping up behind the couch and covering my sister’s eyes with my hands.
Since my steps were those of a trained killer—silent and undetectable—she lurches into action, her manicured nails clawing at the back of my hands.
“Z, you’re a fucking asshole!” she shouts as I lower my hands from her face.
No one else would sneak up on her how I do, so of course she knows it’s me. There’s numerous reasons Madre and her live in this small community. Safety and secrecy being the main ones.
“Serafina, language,” Madre snaps before returning to her task in the attached kitchen and mumbling something about siblings and their behaviours.
Serafina jumps from the couch, hands on her hips, and with a fake-angry pout that always makes me chuckle. I come around the furniture to pull her into a tight hug. One a bit longer than usual. Maybe it’s the week I’ve been having, and who’s now in my life, but a quick hold isn’t enough this time.
Based on the tap on my back and the fake cough, she isn’t feeling the same. “Uh, Zeno. Can’t breathe.” The messy mop of hair she calls a bun brushes my chin when she tips her head back to look at me.
Reluctantly, I let my sister go so she can return to the couch. She leans across the table to mute the reality show—small mercies—and checks her phone’s notifications while she’s there.
Madre strides from the kitchen area, leaning in for her own hug. “ Mio figlio , what brings you all the way out there?”
Because this is where you’ve chosen to live.
This small villa feels like home, even though I’ve never lived here. With Madre’s touch, it’s like a recreation of the mansion she once decorated. Just being in her presence reminds me of a different time, when she lived in Rome and Padre was alive and we were all together, before war with the Bratva demolished us. In some ways, it was a better time, but that’s me being selfish because that very “better” didn’t involve Serafina, and to consider a time when she didn’t exist is unfathomable.
“That would be my troublesome sister,” I reply to Madre’s question, gaze lasering on Serafina who’s tapping away on her phone. Based on her eye roll, she’s still paying attention, even as she scrolls through strangers’ updates and their insistent need to complain about everything and everyone on her favourite social media app.
“If this is about the party last night, give up. Madre yelled at me enough for the both of you, and even Nero gave me an earful.”
“For good reason. You have a curfew, and when you don’t come home or answer your phone, no one knows where you’ve disappeared to.”
“You realize I’m eighteen, right? I can do what I want.”
Madre coughs, indicating exactly how she feels about that.
“It’s a dangerous world, Sera.”
Even if she doesn’t realize exactly how dangerous, but that’s because I’ve ensured she doesn’t know and never will. She’s aware of her background and how she came to be; that I’m a Cosa Nostra Capo, some of what the organization does, why Madre has chosen Ostia for them to live in rather than the Mancini villa. She understands why Madre hides from her own shadow and cries amidst the traumatic nightmares in her background.
What she doesn’t know is how she’s the only woman in the entire world who I’d trade my whole empire for. How everything I’ve done has been in vengeance of not only Padre’s death, but her life. How Madre and I have been determined to let her grow up as a regular, civilian girl and not deal with the political, deadly mob world.
Serafina rolls her eyes and stands from the couch again, barely sparing me a glance. “If you’ve only come to bitch at me, feel free to leave. You seem to forget you’re my brother, not my father.”
Be happy for that. I taper that comment as she stomps by me and heads down the hall. That’s when I’m stricken with how similar her attitude is, and how I’ve never noticed until now…
“Pack an overnight bag!” I call out.
Halfway down the hallway, she spins, all previous annoyance visibly gone and replaced by a bright expression. “Seriously?” And then she runs off without waiting for a response.
Madre watches her go with pursed lips and only when Serafina’s steps thump on the staircase, does she speak. “Rewarding her with a visit home?”
“For a night or two. I need her there for a bit.”
While I generally keep Serafina away from the villa to keep her as hidden as possible, she does come for the occasional visit. It’s fine, as long as we’re careful with our arrival and no soldiers or staff are around.
Madre hasn’t been back since she was six months pregnant with Serafina. I doubt she will ever be.
She shoots me a look that only a mother can master. “What have you done?”
“Got back from Russia this morning.”
Immediately, her eyes dart to the door, the need to escape from the ghosts haunting her past darkening the moment. She clenches her hands together, and then her eyes. Actions I’ve seen so many times. They’re movements her therapist once suggested to help ground her and not be transported back to the horrors she once lived.
“Why would you go there?” It’s a whisper I more read from her mouth than hear. Every syllable is packed with anxiety, apprehension, and the memories trying to yank her away from me. “It’s too dangerous, even with him gone.”
I come around the counter and pull her into my arms. Sometimes, it’s difficult to recognize the woman who raised me. Her frail body used to be strong, and I recall being a young boy and running through the back door and straight into her arms, when she’d lift me and swing me in a circle before urging me to wash up before dinner. In the evening, we’d take walks around the property, swim in the pool, or watch a movie. Evenings with her were so different from my days with Padre and even though I wanted my future as a Capo, being with her was the perfect balance.
She’s no longer that woman. Even when, two years ago, I admitted that Ursin Volkov was dead so she could sleep a bit better knowing her villain no longer inhabited the planet. Albeit with hesitation on my part because I worried about what dredging up the past would do to her, but I hoped to get the mother from my childhood back.
It didn’t happen. Instead, that version exists in my memories. Her body’s shrunken in recent years, despite still being fairly young in age. The stress of hiding does that to a person, I suppose. It took years of her living here, away from the Mancini mansion, to even leave these four walls and explore the town. At first, she demanded bodyguards, and after Serafina’s birth, it was even worse. She was petrified he’d return for them. It was only when Serafina was close to two that she began feeling safer and willingly leaving home alone, which is why, I believe, Padre never mentioned the ongoing war and the numerous attacks he initiated after getting her back; he didn’t want to spook her back into self-imprisonment.
It's why Russia is so rarely been a topic of conversation. I enjoy Madre here , with me and Serafina, and not clawing through the past.
“Why there?” she prompts again, anxiety sharpening her tone. “I’ve left it in the past, so you should too.”
Have you? I don’t dare say that to her though. She hasn’t, and at this point, I don’t expect her to. “I made a promise over Padre’s dead body,” I admit for the first time ever, having never told her of my vow. When he was murdered, she was in the trenches of caring for a young Serafina and then suddenly grieving the loss of her husband, though separated at the time, so she didn’t need the burden of my plans. “I vowed to Volkov that his entire family would pay for what he did to ours. For you, for Padre. His daughter, Vanessa, was next. After her father’s death, she took on the role of Pakhan. That’s why I was in Russia…except now she’s in the Mancini villa.”
Madre doesn’t respond, but her mouth falls open and her eyes shift toward the hallway, knowing but not saying what my plan truly is.
“No.”
“You know better than anyone that Serafina will never be put into harm’s way. I need her help to show Vanessa what’s really at stake. What’s always been at stake and what lies and deceit her legacy is built on.”
Madre’s still staring down the hall, shaking her head. “Pain is more than only physical, Zeno. Please don’t do this.”
I stretch my hand across the island and cover the one she has resting there. “It’ll be fine. A quick meeting and I promise to have her returned soon. Nero can bring her back so you can spend the afternoon fattening him with fresh bread and quell your worries that way.”
Baking has always been one of her coping strategies. In the initial years following her trauma, I ate more bread than I could physically choke down, but Nero, who Madre loves like a second son, could never get enough. Baker’s son and all, I suppose. My comment’s a lighthearted attempt to change the topic slightly and ease her concerns.
It works a little, and she manages a small smirk, but her frown quickly returns. “I don’t like this, Zeno.”
“You don’t have to. Just trust me.”
Madre takes another swig of water and whatever thoughts course through her mind has her tensing again. “What’s your plan with the girl?” And without taking a breath, adds, “She wasn’t even in the country at the time, Zeno. With him gone, maybe it’s time to let the past lie. It’s over and done with. His daughter shouldn’t be held accountable for his actions.”
“Like I said, she needs to understand the kind of man her father really was.”
“Why?” The glass clangs against the tiled countertop with her force. “What good does it do?”
Because… No reasonable answer comes to me. Not one she’ll understand anyway.
“I’m sure she has an idea of who her father was,” Madre muses. “The same as you did with yours. You loved and looked up to the man all while disliking choices he made.”
“Because those choices hurt this family.”
“And yours will do the same to Vanessa. That’s all I’ll say on the matter.” She turns away, literally giving me the cold shoulder, considering the wave of chill coming from her.
Madre’s words repeat in my head as she rinses out her glass and rests it in the drying rack. My choices versus Padre’s regarding the Volkovs are completely different. Padre ripped us further apart from one another rather than supporting Madre the way she needed him to. Mine is pure revenge. Telling Madre this is pointless, though, since she made it clear years ago, she doesn’t want to hear about the Cosa Nostra’s dealings.
I get it. In many ways, they abandoned her too. Madre comes from the Costas, one of the other Five Families based in Europe, and her wedding to my father was an arrangement over thirty years ago. They all turned away from her after what happened. Although, not surprising because it’s not the first I’d heard of them abandoning one of their own in a shitty marriage.
Silence only lasts so long, and Madre faces me again, her arms crossing over her chest. “Don’t kill her, Zeno. It won’t fix anything.”
“I’m not. I’m?—”
“Ready!” Serafina’s cheerful chime enters the kitchen, her eyes darting back and forth between us. I’m thankful for the interruption. She drags in a small duffel bag behind her, dropping it by my feet. “When do we leave?”
With a parting grin to our mother, I reply, “Right now.”
Once we’re tucked inside my car, Serafina kicks her feet up on the dash, brushing dirt over the immaculately clean leather. It makes me scowl and her chuckle, the same as every other time she pulls this shit, knowing full well how annoyed I get having to wipe it off later.
“Must you?”
Completely ignoring my question, she props an elbow on the centre console and twists my way. “So, what’s this actually about?”
I turn down the dark road, heading toward the main route out of Ostia. “What do you mean?”
In the dim car’s lighting, I catch her eye roll. “Z, I know you better than you think I do. You showing up at nine p.m. to take me to your place is random. Which means, you have a reason. Probably one you don’t want Madre to know about.”
Serafina might pretend to barely understand anything of life outside her cell phone, reality shows, and empty friendships, but she’s sharp as a tack.
“Maybe.” I toss a smirk her way. “You’ll soon see, we’ll leave it at that.”
She huffs. “Be more cryptic, why don’t you.”
“We’ll get back late, so head to your room. Do me a favour and stay there until Nero comes for you in the morning. Then stick with him. No wandering the mansion.”
“Well, now you’re being even weirder. Weirdo.” She angles her seat back slightly as we merge onto the darkened autostrada and slips her phone out from her pocket. The small screen casts a glow around her, taking her away into the land of electronic social connections.
Such a silly hobby, but I appreciate how normal it is. How her experiences at eighteen versus mine are vastly different, which is everything I ever wanted for her.
She’s always been the break through the darkness.
Elio leads the way into Madre’s home, his arm tight around my quivering shoulders as he ushers me through the doorway. I’d been like this since he came for me in the bar and dragged me away from Padre’s body.
He called Madre from the car so she could expect us, and we’re barely through the door before she’s yanking me into her arms, her tight hold momentarily bandaging the pain.
If only, bandaging Padre would be this easy. If only it was even possible.
She murmurs something in my ear but I don’t hear her. Everything’s a blur of sound and sight, nothing making sense. Elio said this is shock.
Madre continues whispering what I assume are condolences. I wonder how she feels about this news. Does she still love Padre? Once, it was hard to imagine a world with them apart, but Ursin Volkov’s actions created that very world.
Over her shoulder, gentle steps approach the hallway, a four-year-old child with blue eyes gazes up at me. She’s clutching a stuffed bunny rabbit, one I’d gotten her for her last birthday, and somehow the simple sight makes things feel a bit better.
I release Madre just as Serafina runs toward us, despite the fact she should be well asleep in bed. Her small frame slams into my legs, thin arms tightening around my body as much as she’s able to.
Immediately, I react, pulling her away as I drop into a crouch to take her in my arms instead. The blood on my jeans is mostly dried by now and crusting, but still, she shouldn’t be stained by it.
She was born among so much pain and doesn’t even realize it. Padre didn’t do right by her, but I won’t make the same mistakes.
I’ll protect you, Sera, always. You’ll have a life free of war, crime, and scheming. You’ll never have to experience nightmares like I do.
She hugs me tighter, almost like she can read my mind.
Regardless of the despair from hours ago—from seeing my father shot to death and kneeling in his blood—Serafina makes things feel a little less shitty.