Seventeen
Vincent
“Is that him?” I ask, standing still while locking eyes with the man who stole everything from us.
“Him?” Selene stares back at me, pulling my attention away from the retreating man that I vowed to despise.
“Don’t act coy, Selene. Is that the man I helped get out of jail? Is that your husband?” I sneer, the word still tasting like bile around my tongue.
“Yes, it is,” she affirms, crossing her arms over her chest unapologetically. I sneer at that as well.
“Hmm. Scared to meet me, is he? Don’t I deserve a ‘thank you’ for my troubles at least?” I taunt, bridging the gap between us. But Selene takes two steps back away from me, no longer comfortable with the intimacy.
Too bad, I think and remove the space she’s created. Selene places both of her hands on my chest to hold me at bay, and my cold smirk itches to come through.
“He isn’t scared. He just had some place to go.”
“Guess his priorities aren’t what they should be. If I had been locked away without being able to touch you, I doubt I would be interested in visiting neighbors when I could be fucking my wife seven ways till Sunday,” I snipe.
“You’ve never been crude, don’t start now. What do you want, Vincent?” she questions, unimpressed with my crass comment.
“Are you not even going to invite me in for coffee?” I tease.
“Coffee? The only thing I’ve seen you drink is hard liquor,” she criticizes, her censuring brow up in the air to make her point.
“Coffee will do just fine. I haven’t needed to drown myself in alcohol for the past few days. I had an epiphany of sorts,” I tell her, reaching out to grab a lock of her hair, playing with the rich silk of it through my fingers.
“Really? Do I want to know what it is?”
“That one addiction can never truly satisfy another. Alcohol can’t drown the craving of what I really thirst for. So why demean it with a pale substitute?” I watch her swallow dryly, and her eyes shimmer with thoughts of the last time we were together. I lick my lips, and she follows my errant tongue. “So how about that coffee?” I insist mischievously.
“I don’t think I have any. I haven’t been around much to shop,” she says, her cheeks turning to a blushful pink.
I lower just enough for my lips to caress her ear, and her involuntary shiver is too pronounced for her to play off. “Water then,” I hush, turning that gorgeous pink to full blown red.
“Fine!” she concedes, while her eyes scout around to make sure no one saw our private exchange.
“Come in, then,” she says before turning on her heel and climbing the three-step stoop leading to her front door.
“I intend to.”
I walk up the stairs admiring the way her perfect, peach ass fills up the generic jeans she’s wearing. This woman is a mafia principessa , yet here she is acting like a normal —living in an average suburbia home and wearing average clothes instead of the designer labels she grew up with. I should have known as much that those luxuries our life offered didn’t mean anything to her. She could take it or leave it. Just like with everything else in her life, apparently.
We walk into a hallway filled with photographs and adornments, but she speedily ushers me into the kitchen, not allowing me much time to look at her homely decorations. But one thing is clear; even though this house is small, it’s a far cry from the gloomy halls of the Bianchi mansion. There is light, and color covering every inch; even the air seems lively and refreshing, holding a hint of her spring perfume smell. The kitchen is charming enough, forsaking the modern look, which keeps the homely feel even with the outdated appliances and sunshine colors.
I hate it all.
I can’t believe it, but my jealousy toward such a small thing as home décor is enough to strangle the threatening scream I yearn to release. How could she turn her back on us, just to become fucking Betty Crocker instead? I mean, she could have had it all, yet she preferred to marry a mechanic merely months after leaving us.
Did she not love any of us at all?
Last time we were together, I almost let myself believe she genuinely cared for me. That maybe there was an ounce of regret in her decision to abandon us. But as I turn around and look at the life she has built for herself, a life so foreign to the one any one of us would have offered her, I wonder if this was the real reason why she left—to pursue a life we could never give her.
A life of a normal .
“What’s wrong?” she asks nervously, placing a glass of ice water on the countertop beside me.
Everything. That’s what’s wrong.
I came here to throw in her husband’s face how he could never measure up to a woman like my tesoro, yet here I am, forced to face reality.
I’m the one who could never give her the life she dreamed of. I could have given her the world, but never this.
“Vincent?”
“I was just thinking how cozy your home is.”
“Thank you,” she replies, her face still troubled by my features.
“I wish I could burn it to the ground,” I admit. But my confession isn’t tainted with resentment and anger as I would have thought. Instead, finally confronting the truth, all I feel is an overwhelming sadness.
“Vincent…” She sighs, placing her delicate hands on my cheeks to comfort my sudden pain. But it does little to wash away this new blooming misery.
“I wish I could burn away every last memory this house has been blessed with. Your laughs. Your cries. The good moments and the bad. These walls saw it all, and I didn’t. I would wield a wrecking ball through it if I could,” I murmur in anguish.
“I’m sure you could,” she tries to tease, but her sparkling, jeweled eyes look just as pained as the organ inside me that refuses to beat.
“I know I could, but then you would hate me even more.”
“I don’t hate you, Vincent,” she huffs out, breaking away from our contact and turning her back on me.
“Oh, no? Then why did you leave us? Leave me?” I ask, walking to her and pulling her back to me.
“Vincent—”
“I thought I knew the reason why, but now I’m not so sure,” I tell her, my nose running behind her ear, knowing this will be the last time I will be this close to her. After confronting such a reality, there is no way I can keep her. Ten years ago she left us, but now we are the ones who will have to walk away from her.
“There is a lot that you don’t know, Vincent. Just trust me when I say that lack of love was not the reason I left you,” she reveals with a melancholic tone.
“I know my uncle talked to you about us getting married, Selene,” I confess, and her spine straightens in my embrace. Before she’s able to say another word, I kiss the top of her head, to show her I’m not angry. “For years I thought you left because you were repulsed at the idea of being my wife. But now that I’m here, I finally understand why you left. It’s not that you didn’t love us. You just couldn’t love the life we were offering. The life I could offer you.”
It was easier thinking Selene was incapable of love. A traitorous, spoiled principessa who fooled us all into believing her heart was pure. I could blame her for being a lie.
But this?
Knowing my tesoro ran, not from me but from a life I can never abandon, is gut-wrenching. I vowed to put the Outfit above all others; that was my choice. Selene made no such promise. The Butcher took her innocence while the syndicate did nothing. She owes them no loyalty. Why should she marry the boss of an organization, forever binding her chains to it, when she could run away and live free?
“I’m such a fool. Giovanni always told me you wanted something different than the life we had, but I didn’t want to accept it. I preferred to blame you for my desolation, instead of facing the fact I was responsible for it all along.”
Her shoulders slump, and I know I’ve hit the nail on the head. I turn her around, wanting her to confirm that this is the reason why she abandoned us, leaving me half a man.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” I beg, wishing she had just made it clear as to why she would go the lengths she did to hide from us. She mauls her lower lip, looking so uncertain, killing my composure completely.
“Selene, is that why?” I ask shaking her shoulders desperately.
“ Mammà , is everything okay?” I hear a small voice behind me, and my heart starts to beat erratically at the sound of the childlike voice.
My hands fall away from Selene’s shoulders, and her green-filled eyes turn from sorrow to horror, and then swiftly back to her absolute calm facade. She pushes me to the side, bypassing me without another look, and heads toward the voice I’m frightened to face.
“ Mammà ?”
“It’s okay, Jude. Everything is okay,” she singsongs, trying to play off the conversation the young boy must have heard.
I stand in place, keeping my back to the child, because I may really burn this house down to the ground as I threatened once I see that his features resemble the man who got out of the car.
“ Mammà , who is that?”
“A friend, kiddo. From way back when I was your age. How about you go play in your room and let us catch up?” She tries to persuade him.
“I don’t want to. I’m going to stay here and make sure you’re okay,” he replies, suspicion and protectiveness coating each word.
“I am,” Selene says reassuringly.
“You said you’d bring Dad. Where is he?”
“Next door at Mrs. Henderson’s, where I thought you were, young man,” she replies, accusing softly.
“Then maybe we both should go over there,” he adds, and if I wasn’t so nervous, I might have smiled at his clever rouse to get his mother out of harm’s way.
“Sure, Jude. Hmm… Let me just say goodbye to my friend here,” she replies nervously.
I take a breath, summoning all the strength I have to face James and Selene’s son without losing my mind.
“I see that I’ve come at a bad time. I’ll show myself out,” I announce, turning to face my nightmare in the eye.
The only thing is, instead of dark eyes resembling the man who married my love, I’m confronted with hazel greens like mine. I open my mouth and close it again, as I take stock of every detail of the boy’s features. Dark-brown hair, long enough on top to fall to his eyes. Strong cut jaw, but still holding his childlike chubby cheeks. It’s as if I’m looking at the old photograph I keep on my fireplace mantle, where Pietro and I were still so young and clueless to what burdens this life would give us. Yet, it’s not my blond, blue-eyed cousin I’m fixated on, but rather my replica in front of me.
Jude walks over to Selene and stands in front of her, protectively putting himself between his mother and me.
“Maybe this isn’t the best time to talk, Vincent,” she chokes out, and Jude looks up at her with a surprised look on his face, and then returns his stare to mine with the same puzzlement I’m feeling.
“I think you’re right,” I stutter, overwhelmed with too many emotions to think clearly.
Before I’m able to say or do something that will tarnish Jude’s opinion of me, I rush out of the small house which holds the family I always dreamed of having, but was stolen from me.
I drive around Nashville for hours. The photograph I stole from Selene’s house, now carefully placed on my lap, haunts every minute of my journey. A baby Jude in Selene’s arms, accompanied by an elated Anna Maria, placing his binky back into his mouth—a picture-perfect family moment, taken by someone other than me.
My phone continues to blow up, but none of the callers are who I want to talk to right now. I need answers, and Chicago doesn’t hold any for me.
“Mr. Romano, should we find a hotel to stay the night or would you like me to drive you back to the airport?” my driver asks, obviously tired of running circles around this town.
“No. Take me back to Cedar Grove,” I order, not sure if I’m in the best frame of mind yet to return to Selene’s home. Unfortunately, after today, I’m not sure if I ever will be.
When we drive up to her street, I see someone familiar sitting on the stoop, looking as if he’s been waiting for my arrival. Once my driver parks, I get out and slam the door, hastening my step to talk to the man I helped liberate and who can give me some answers.
“Vincent,” he says in greeting, and there is a tinge of country in his accent.
I’m sure Selene just melts when he says her name. My hands ball into fists at my side, and my mind yells in my ear, telling me to not think of such things. Otherwise, this will be a short conversation as I have more important things to clear up than to fuel my jealousy any longer.
“I came here for answers. I need to know the truth,” I command, forgoing any introductions.
“Then ask her,” he says, taking a sip of his beer. I seethe at his nonchalant reply.
“I can’t,” I spit out, not wanting to let the man before me know how vulnerable his wife makes me feel.
“Ah. So you want me to tell you.” He smirks.
“Yes.”
“Why?” he counters.
“Because I need to learn the truth, and I’m not sure if Selene would lie to me,” I confess.
James chuckles at that.
I really do hate the man.
“So let me get this straight. You want me to tell you how I met my wife? You want to hear the whole sordid love story from my lips, but not hers. Is that it?” he goads.
My teeth grind so hard that I almost break my molars.
“Yes, but I would prefer you didn’t use such terms.”
“What terms? You mean love? That she loves me?” he insists, and if I wasn’t so desperate, I’d put a bullet between his eyes just for the arrogance alone.
“Yes,” I spit out.
“Well tough shit, because if you want the story from me I won’t sugar coat it for your benefit,” he relents snidely.
Lo cazzo!
“Fine. I see Selene still kept up her predilection for assholes,” I snap back with an arctic smile.
“Oh, I think she has made some improvements.”
Stronzo.
“Are you going to be of use to me or not? I think I deserve it after getting you out of jail,” I bite back, hoping he at least feels an ounce of gratitude for my endeavor, enough for him to tell me what I need to know.
“You’re in luck. I’m in a sharing mood today. Selene has lived on lies long enough. I won’t be an accomplice to it any longer. So what do you want to know?” he asks, making room for me on his porch stairs. Begrudgingly I accept his friendly gesture and sit at his side, rather than bash his skull with my gun like I wanted to.
“Everything,” I insist coolly.
“You really are a glutton for punishment, aren’t you? She always did say you were the hardest to love,” he recounts, taking a swig of his beer. “Hardest to forget, too, unfortunately.”
“She talked to you about me?” I ask, surprised.
I can see a tug of a smile on his lips as he keeps his eyes on the distance beyond as if recalling the past.
“That girl couldn’t stop talking about you; about all of you. But that came after Jude. When I met her, she was just a scared, young girl, seven months pregnant with no place to go. She came into my garage hoping I could fix her piece-of-shit carburetor, but one look at her and I knew she had way more important things that needed fixin’.”
“You’re very perceptive—more than most. The Selene I knew always kept her guard up amongst strangers,” I mumble.
“I’m sure she did. But that was before she left behind everything she loved. As cemented as those walls might have been, she was the one who made the first dent, cracking it from floor to ceiling. By the time she arrived on my doorstep, she was nothing but raw grief, praying for the end. Her suffering resonated with mine, and so, although I didn’t know the cause of it, I offered to help. She stayed with me until Jude was born. And then when she tried to leave, I made her tell me the truth.”
“Which was?” I interject.
“Ah, that, I think, she should be the one to tell you. But it was enough for me to know that she was in danger. Being on the run—distraught as she was—with a baby in her arms, she was sure to get caught, so we came up with a plan.”
“A plan?”
“Are you going to interrupt me every five minutes? I thought Giovanni was the talker?” he snipes back, grabbing another beer from a cooler behind him.
His southern hospitality getting the best of him, he hands me one, but I don’t even open it. I need my wits about me, and my use of alcohol to dim my pain is in the past. I want it all—the ugly and merciless to gut me in two, without anything to dull the ache.
“As I was saying, we came up with a plan to hide Selene in plain sight so Jude could have a semi-normal life. I married her, or her alias at least, and she became Mrs. Susan Lewis. She became just the wife of a former army vet, who busts his ass in a small town, self-owned garage while she’s a stay-at-home mom, raising our baby boy. Now tell me, in all your searches, would a woman like Susan even be suspected of being your Selene?”
I shake my head, knowing it was, in fact, the perfect camouflage for her true identity.
“Yep, just what I thought. Can’t take the credit for it though. That was all Selene.”
“So that’s when you fell in love?” I choke out, surprised at being able to say the words.
“Ah, now you want to talk about love. As much as I’m enjoying seeing you squirm, don’t give yourself a coronary. I love Selene, and she loves me, but our relationship was never about that type of love. It was built on something different—a shared understanding that, when you lose a soul mate, nothing else measures up,” he explains, dimming his earthly toned eyes for the first time since we started this conversation.
“You lost someone.” It’s not a question. I feel his pain travel in the air, resembling something similar to my own.
“Tell me, Vincent, have you ever been at war?” he asks out of left field.
I give him a stiff nod as my reply. I don’t think I recall a day I wasn’t battling for my life. Being born into the syndicate meant the streets were your battleground and every day you survived was a miracle in and of itself.
“I spent years fighting for my country. I thought I knew firsthand what war felt like—harboring that powerless feeling in your veins, knowing that as much as you fight to keep your armed brothers alive next to you, some will fall in the end no matter what you do. But I only understood what the true meaning of war was when I came back home. There is nothing worse than seeing the person you love most face their impending death and being helpless to prevent it. I was born a soldier, but my late wife Lori was the true hero in my eyes. We battled two years filled with exams, chemotherapy, and all the drugs under the sun. She did it all with a smile on her face and love in her heart. The day she died, this world lost its light for me. I became just a vessel of flesh and bones. When Selene came into my life, I saw that same emptiness residing inside her. So we trudged each day together, helping each other survive one day at a time without half a heart. She didn’t just leave you. She died for you. Much in the same way I died for Lori when she was taken from me. And from what I can tell, I don’t think you deserved her sacrifice.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“Yes, I do. I have ten years’ worth of knowledge regarding you, Vincent. You are a selfish, cold man, and I doubt you have ever put anyone’s interest above your own.” I stand from my seat, not wanting to hear another minute of this man’s interpretation of my character. He lets out a stiff chuckle and takes another pull of his beer, and adds “Anything else you want to know?”
“Is Jude mine?” I question coldly.
“What do you think?” he grunts in response.
“Does he know I’m his father?” I interrogate him, and James tilts his head to the side, taking a good hard look at me.
“He knows. Selene never hid that away from him. But I’d like to clarify something for you before you get your panties in a twist—you might be Jude’s father, but you best believe that boy is my son, too. I have raised him the best I could, and his birth was what saved Selene and me from total ruin.”
I nod and look back at the house that now holds the two missing pieces of my soul.
“There’s something else you should know. She’s already making plans to leave,” James announces, breaking my train of thought and increasing my panic.
“I can’t allow that. Not anymore,” I state plainly.
This afternoon, when I went into their home, a part of me acknowledged that the best thing I could do for Selene was let her have the life she always envisioned for herself. Now, knowing that life is a lie and she has my son with her, I can’t let her leave me. Not again.
“I thought you’d say that,” he grunts, standing up from his seat and facing me head on.
“If you knew, then why tell me? I would assume your loyalties were with Selene.”
“They are and always will be. Call me naive, if you must, but I’m hoping you’re not as much of a pompous, self-centered prick as you seem to be. Perhaps this time, you’ll finally do right by her, as she’s done by the lot of you,” he says accusingly, and turns his back to me, heading back inside where my family has lived for the past decade.
I watch him take each step, but I’m still unable to move.
“James.”
“What?”
“Did Selene name my son?” I croak out, my body filled with nervous energy coursing through its veins. James doesn’t turn around but answers me just the same.
“She did. She told me Jude is the name of the Patron Saint of Lost Souls, and if there was ever a lost soul in need of saving, it was hers. She thought it poetic—the man who she forsook her soul for in the first place, should give her such a redeeming parting gift. But now that I have met you, I don’t believe you could sacrifice yourself for her the same way she did for you. She deserves better, and you’re not it.”