Chapter 5 Bruno
brUNO
Three soft knocks at the door to my motel room send a flood of cautious alarm through my body. My fingers tighten around the handgun hidden against my thigh as I peer at the door and wait for the call of housekeeping.
It doesn’t come.
My grip on the gun tightens.
After revealing myself at the masquerade last month, my father made it pretty fucking clear that I’m not welcome.
All those years apart and he still looks at me like I’m some shameful stain on the bottom of his shoe, barely worth a second of his time.
I always thought pain like that would fade with time, but fourteen years aren’t enough to lose the crushing feeling of despair when your own father looks at you as if he wishes you’d never been born.
Going to prison for him apparently wasn’t enough to earn his love. What else can I do?
“Bruno?” Three knocks follow as my sister’s voice drifts through the closed door. “Bruno, it's me. Mary? Are you there? I got your text.”
Mary.
Shit.
I can’t get to the door fast enough and when I pull it open, her wide smile of delight quickly melts into a frown of concern. “Oh, my God, what happened to you?”
I glance down at my bare torso covered in an array of bruises from fighting a wildcat of a woman earlier tonight and shrug. “Do you even want to know?”
“Of course I do!” She glances over her shoulder then steps into my motel room, closing the door behind her. “Please don’t tell me Dad had something to do with this?”
“Please,” I scoff dryly. “He doesn’t care enough about me to get rid of me.”
“Oh, Bruno.” Mary guides me backward with her gentle hands until my knees hit the edge of the bed and I’m forced to sit. She sets aside her bag and shrugs off her coat as she speaks. “He cares about you.”
“You don’t need to pretend.”
“I’m not pretending! He does care.” Mary buries her hands in her bag in search of something. “He’s just…” She pauses and glances at me through the parted curtain of her hair. “I think he’s in shock that you’re back.”
“Most parents would welcome their kid with open arms if they hadn’t seen them in fourteen years.”
“Sure, but we’re not most families,” Mary replies. “Plus, things have been… insane. But I know he cares. He just needs time.”
I can’t hold back my scoff of disbelief. “How much more time can he possibly need?”
Mary sighs as she pulls several cotton balls, some bandages, and a small tube of antiseptic cream from her purse. “You told me you were banged up, but I didn’t know it was this bad, so I only brought these.”
“I didn’t expect you to come at all.”
“Of course I came!” She sits beside me on the bed and snatches up one of my hands. “I’m glad you’re back and safe. I’ve missed you.”
“Thanks, Sis.”
“And Dad has too. I think he’s just… ashamed of how things went down.”
“What?” Despite the pain radiating through my ribs when I breathe and the sharp pull of my split lower lip each time I talk, Mary’s words somehow hurt more. “How can he possibly be ashamed?”
“You… you were caught with all those stolen drugs, Bruno. And you killed a cop. You broke a lot of rules.”
It hits me like a tidal wave. After all these years, Mary still doesn’t know the truth about what happened that night. And why would she? There’s no world in which he would admit to those crimes, or the fact that he allowed me to take the blame in some misguided attempt to get him to notice me.
I was such a fool thinking he’d be proud of me for protecting him. I was just a scapegoat. “Yeah,” I say eventually. “Guess I broke a lot of rules.”
“Let’s not talk about him,” Mary decides, releasing my hand.
“Because you want to tell me he cares while also sneaking out to see me because you’re worried?”
She narrows her eyes and pouts. “Maybe.”
“Tell me again he cares about me?” It’s a lame joke, one that hurts because deep down, that’s all I want. Fourteen years in prison did nothing to soften the urge of the boy eager for his father’s approval.
“That’s not the only reason I shouldn’t be here,” Mary replies stiffly. She focuses on the cotton in her hand and unscrews a bottle of water from her bag. “Now stay still.”
I remain obediently still as she starts to clean up my face, her brows knitting together as she studies me. “What’s the other reason?”
Her fingers hesitate against my cheek and she can’t look me in the eye as she continues. “You… remember what I wrote to you about?”
My heart sinks and I catch her wrist. “Mary, please tell me you came here with security.”
“Why should I?” She snatches her hand away then grasps my chin and forces me to look away while she cleans up blood around my eyebrow.
“The serial killer is dead. It’s all sorted.
And why should I be scared to go out just because some psychopath bore a grudge against blonde women?
He’s dead. Rocky made sure of that. So I have nothing to fear. ”
Receiving her letter last year was terrifying.
I’ve missed out on so much of Mary’s life, but to learn that a serial killer hungry for Rocky’s fiancée, Sarah, was targeting blonde women and happened to attack Mary was horrifying.
In one letter, I nearly lost the chance to ever see my sister again.
It was excellent motivation, however, to rock my appeal and gain early release.
“I’m not saying you have to be scared,” I say softly. “You’re my little sister and it’s my job to worry about you even from behind bars. You shouldn’t go anywhere without security.”
“I’m not a child.”
“Mary.” I turn to face her and catch her wrist, not letting her pull away this time. “There are more dangers out there than him. Promise me you will call security before you leave and you won’t do something this reckless again!”
“Hey, you texted me!” she snaps back. “I didn’t have to come!”
“I didn’t ask you to. I can take care of myself!”
“Clearly!” She jerks her wrist out of my grip and flounces away, grumpy. “Excuse me for trying to help.”
“I…” An argument is not what I want right now. “I welcome your help, Mary. I’m just not used to it. I’ve done things by myself for fourteen years.”
She looks back at me with wide, doe-like eyes. “Was it scary?”
“Prison?”
She nods as she settles back beside me and resumes cleaning.
“At first, yeah. I was only twenty. Young and stupid. I thought Dad would get me out because I was his son, but when he didn’t, things got rough. My name didn’t mean much without my father there to back me up.”
“Oh, no.” Mary’s hands pause. “Did they hurt you?”
“At first. But I learned to fight back and soon, I had enough respect that no one messed with me.” It helped that I befriended quite a few of the Chinese Triad on the inside.
I was friendly enough with a couple of guards that I could manipulate them in my favor, and when the Triad learned of my skills, it was easy to cut them in for protection and a form of friendship.
“I hate that you were in there for so long,” she murmurs, finishing with my face. Her attention turns to my bruised body. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“No.” I smirk. “Just know that I won.”
“Did you?” The disbelief in her tone is comical, and I’m certain I would have lost if our fight hadn’t been interrupted. Thinking it over brings a pulse of guilt through my chest as I recall how hard I kicked that woman into the van. Not my proudest moment.
“I did,” I repeat. “But I’ll be okay. Thank you for coming here to help me.”
“I’m just happy to be here.” She beams up at me, and a further ache rises in my chest. She’s changed so much in fourteen years that it’s hard to believe she’s what my toothy, pigtailed eight-year-old sister grew into.
“I’m happy you’re here too.”
“And… I know you don’t want me to say it, but I think you should try with Dad. He’s been so swamped with helping Rocky all these years that I think he’s just… forgotten. I bet if you reminded him of how cool and useful you were, things would change.”
Of course. Eight-year-old Mary was blind to the arguments, the discussions of my worth, and my countless attempts to earn my father’s love. She views it with the same childlike hope she viewed everything back then.
“Yeah,” I say, slinging my arm around her shoulders and pulling her in for a hug. “Maybe.”
She stays for another hour and tells me everything about her life, from her new boyfriend to her studies and her desire to be a nurse.
I tease her that she’d be terrible with how awful her bedside manner was to me, but she leaves with a smile and swears she’ll send for her security once she gets to the end of the street.
I don’t stop pacing my room until she sends me a picture of her security picking her up. Only then do I relax.
What a night. My stake out of that warehouse being interrupted by a woman with so much talent and fury was an unexpected turn.
Her blows were hard but careful, nothing that truly injured me, but the bruises are tender and I feel somewhat like a gutted fish as I lie in bed debating my next course of action.
Had my father welcomed me with warm, loving arms, then all of this would have been over last month, but it seems he hasn’t changed and is once again blind to my trying to help him.
In prison, my last name eventually faded so no one thought of me when the Triads I befriended started whispering the name Del Prete in the dark.
Three times I heard them mention my father, and each time they either didn’t think I overheard or didn’t care.
What stuck out about those brief discussions was that even though the Triad mainly spoke in code, I picked up one or two phrases.
They mostly spoke about the Black Market.
That and my father don’t mix. My entire childhood was rigorous training on the morals my father lived by, how he did everything above board and made sure that even in a life of crime and the Mafia, we were honorable criminals.
He wouldn’t be seen dead dealing with the black market.
I want to talk to him about it, to warn him that someone is surely using his name for clout in the underworld, but given his desire to ignore me, I’ll have to solve this puzzle myself.
When I present it to him, solved, then he won’t be able to ignore me.
My mind wanders and I almost fall asleep when a call comes through from an unknown number. “Yo.”
“Who am I talking to?”
“Fuck knows, you called me,” I say, lifting up onto one elbow.
“Name.”
Rolling my eyes, I check the number. “You’re not in my contacts so you probably got the wrong number, bro.”
“This isn’t Bruno?”
I sit up further. “Yeah, it is. Should have led with that, Pal.”
“Bruno Del Prete?”
“Who’s asking?”
“You can call me Daniel. Word on the vine is you’re good for some work.”
“Sure, I’m looking.”
“You made some friends inside so they’re throwing you a bone. Get you back on your feet.”
Befriending the Triad continues to pay off, it seems. I sit up fully and stifle a yawn. “Appreciate it. What you got for me?”
“First, we need to know you’re good. We have a problem that needs taken care of. Do it, and we’ll know you’re trustworthy.”
“Sure. What is it?” The call ends in a click and a few seconds later, a text arrives and my stomach twists the moment I open it.
Four words and a picture.
A photograph of the woman who kicked my ass tonight.
Take care of her.