Chapter 8
EIGHT
NICOLO RASTELLI
It’s a stupid fucking question. Are you okay?
As soon as I ask, I know the answer. The only surprising part is Sebastian’s honesty. He would’ve lied before—told me he was fine, to worry about myself, before working hard to distract me. I would’ve let him, because it was easier to play pretend than to acknowledge our reality.
Things are different now. Sebastian is no longer that same teenager, trying hard to live up to our father’s expectations while at the same time never losing himself to them, and protecting me to the best of his ability.
I’m not the same child who needed his protection. Mostly because he sacrificed everything to ensure I was protected from our father.
He risked his life, and eventually forfeited it in many ways, to ensure Anthony Rastelli could never hurt him, me, or our mother again.
I can’t imagine how scary it must have been—running away from his own baptism, into the arms of the FBI. The months of hiding in safehouses while the Family did everything in their power to find him, to kill him so he couldn’t testify. Not knowing if I was safe, if Mother was safe. Testifying against Father in court. Leaving me and Mother behind. Never really knowing if everything he did to protect us was enough.
I sit my nearly full beer to the side—it’s fucking gross anyway—before slipping into his lap. He makes room for me easily and quickly, so my ass is on the floor but my legs are draped over his thigh.
His free hand settles on my back as he drops his arm over my legs, grasps my hip to hold me in place. I wrap my arm around his neck and press my face into his chest.
“The week after you left, he was pissed.” I close my eyes, fist the front of his shirt, and listen to the steady but rapid thump of his heartbeat. His hand tightens on my hip. “But I could tell he was scared too. In and out of the house at all hours. Screaming at Uncle Vincent and everyone else.
“We stayed out of his way, spent a lot of time in the parlor or outside. We weren’t even home when they came for him. The FBI were waiting for us when we got back, but he was gone.”
I remember Mom taking a deep breath, squeezing my hand, marching right up to the police line and telling them exactly who she was.
“ I’m Natale Rastelli. If any of your men break my nonna’s china, my husband will be the least of your worries, young man. Understand?”
We could’ve turned around and disappeared into the crowd, but with time and age, I realized why we didn’t just leave. Not because of the china, or anything within the house itself.
If we’d tried to disappear, the Family would’ve assumed she was an informant for the FBI. They would’ve hunted us down and killed us.
“One of them played with me while they talked to Mom, but they didn’t . . . I don’t know—” I shrug. Sebastian tucks me under his chin, his hand slipping under my shirt to rest on my spine. “Hassle her too much?”
He nods. “Part of the demands I made was Mom and you being left alone.”
“Oh. That makes sense. Sometimes an agent would come by, but they never stayed long. Or Uncle Vincent would, and Mom would get into screaming matches, but she always sent me to my room.”
I was eight, and our mother did her best to protect me from the flow of information. Just as she always had.
I swallow and scrub my eyes with my free hand, the one not holding onto Sebastian. “She cried when she found out you were the informant. I was . . . I was just happy to know what happened to you. We never talked about it. Just . . . kept going about life like nothing had changed.”
I still attended lessons. Mother continued to take me into the city for various activities. We had dinner with the Family.
“Except when we had to attend the trial.”
It was rare we actually saw Sebastian at the courthouse. Most of the time, he testified from a secure location via video feed.
The last time we saw him in person was the day before the closing arguments. He took the stand and spoke directly to the jury—not only detailing Father’s criminal activities, but the abuse we had suffered at his hand. It was the first time I ever saw him openly cry.
I went to the bathroom after his testimony, during a break, and that’s when Sebastian found me to say goodbye. Only, at the time, I didn’t know he was saying goodbye. I thought once Father was in prison, Sebastian would come home, be with us. A child’s foolish hope.
“Uncle Vincent started running things after that, but we were left to our own devices for the most part. Dad wasn’t allowed visitors but Mom accepted his call every week like clockwork until he kicked the bucket. I never spoke to him.”
If he asked to speak to me, Mom never said. I doubt he did. I wasn’t the son he loved, the one he wanted to follow in his footsteps. That had been Sebastian. Look how that turned out for him.
The irony—him, loving the son who hated him, hating the son who would have loved him given half the chance, and thus being the architect of his own doom—isn’t lost on me all these years later.
Him dying of cancer in prison, nearly four years after being sentenced to life without parole, was the best thing that ever happened to us.
It was as if a weight lifted off Mom’s shoulders. Mine too.
The fear of the verdict being overturned, or of him somehow escaping, died with him. Life was, aside from the fact we were still very much part of the Family, typical from that point forward.
“Mom signed me up for therapy, soccer and music lessons.” We redecorated the house, throwing out nearly all of Dad’s things. His office is the only room we never touched.
I confessed to being gay sometime around my fifteenth birthday; Mom warned me to be discreet because the Family wouldn’t approve, but assured me that she loved me and always would.
No one ever raised a hand to me again—not even Uncle Vincent. Mostly because he may have been head of the Rastelli Family with Father out of the way, but a lot of members were still loyal to Anthony and, by default, his wife—who was deathly protective of me after having lost her eldest son and her husband.
Sebastian chuckles, but the sound is wet and choked off. “Music lessons, huh? What did you learn to play?”
I roll my eyes. “Piano. I wasn’t very good.”
My music instructor told Mom I was “hopeless” after a couple sessions, and I never saw him again. Instead, we went to the symphony a lot.
“You were okay though?”
I think about it before I nod. “I missed you, but I was okay.”
He made sure of that, after all.