Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Vita
I’m struggling with Alejandro leaving me behind when he and his cousins depart for Italy.
My fears stem from being left behind as a mercenary and as a Mafia daughter.
As though one isn’t enough, I have both.
He’s headed to see my family and adding incalculable danger to his already tenuous hold on life.
I know his cousins are the best people to be with him as a team, but I can’t help feeling I’ve left him vulnerable.
The Diaz family may work with and against Italian Mafias, but they aren’t Mafia.
I am.
They may know plenty, but I know more.
I’ve trusted Alejandro to protect me from our previously unknown assailants, and I’ve trusted him to take care of me emotionally and physically when we’re having kinky sex.
I’ve gotten the better end of the deal in this relationship.
All I’ve done is endanger him, while he’s done all he can to make me happy.
It’s not that I owe him or am obligated.
I want to be there with him to help, to make the mission easier, to be an extra set of eyes, ears, and hands.
But I also know I could just as easily make it worse.
I’m not a Made Woman. I’m not supposed to know a sliver of what I do about the inner workings of the Mala del Brenta or any other Mafia, but I was a far too inquisitive kid and teen.
It’s why becoming a spy, then a mercenary, wasn’t a stretch for my moral boundaries.
I had none by the time I graduated university.
“Vittoria?”
I turn toward Catalina as she approaches me in her living room. I sense her sadness from saying goodbye to Alejandro. He travels so much that she must feel this weight far too often. I wonder if he fully understands what it means for her to always be left behind.
Matáis doesn’t go on many missions because he’s the forward face of most of the Diaz family’s legit businesses. They need him out of danger and with the least questionable trail of dubious activities.
But I know there were several years during Alejandro’s training when Catalina’s son and husband left together for the unknown.
Now her husband might be by her side, but her only child is gone.
Her instinct to protect him practically radiated from her as she hugged him one last time before he gave me a sizzling kiss, then left.
“Please call me Toria.”
“Thank you. Would you like some tea or coffee? A snack?”
“I’m all right, thank you.”
Everyone convened here, and we shared a meal as a family.
I discovered it’s tradition. If a mission’s planned far enough in advance, then the family gathers before the men leave.
It was the most normal family meal I’ve ever had—like non-syndicate level normal.
It was just a bunch of parents teasing their children, and husbands and wives joking about household chores and grocery shopping.
It was playful competitiveness among cousins and childhood friends.
Truthfully, it was utterly extraordinary by any standard but unbelievable when you remember who these people are. Some of the wealthiest and deadliest men and women in the world.
“It’s different, isn’t it?” Catalina offers a maternal smile that makes my shoulders slump.
Back home, nuclear families gather when they can, but it’s never the extended family too.
I remember when it was Mamà, Papà, my brothers, and me.
When I was little, it was just Papà leaving, but eventually my brothers joined him.
It was always at least Mamà and me left behind.
I thought I was prepared for Alejandro to leave because I’ve waved goodbye before.
However, it’s an entirely different sensation when it’s your partner, the person you love most in this world who’s walking into the unknown.
“It is. This is worse than anything before. I don’t know how you do it when it’s your son.”
If this is excruciating, then how will I survive if Alejandro and I have sons?
“Is there a choice?”
Her question’s so simple yet so complex.
“No.”
“Then you learn to live with it. When you look at any of this as a choice, you fool yourself into thinking it can be something different. For us, it never will be. This is who we are. Leaving and surviving isn’t an option.
Ignoring a threat to this family leaves us vulnerable.
Vulnerability isn’t an option when so many people depend upon us for their safety and livelihood.
Grief is an inevitable lifelong companion, but who wants to willingly add to it by not protecting our own, our family? ”
She’s right.
“Sit with me.” She gestures toward a loveseat.
“I know it doesn’t get easier, so I won’t ask if it does. But what do you do?”
“I focused on Alejandro and keeping him distracted when Matáis would leave. Luciana and Tres J’s would come over once they moved here. Now that it’s the ninos leaving, I have Matáis and Luciana. We distract each other.”
I look toward Luciana who’s sitting on a sofa between Madeline and Anneliese. I shift my gaze to where Luis and Margherita sandwich Florencia on their own sofa. Elle and Enrique share another loveseat.
Their living rooms are all enormous. I’ve never seen homes that can fit so much seating in one room.
It’s an odd observation, but I noticed it at Enrique and Elle’s, and it’s the same here.
Both homes have enough bedrooms for everyone to stay comfortably.
It’s a huge house for a family of three.
I realized quickly that it wasn’t their affluence that prompted them to buy the mansion.
It was to have room for the family to gather.
Luciana’s house is the same—we drove past it—and only she lives there now.
But apparently each of her sons still spends the night there at least once a week.
Two of the three now have wives and one has a fiancée who join them.
It’s not because she can’t live on her own.
The men, and now their wives or fiancée, enjoy her company.
“I feel so badly for Luciana.”
“She definitely has it the hardest, but my little sister is the bravest person I know.”
Alejandro explained how rivals with a longstanding grudge murdered Luciana’s husband, Esteban, in front of Tres J’s while the men were still young boys.
They remained in Bogotá for several years after Esteban’s death.
However, the situation became untenable.
Street gangs targeted the brothers, and men kept attempting to force Luciana into marriage.
They moved to the States as the brothers became tweens.
Now, when Tres J’s leaves, Luciana is alone.
She stands to lose all the men she loves most.
Could I wind up in the situation?
There’s only one answer to that.
Yes.
“I admire your sister’s dedication and fortitude.”
In the month we’ve spent waiting, Alejandro and I have talked about what a future might look like for us.
We talked about marriage and children, even though both still feel so foreign to me.
I accepted I would have neither when I became a mercenary.
They still seem like such hypotheticals rather than certainties.
Alejandro admitted he hopes we only have daughters.
His cousins feel the same. They’d love nothing more than for the Cartel to end with their generation.
That the women in the family be untouchable to whichever family takes over and that no more Diaz men have to serve the Cartel.
The genetic lottery makes that unlikely, but, apparently, it’s in all of their daily prayers.
“Faith helps.” She offers me another kind smile that has a wistful note.
Turns out Catalina, Luciana, and Margherita are devout Catholics.
Elodie and the men are lapsed like I am.
Picking which commandments to follow makes our relationship with God complex.
But they say there’re no atheists in foxholes.
In the Four Families—three Catholic and one Eastern Orthodox—that’s true.
It’s the same for mine. We’re all more than C and E—Christmas and Easter—Catholics, but the hypocrisy and duplicity aren’t lost on us.
“I—”
The burner phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out, not recognizing the number.
I set up my regular phone number to forward calls to this one.
I’ve used Alejandro’s secure line at our condo—I’ve gotten used to thinking of it that way—to speak to my parents a few times.
They’ve just been quick check-ins, a silent agreement among us not to discuss anything that puts me in the middle.
Everyone looks at me as I rise. I walk over to Enrique and show him the screen. He frowns and shakes his head while shrugging.
“Do I answer it?”
“If you want.”
Well, that doesn’t help much.
“Hello.” I answer with the call on speakerphone.
“Senora Diaz-to-be.”
That’s a fucking odd greeting.
“Who is this?”
“A neighbor to the north.”
An Eastern European sounding neighbor.
I watch Enrique’s face, and I know he recognizes it. So does Elle.
A knot forms in the pit of my stomach. It’s bad enough that Enrique knows who this is. That Elle does too makes me want to vomit. That’s not a good sign.
Elle stands next to me and whispers in my ear.
“Yuri Volkov.”
My eyes widen.
The man’s supposed to be dead.
He’s the Boston bratva’s former pakhan. His nephew inherited about five years ago.
Is he calling me from the grave?
Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s a bona fide demon.
“How’s the weather in Boston?”
“You know who I am, Senora.”
“I do. Your reputation precedes you.”
“But was it Enrique or Elodie who told you who I am?”
“Like I said, your reputation precedes you.”
“But I died before you became a mercenary.”
I don’t like that he knows anything about me when I know so little about him.
“Infamy lives on.”
What the fuck does he want?
He’s toying with me, and I can’t show my impatience.
He cackles before coughing.
Not dead—yet, but ill enough he stepped down.
“What do you want, Mr. Volkov?”