19. The Old Ways
NINETEEN
THE OLD WAYS
N adia stood outside of Moonbeam’s doors, looking at the black-tinted Cadillac that royally sucked at concealing itself. She made the slow journey to the car and knocked on the blacked-out window.
“I can see you two in there!” she roared. It might’ve been tinted to hell and back, but it wasn’t impossible to see in with the sun out.
The window awkwardly dropped with the push of a button, and she couldn’t help but laugh at the pair.
“I take it Dante sent you?” she asked the big one.
Amo spoke unapologetically, “Yep.”
She looked to the blond one, who was still too young for this job. “Why are you here, then?”
Leo shrugged. “Thought I’d keep him company.”
“Well … at least make yourself useful.” Nadia turned to walk back inside, but when they didn’t begin following her, she looked back at them. “Come on, then.”
Both car doors quickly opened following the cutting of the engine.
She left them behind, making them catch up to her in the small building.
“So, this is it?” Amo asked, confused.
“We’re packing up.” She smiled, knowing where his confusion was coming from. “And moving into a huge facility.”
No thanks to Dante. She kept that part to herself.
It was, however, Dante’s friend, unbeknownst to her, she could thank.
Desmond Beck. And Haley, of course, because he had made an offer in their meeting that Haley couldn’t refuse.
In return, he gave the plans to an abandoned mall here in Kansas City to be renovated into the next Moonbeam, becoming a self-sustainable community, with housing and jobs for all of her at-risk youth.
It was a literal dream come true that only came at her friend’s cost …
What that cost was, Nadia still hadn’t been told.
Haley promised to tell her when the time would come.
She just prayed she would fare better than Nadia had with Dante.
“Oh.” Amo looked around at all the teenagers helping to pack up. “Aren’t some a little too old to be here?”
“I help kids up to nineteen years old. Just because you’re eighteen and considered a legal adult doesn’t mean you should stop receiving help.
” Those two years of being an adult were sometimes the hardest. You needed help to learn how to actually be an adult.
By the time her kids reached twenty, they were set up for success in the real world.
She shook her head at seeing that Amo was pretty much uncomfortable here. The thought of a little work without receiving money clearly wasn’t something he was interested in.
“How about you go help”—Nadia took a look around for the person whom she had in mind—“her.”
“Her?” Amo asked, nodding to a girl who was struggling to hold up a huge box.
“Yep.” Nadia smiled evilly and, thankfully, Amo had just missed it.
Leo, however, had not.
“You’re doing something sneaky, aren’t you?” he asked, watching Amo’s back.
Nadia was caught by surprise. None of her evil plans were ever caught. Poor Haley had yet to even learn until it was too late. “How’d you know?”
“I don’t need two eyes to know when someone’s being a sneaky bastard.” Leo smiled, letting her know he wasn’t going to stop his friend from being ensnared in her trap. “Especially when you grew up with three of them.”
“Well, you know what they say …” She whistled, not even needing to say the last part, as both of them were well familiar with the saying.
Payback’s a bitch.
F-o-r-g-i-v-e-n-e-s-s was an eleven-letter word that he was asking for from each of his children, and Leo had only been the beginning.
He stared at his children in front of him.
His oldest, Lucca, stood in the corner, flipping the Zippo he had gifted him when he had become his underboss.
The two chairs in front of his desk were occupied by his other children.
Maria, his second oldest, he arguably owed the biggest apology to.
Then Nero had followed her, but he was the first child whom he’d wronged.
“Thank you for coming to see me”—he specifically looked at Maria, who looked like she was going to leave any second—“even though I know I don’t exactly deserve the chance to see you.”
Unfortunately, the other two didn’t have an option not to be here, as they worked for him.
Maria had stopped stirring at his words, finally looking up from the clock on her phone.
“And I don’t think I should get the chance to explain myself, but I ask that you let me—”
“I am not listening to this shit again,” Maria hissed, standing up and moving toward the door.
“Maria, please,” he called out to her, hoping she would stop. Dante knew what she spoke of, and it was the exact reason she was so hurt by him.
The day she and Dominic Luciano had married had been the day that he had told his only daughter that he wouldn’t be able to walk her down the aisle, let alone attend her wedding.
He had tried his best to explain to her why, as the Caruso boss, he couldn’t, but he, too, agreed it made him a poor excuse of a father.
“If you don’t like what I have to say this time, you never have to see me again.”
Maria paused but only went back to her seat when Lucca nodded for her to return.
“Thank you,” he said gratefully.
It took him a moment and a long deep breath to put his words together.
All three children shared something in common—they had all fallen hard in love with someone who wasn’t of pure Italian blood.
The single, oldest rule in the Italian mafia was that, in order to be made, you must be of pure Italian blood.
Over the years, slight exceptions had been made that, as long as you were of mostly Italian descent, it was approved …
as long as you didn’t have the Caruso name, that is.
The men who bore the Caruso last name were ordered to keep their Italian blood pure.
That way, the high positions they held in the family of boss and underboss were never taken from them.
The problem was that his children weren’t the only ones who shared that commonality of falling hard for someone who wasn’t of pure Italian blood.
“Your mother and I had an arranged marriage,” he began the story they hadn’t heard since they had been children.
“Her father owned this casino hotel and had received many offers to sell, but the only way he would agree to sell to my father was if his daughter married his son. That way, when he passed, this property would pass to me, which would be returned back to his daughter, and then his future grandchildren. ” Dante stared at the faces of those grandchildren whom he spoke of before he got to the part that they had never been told before.
“However, even though her father and mother were, in fact, Italian … your mother was not.”
This time when Lucca’s Zippo flipped to a close, he didn’t continue his movement of flipping it back open. “Who knows this?”
“Very few people ever did. Most of the ones who did are dead now.” He knew his oldest son was the only one who knew the severity of this information, so he explained to Maria and Nero why he had disagreed with their choices in partners from the beginning.
“If this information fell into the wrong hands, any future children you might have with Dominic , Elle , or Chloe ”—he looked from Maria’s emerald gaze to Nero’s emerald pair then to the blue-green ones that glowed in the dark corner—“might never sit where I sit one day.” They were already only fifty percent Italian, which meant Nero’s and Lucca’s children would only be twenty-five percent.
“Dom might be from Spanish descent, but he’s fifty percent Italian,” Maria told him, clearly not forgetting the conversation he’d had with her on her wedding day.
“Yes, but one day, you might be in the same position I’m in right now—worried about your future grandchildren.”
She spoke to him as if he had forgotten a vital piece of information. “My children will be Lucianos.”
“Yet you didn’t take his last name?” Dante asked, raising a brow to look at the wedding ring that she so proudly wore on her finger.
“The two families are starting to merge, and your children will not only carry Luciano blood, but Caruso as well. I imagine you will want them to at least have the chance to take their pick?”
Maria seemed to understand clearly now.
“Good thing you will be gone when that happens and the rules will have been changed,” Nero finally spoke for the first time. His cold words reminding him that he might’ve been the first he wronged with more time to have passed, but he had yet to forget.
“There will always be those who will never forget the old ways.” His grave warning was not only for Nero, but also his other children.
The silence was unquestionable, and it was only when he was certain his children finally understood that Nadia’s words came to mind. I have never come across anything that couldn’t be fixed with a ‘sorry’ and some time.
“I understand why you three might hate me forever, but I just wanted you to know it was never anything against who you three have chosen; it was my greed for power that kept me from accepting them like a father should have. I not only wanted my children to fill this seat one day, but I wanted your children and theirs after to fill this seat.” Dante swallowed hard, having to clear his throat to say his final peace.
“Otherwise, I feel like I would have lost your mother … Melissa , for nothing.”
It was the first time his children heard him speak her name since her death.
“I am sorry.” He looked at each of them genuinely, but he now settled on Maria’s green gaze that seemed to sparkle. “And I wish those words alone were enough to ask for forgiveness, but I can only hope you will give me the chance to prove just how sorry I am with time.”
That sparkle in Maria’s eyes had fallen as tears hit her cheeks. Not once had he seen his daughter cry, not even when her mother had died. Dante had passed on his lack of compassion and emotion to all of his children who were in the room.