Chapter 3 Elio
It was embarrassing. My father had invited all of his friends, and that meant some of the most powerful people in the country were present at the charity, including the new mayor himself.
That guy wasn’t much older than I was, was he? What was he, in his early thirties? Well, I was twenty-eight. I could be mayor someday if I wanted to.
The charity auction was being held for the mayor’s office, and as such, it kind of made sense for him to be there. Did the mayor know that the men he was sitting amongst were at one point some of the most notorious mafiosos of New York City, and that they’d only very recently decided to go legit?
Did the mayor care?
Why the hell was I fixating on the mayor?
Well, I knew exactly what I was doing. It was something I’d done all my life.
Focus on something else to ignore my own situation.
I called it pulling an Elio. The shrink my father took me to during my formative years said that I had a severe case of escapism and an avoidant attachment style, whatever the hell that meant, but could you blame her?
The shrink literally said whatever it was my father wanted her to say.
She was scared for her life. Back then, my father wasn’t as much of a gentleman as he liked to pretend he was these days.
Back then, he ran the streets, and he got good money from his racketeering.
Was I to blame for my reluctance to join his business?
He claimed, as did his lawyers and all his capos and consiglieres, that they had gone legit, that they were no longer in the business of illegal business and that they had sorted their differences with Fbr and FCC and every other agency that monitored such things.
I was skeptical, and I refused to join.
See, the thing was, I’d seen him from the day I’d opened my eyes. I’d seen him at his worst; I’d seen him when he’d been violent, angry, a hostile force presiding over New York like a mist. And then I saw him turn tame, go legal, apologize to the people he had wronged, and turn over a new leaf.
I knew who he was underneath. I knew he’d gotten with the times, but a caged lion was still a lion.
It sometimes made me ashamed to be associated with him. And it made me ashamed that he was still called the don of the Romano family. What was he the don of if he’d gone completely legit? Something didn’t add up.
It didn’t add up even though my father had dragged me to multiple board meetings and explained how he’d paid his fines, paid for his mistakes, and was now on the honest and good path.
Did that somehow erase all the stuff he did in the past?
He maintained that he was a man of honor all his life and that he’d never killed anyone. But there’s plenty of evil things you can do to a person besides kill them, and I was sure that he’d done some of those, if not all.
What was it about being his son that I was not able to forgive him for his past when the world had?
If I were to go to a shrink, they’d tell me something along the lines of, “He changed for the world, but to you he’s still Don Romano. The world doesn’t fear him, but you still do. And that’s got more to do with the fact that he’s your father rather than that he’s the don.”
But what do shrinks know anyway?
“This next item for bid is not an item but a person,” the overzealous commentator said from the stage. I cringed. He was talking about me, and I had half a mind to ditch this place, get in my car, and… go where exactly? My accounts were still frozen. Damn it.
“The elusive, exclusive bachelor, Don Romano’s very own heir, Elio Romano!” he said. Oh God, they were clapping and cheering. What the hell?
“The highest bidder will get to spend seven wonderful days with the don’s son,” the commentator said.
What the hell was he implying, anyway? I didn’t like his tone.
“Where is Elio? Let’s get him on stage, give the ladies a little something to look at!”
I groaned and walked up the stairs and onto the stage.
The lights blinded me. They always blinded me when I was sober.
And for this night, I had to be sober. I had to see who in their right mind was bidding on me, what their intentions were.
I knew that Father had arranged this thing to teach me a lesson, but as to what this lesson might be, it still evaded me.
There were a lot of people here. A sea of suits and elegant dresses. Hell, they were all eating food while they were bidding. That had to be the next level of depravity. Why didn’t someone bring me a plate? I was starving backstage.
Auctions. What a joke.
I took a champagne flute from one of the servers walking by the stage. If I was going to be here, the least I could do was have a drink, maybe enjoy myself a little. This would be over soon. Seven days, to be exact.
“Sixty thousand, do I hear sixty thousand?”
I waved at the crowd, giving them one of my signature smiles, that devilish grin that made the ladies swoon. I had that on good authority, primarily from the ladies who did the swooning.
But this was strange.
There weren’t very many young women who were bidding on me. In fact, most of the bids were from gentlemen, older gentlemen, and this one lady who had to be in her sixties. Oh, shit. I knew that woman. Her name was Agatha Thompkins, and she was Father’s….err….
She was the woman who Father was seeing these days.
It was nothing serious, I think. After Mother’s death, Father had been in a depressive slump for a long time.
I couldn’t blame the man. I’d lost a mother, he’d lost a wife, we were both distraught.
But something happened to him some years later.
He met this woman, and she started to bring out the good in him.
Not saying that Mom didn’t bring the good out in him; of course she did.
She was the one who pushed him to go legal and say goodbye to a life of crime.
But this woman, Agatha—she gave my father something that he needed. A will to live. A will to try. Something along those lines. I don’t know. I wasn’t really there. I was busy drowning the sorrow of my mother’s loss in everything that I could drink.
And, after all those years, here I was, once again, drink in hand, looking miserably at the desperate efforts my Father was making in a post-mom world.
Now, my mother, she really had a handle on me.
She’d tell me what she wanted me to do and she’d tell it straight, and whenever I veered off-track, she’d gently nudge me in the right direction.
That’s how I was able to make it to Princeton.
That’s how I graduated magna cum laude. But for the past three years, mom-less years I called ‘em, I had been a mess. Even I knew that.
I wasn’t quite ready to untangle all the knots that were there. Not just yet. I still hadn’t mourned her enough.
“Two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars!” the auctioneer yelled, and I saw with great dismay that it was Agatha raising her hand, a small victorious smile on her lips. What the hell was she going to do with me? Try to be my stepmother and teach me some manners?
Whip me into shape?
Try to set me up with one of her daughters? I knew for a fact she had three, and one of them was my age. Now wouldn’t that be fucked up?
Before I could focus on what was happening, the doors swung open, and a woman burst through, all red in the face. She made her way through the hall and sat down on a vacant seat.
The door opened again, but Father’s security detail stopped whoever it was who was trying to get in. Was it more guards? Ah, I didn’t know what was happening.
The woman, this mysterious woman who had just shown up out of the blue, looked up at me, and then looked around. I gave her a smile. She missed it.
“Two-fifty, going once, two-fifty, going twice…”
I groaned internally. Agatha was going to get me after all, it seemed. Whatever lesson my father had planned, he’d finally be able to impart. If he’d wanted me to make nice with the woman who was probably going to be my stepmother, he should have asked. This was too contrived.
The woman who had entered late was fidgeting with her glasses. They fell off her face. When she leaned back up after picking them, her hand was raised, holding the glasses precariously.
“You, madam, do I hear three hundred thousand?” the auctioneer asked.
She mouthed something, but no one heard her. She was still too far in the back.
“Three hundred thousand going once, going twice, and sold to the highest bidder!” the auctioneer said with great glee.
I shot a look at Agatha. She was fuming, her lips pursed. This couldn’t be happening. Who even was this woman!? I then looked at my father, and his face was red with rage.
I suppressed my laugh and stood there, biting down on my lip lest I burst into cackles.
“Enjoy your seven days in heaven with Mr. Elio Romano,” the auctioneer said.
Once backstage again, I was laughing in the green room, downing another drink, this time whiskey, not champagne. Oh man, that was wild. And to think that my father had planned this elaborate ruse!
Unless… unless the woman was part of the ruse. I could not be sure.
There was a knock on the door.
I opened it to find the woman standing there, escorted by one of the auction managers.
“Mr. Romano, please meet Ms. Maria Thurman,” he said. “The woman who won the bid on you.”
“Is that a thing we do?” I asked, raising my eyebrow at the auction manager.
“Naturally, sir, the bidder reserves the right to check the… merchandise they’ve bid on,” the auction manager said smugly. I had half a mind to punch that smug look off his face, but there was a lady present.
“Please, come in,” I said, waving my hand and holding the door for her.
“Thanks, I…” she said. “I don’t know what just happened.”
“You and me both,” I said, holding my hand out. “Elio Romano, the don’s son.”
“Is that how you go about introducing yourself?” she asked, chuckling. “Because that’s pretty weak sauce. Who are you on your own, don’s son?”